Personal system randomly locks up

Calamity1911 · August 23, 2019

My Build:

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz 6-Core Processor	$116.89 @ OutletPC
CPU Cooler	be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 35.14 CFM CPU Cooler	$27.99 @ SuperBiiz
Motherboard	MSI B350M GAMING PRO Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$74.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Toshiba XG3 128 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage	Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$74.99 @ Adorama
Storage	Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$41.89 @ OutletPC
Storage	Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$79.89 @ OutletPC
Video Card	EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB SSC GAMING Video Card
Case	Thermaltake Versa H17 MicroATX Mini Tower Case	$38.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	EVGA SuperNOVA G3 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$94.89 @ OutletPC
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit	$139.89 @ OutletPC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$730.40
	Mail-in rebates	-$40.00
	Total	$690.40
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-08-22 22:19 EDT-0400

So I came back from my dad's house and I tried to turn on my computer. All the fans and stuff spun up, but there was no display output.

So I tried to connect a BIOS speaker, but I didn't have one on hand. I got the amazing idea to use a buzzer I had in an electronics kit I had on hand. It worked, but the speaker just like constantly buzzed. I might've done it wrong.

Now I had to take out my GPU to get at the pins for the speaker. While I was working on the computer, the BIOS reset itself. I did try to manually reset it with both the jumpers and the coin cell battery.

I remembered that I had a Kubuntu 18.04 live image on an external SSD so I tried to boot to that, and when I went into the BIOS, it froze up. Like froze to the point that I had to flip the power switch. By going fast enough, I was able to boot to it and windows, but after moving around in the OS for awhile, it froze like it did in the BIOS.

I tried moving all of my RAM sticks around, like swapping left and right DIMMs and then each DIMM in each slot. After only using one stick, it became more stable but did the same thing again, just a minute or two later. I then put both sticks back in the way they originally were, it became slightly more stable.

I booted windows then, and the same stuff.

Calamity1911 · August 23, 2019

Bump...

I really don't want $1k to go to waste. I just tried disabling global C-State control because I read that some early production run 1st gen Ryzen chips had issues with C states. It didn't fix anything.

My new thought is maybe the GPU as its fans twitch when the system hangs on boot, but spin fine in Windows before the system locks up. I have also observed the EZ Debug LEDs on my motherboard getting stuck on GPU a couple of times.

I don't have much on hand to troubleshoot in terms of spare parts, so I'm gonna have to shelf my build until I figure something out.

At least this gives me incentive to possibly buy a RX 5700 or 5700 XT

Calamity1911 · August 24, 2019

After some troubleshooting, my CPU actually died. Upsetting. I'm not sure if it took the motherboard with it, but it looked like there was a tiny drop of thermal paste that somehow got under the CPU and on the socket. I have no idea how.

Now I'm stuck on my Acer Nitro V laptop until I get the money to fix it.

I'm gonna go Ryzen 3rd gen now, probably a 3600 and a B450 motherboard.