Randomly Permanent PC Freezes

[Omseik]

I'm writing this in the name of a friend who will soon come to me to check his PC.

 

Problem:

Problem started around march. He uses the PC for gaming mostly. He didn't change any bios settings for years, or change any specific settings which would affect stability.

The PC will freeze time to time and stays like that. The only way to resolve this is to restart, waiting wont unfreeze. It happens during gaming such as Call of Duty or Fifa or sometimes while installing a software without anything significant in the background. 

 

A few times in the last few days he start received BSOD with error WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR which is mostly hardware from what I saw online, and regarding overclocking.

 

 

Specs (It is a pre-build):

i7-7700k + Cooler Master 212 Black Edition

Zotac GTX 1080Ti Rear Exhaust

Asus Prime Z270-P

PSU Corsair TX650M

 

 

What he already tried:

Reset bios to standard settings (turned off all auto overclocking which came with the PC). Freezes still happen.

Stress CPU & Memory (together at same time. might try separately) with prime95, freezes still happen.

Idle for a while to see temps, freeze wont happen, but after he tried to install HWMonitor, PC froze.

Windows Memory Diagnostics - passed just fine

Used FurMark, PC did not freeze while using it, but froze later when the cpu was idling after the stress.

*Clean reinstall of Windows 10. Up to date. Still wont solve the problem.

 

 

Temps:

While stressing with prime95, the CPU will get up to 92* sometimes in small spikes to 100. Depending on what stress test the prime95 does (we used the blend feature to go through all the tests) It will overall range from 80-90 usually. While the CPU is hot at like 92*, which is too much in my opinion,  I see the Clock Speed dropping to 4.1-4.18 from 4.2 standard.

For GPU. While FurMark is running, GPU gets up to 88* at 1080p settings. More details about GPU when I get the PC.

 

 

What I want to try:

Change CPU Thermal Paste.

Take GPU out and stress again only CPU  (no fail for a 2h stress)

A little busy today, so I will let prime95 stress test all options (CPU+RAM) and using the internal GPU  (failed/froze after 3h 15m of blend stress test)

Stress testing the CPU only again but for many more hours, 2 is not enough.(Averaging at 85% after 8h of full heat and power in prime95, nothing happened)

Testing memory with memtest86 (passed all 4 x13 tests without any error)

Stress memory with prime95 (after 8h this didn't make the pc freeze)

Try to replicate the last freeze i had by using prime95 in blend mode (again it didn't freeze this time)

I had prime95 with blend mode + a youtube video playing in BG + FIFA playing as this game used to cause freezes (This worked flawlessly for many hours)

Run chkdsk and sfc /scannow (No problems were found)

TRY TO FREEZE/CRASH THE PC somehow... it just doesn't want anymore. Cant troubleshoot a working PC.

 

EDIT 2:

What can I try?

FIFA 2020 and COD used to freeze the PC every 1h. FIFA worked without problems for hours with prime95 in background. Didn't try COD yet, downloading all 210GB+. Did that thermal paste change fixed it? It was indeed CPU throttling before, and the last freeze was before 24h passed since the thermal pastel paste application (takes 24h to work properly). I can't make it crash anymore to check other what could crash it. NOTE: without gpu it froze in the past.

 

EDIT:

*Added info about Windows being clean installed.

*Stressing without Gpu atm

*Added more specs

*More details about tests, and what I don't know what to do.

[WaterSheep]

have you checked the HDD/SSD?
try running chkdsk and sfc /scannow
also even if it passes in memory testing, once the memory stick is dying its going to send you that BSOD error
try removing all stick and boot the rig with 1 stick at a time, if 1 stick doesn't cased any BSOD try putting the other stick in and reboot it and see if its the problem

 

[Omseik]

4 hours ago, Seraphiel said:

have you checked the HDD/SSD?
try running chkdsk and sfc /scannow
also even if it passes in memory testing, once the memory stick is dying its going to send you that BSOD error
try removing all stick and boot the rig with 1 stick at a time, if 1 stick doesn't cased any BSOD try putting the other stick in and reboot it and see if its the problem

 

Yes.. that was my last plan, but I cant make it freeze/crash anymore. My friend said the PC was freezing every hour, nothing for me anymore. I stressed both sticks of RAM to hope they crash so I can remove one and stress again, but it just works right now. I really doubt the thermal paste change was causing such freezes and system instability.  

 

I update the original post if you want to see more details and if you can help. 

[WaterSheep]

wait what? he changed the thermal paste?