PC freezing randomly

HRVH87 · July 15, 2021

Basically my system freezes under light load (watching youtube videos or simply browsing the internet) but remains stable as long as there's a game running in the background. I can play games for hours on end with no problems but if i turn them off, my system will either freeze and the sound will start looping/buzzing and the system will remain hardlocked until i manually power off the computer. Sometimes, the screen freezes, sound starts buzzing and the screen turns black and the system restarts itself. This same scenario has repeated itself on a different board and on a different storage device so at least I can rule out mobo and m.2 malfunctioning. I've ran memtest on my memory sticks, no errors found, ran prime95 no problem, updated BIOS, updated drivers, did fresh windows reinstalls x3, disabled xmp, disabled cstates and speedstep, changed my power management configurations, temps are optimal.

i7-100700K UHD 750

RTX 3060 12GB

Asus TUF GAMING Z590 Plus WiFi -> switched to an old Z490 MSI ACE i had laying around, problem persisted

S40G XPG 1tb m.2 -> switched it to a WD black SN850 m.2 1tb, problem persisted

G.Skill Trident Z 2x8 3200 RAM

EVGA G5 750w gold

I tried a borrowed GPU for a couple of days and it didn't freeze or restart, but sometimes my problem takes a while to manifest itself so my main suspects right now are the GPU and/or PSU but since GPUs are so expensive where i live, i really want some points of view of what my problem could be before I purchase a new GPU at scalper prices.

emosun · July 15, 2021

sounds like that 3060 is junk or was mined on.

had an r9 290 that did the same thing. ran great under heavy loads and was unstable at idle. Was also a mining gpu.

underclock it to 50% when idle and see if that fixes it. Just run it as low as it can while idle.

HRVH87 · July 15, 2021

To be honest it wouldn't surprise me that my GPU is junk or was mined on. This version of 3060 is a PNY one that was only commercialized in Europe and went pretty much under the radar. Worst part is that I bought it at full price. I'll try your suggestion and come back with the results.