Block artifacting randomly GPU or RAM issue?

[MikeChungis]

Hey everyone! First post here. (Edit turns out that's not the case turns out I just posted awhile ago lol)

 

 

So this is the third forum post I've made overall about this though, once on reddit and once on Tom's hardware but didn't get very much help, So I figured I'd try you guys! Luckily I've sorted some things out to hopefully narrow it down.

 

Basically, when I first got my PC the ram was set to a really low frequency, think it was 2166MHz instead of 3200MHz (It's the AMD optimized RAM for 3600MHz but 3200 is my CPUs max). I had just built this computer and it hadn't really seen if it was stable, and couldn't get it to post at 3200MHz, been out of the PC building game for awhile so had to learn what XMP was. Long story short I could boot at 3000Mhz but had artifacts semi frequently and 2 blue screens once it was turned up to 3100Mhz. After lowering it down I updated my Chipset, ME, and BIOS, and used XMP 1 and turned it back up to 3100Mhz. And it's been 10 days with plenty of games and no blue screen. Didn't even have block artifacting until today while scrolling on twitter. I couldn't catch if it was limited to the browser window or not, but I can say I haven't had any block artifacting whatsoever in games yet. I think it's all been browsing the internet. I've also had my pc completely freeze after closing out games where the audio would cut out and the mouse would be unresponsive. Although I think this has gone away with driver updates.

 

 

So now it's got me wondering if this is a GPU thing. I've updated my Nvidia drivers too, but I always hear block artifacting in relation to GPUs. I downloaded OCCT but couldn't exactly figure out what I was doing or what to look for in the way of testing. I guess I could have gotten a bad GPU, some friends made the exact same that I put together and I haven't heard any of them having this issue. I bought this thing at Best Buy so I'm pretty sure I have a long warranty on it (Hopefully) or I could get an RMA. I just wanna make sure I can narrow it down as much as I can before actually returning something. I think its normal for my card to be in the 90s and 100%'s while I play semi intensive games too and CPU-Z reports a higher clock speed under load than the boost drop down, so I don't think I'm undervolting it?

 

I guess my question is, how can I narrow down what the issue is? If it's obvious please lay down some knowledge on me. I can link my build and my other forum posts as well as my build.

 

I know this was a whole long story but thank you for the help and anyone who reads it!

 

 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yrNgnt

 

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/where-can-i-find-figure-out-ram-timings-for-amd-optimized-ram-with-an-intel-cpu.3765876/

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/xmp-and-ram-settings-causing-instability-and-blue-screen.3769079/

(some of this info might not be the most helpful but I figured I'd link it incase I missed anything and for the sake of having the full story)