PC randomly crashing in Idle or low load situations (no error messages)

[Jishaku]

My System:

Spoiler

Windows 10 Pro

x64

Not OEM (Volume license key for small business)

Intel i7 - 7700K
Geforce GTX 1080 Ti
G.Skill Trident Z - 32 GB @ 3200 Mhz (I got those sometime later)
Asus Maximus Hero IX (BIOS Version is 1301 - which is the newest one available)

Corsair AX760

2 Monitors - 1 VR Headset

Built and installed OS in March 2017

So my system started crashing about 6 weeks ago. At first only once a week or so, now sometimes twice a day.

The PC either just restarts or stays on backscreen indefinitely (RGB in the case stays on).

 

There have not been any crashes, while running resource intensive tasks like VR software, rendering 3d models and compiling code thankfully.
Usually it happens during web browsing, word processing or playing e-sports games. One time, the pc just didn't return from sleep and I had to hard reset it.

I do have some stuff like Spotify and Chrome (with about 300 Tabs open) running at all times.

 

So I checked the reliability monitor and the crashes looked like this:

 

With an added Hardware error in about 10% of the crashes.

LightingService seems to be Asus' RGB control software so I uninstalled it but the crashes did not stop occurring. So I guess the LightingService.exe crashes because Windows crashes, not the other way around?

 

Another thing I noticed (might not be related) is, that from time to time (once every 3 hours-ish), for a split second, there are colorful vertical stripes covering about 10% of one monitor. Seems like it would be GPU related to me. It only ever occurs on one specific monitor. This does not really bother me that much, but it could be related I guess. Might be a sign of my GPU dying. 

 

Even if I upgrade to a new platform, I would still need to know what the problem is, so I can sell the parts without basically scamming someone...

Where can i find more detailed crash logs to pinpoint the issue?

Anything I can rule out as the source? GPU, CPU, MB, PSU?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Mark Kaine]

psu is the main suspect. 

 

 

as for that asus software  malware , this isnt as easy as you think, look up how to remove it completely,  very nasty,  little program (you'll have to disable some services besides deinstalling, is all I remember..)

[Jishaku]

Ok, so I looked into the Windows Event Viewer and found this:

Spoiler

 

I looked further into the Critical Errors, but are about 100 Errors a day normal?

Most of the Critical Errors had BugcheckCode 0 or 278. And the codes 307 and 209 appeared once each (within the last 7 days).

 

Some Screenshots:

Spoiler

On 278 the SystemSleepTransitionToOn is either 1, 3 or 5

The 0 code is not much help, but notably not all of them have a PowerButtonTimestamp, which I assume means, that the PC was not shut down by hand.

 

None of the components are overclocked except for activating the XMP profile for the memory.

Some of the errors seemingly should have resulted in a BSOD but I have not actually ever seen one on this pc.

Utilization of Hardware during Idle is:
CPU: 3-6%
Memory: 33%

GPU:0-1%

 

I guess I'm going to read through some of the documentation I linked for the error codes.

[Jishaku]

15 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

as for that asus software  malware , this isnt as easy as you think, look up how to remove it completely,  very nasty,  little program (you'll have to disable some services besides deinstalling, is all I remember..)

I'll look into that.

16 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

psu is the main suspect. 

Some of what I read pointed in that direction but some was hinting at corrupted drivers.

I'll try to find out a bit more before I send them an RMA request.

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, Jishaku said:

I'll look into that.

Some of what I read pointed in that direction but some was hinting at corrupted drivers.

I'll try to find out a bit more before I send them an RMA request.

Right, I mean at this point its all just guessing (based on experience,  but nonetheless guessing) but yeah it sounds like psu or maybe ram...

 

Some details needed:

 

For how long do you have the ram and when did these issues start?

 

And how long did you have the psu?

 

 

[Jishaku]

8 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

For how long do you have the ram and when did these issues start?

 

And how long did you have the psu?

I got the ram in mid 2018 and the psu when I first built the system in early 2017.

 

According to event viewer the first crash was on 08.27. and the one after on 09.12.. But looking back at what projects I was working on at the time, I can't really remember having any issues at the time. The first crash i remember around mid Oktober, but they have gotten much more common recently (6 in the last week).