Help! PC Freezes & Restarts

[droscoe]

Please help! My PC randomly freezes and restarts. The chances of it freezing/restarting seems to increase when I'm putting a load on my system (such as gaming). Only a few minutes of heavy gaming and it restarts.

On the flip side, when I'm doing nothing at all (sitting on desktop) or doing minimal activity (browsing the internet) it will only SOMETIMES freeze/restart.

Steps I've Taken So Far

• I have no visible damage to system components
• MemTest had no errors after passes
• I've tested individual memory modules, no change
• I've monitored temperatures for CPU, Memory, and GPU and nothing was out of the ordinary.
• Drivers and Windows updated
• Windows Event Viewer shows only 3 events related to the crashes.
  • Error - EventLog (ID 6008) - 8:20:55 pm
  • Critical Kernel-Power (ID 41) - 8:20:51 pm
  • Error - EventLog (ID 6008) - 8:20:55 pm
• BIOS version is 5.80. ASRock website has newest version of 6.30, but it says "they do not recommend" if I have a Summit Ridge CPU. Why not? I'm confused by this, so....I can never update my BIOS?

My Research

• The general answer to unexpected shutdowns include PSU problems, over-heating, and memory modules. I don't appear to have any over-heating issues or memory issues.
• One YouTube video did suggest that it was actually a capacitor that was over-heating due to being covered up by his CPU cooler. I've also read ASRock replacing a board for a customer (that had freezes and restarts) because a memory chip controller was defective.
• It seems that LOTS of people with Ryzen systems complain of freezes/restarts. Evidently AMD's earlier gen CPU's had stability issues? I've read their own press releases about it...am I just screwed?
• I've monitored my memory clock speed using MSI Afterburner in-game (Doom Eternal). I have stock memory sticks (not overclocked) that are DDR4-2400, but MSI Afterburner is reporting the Memory Clock at over 3500mhz....Is this a problem? BIOS has memory set to "Auto", why is my memory running at 3500mhz? Or am I confused here?

 

A Little Back Story

Months ago I was playing CoD Black Ops 3 and my game kept freezing and crashing. I contacted Activision support and they recommend that I update my BIOS version. I updated/flashed my BIOS according to the ASRock website. Only THEN, suddenly, the crashes/restarts started happening. I was very upset. I updated my BIOS to the newest version and all of a sudden my system can't handle heavy loads and restarts.

I do have to consider that this is just a coincidence though. I find it incredibly odd that a BIOS update to the newest version would be so broken.

Basically, when I put a heavy load on my system it increases the chances of it freezing and restarting. But this isn't always the case, Sometimes I'm just watching Netflix or browsing Amazon and it freezes/restarts.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (Summit Ridge, ZP-B1)
3200 MHz (32.00x100.0) @ 3392 MHz (34.00x99.8)
Motherboard: ASRock AB350 Gaming K4
BIOS: P5.80, 06/19/2019
Chipset: AMD B350 (Promontory)
Memory: 16384 MBytes @ 1064 MHz, 15-15-15-36
- 8192 MB PC17000 DDR4 SDRAM - Team Group TEAMGROUP-UD4-2400
- 8192 MB PC17000 DDR4 SDRAM - Team Group TEAMGROUP-UD4-2400
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, 4096 MB GDDR5 SDRAM
Drive: PNY CS1311 120GB SSD, 117.2 GB, Serial ATA 6Gb/s @ 6Gb/s
Drive: ST1000DM003-1ER162, 976.8 GB, Serial ATA 6Gb/s @ 6Gb/s
Drive: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB, 488.4 GB, Serial ATA 6Gb/s @ 6Gb/s
Sound: NVIDIA GM204 - High Definition Audio Controller
Sound: AMD Zen - HD Audio Controller
Network: RealTek Semiconductor RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home (x64) Build 18363.720 (1909/November 2019 Update)
Power: Corsair GS600 PSU