PC freezes while gaming

[schwlfty]

Hi everyone, first time posting here and I'm looking for some help troubleshooting my PC.

When gaming my system will freeze becoming completely unresponsive until I hold the power button down to force shutdown. In this state the screen is frozen with the audio stuck (i.e. electricity like sound) and the mouse + keyboard are unresponsive. Recently it started happening every time I game (usually after ~10 minutes).

 

Specs:

OS: Windows 10 Pro

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X - 6-Core 3.7 GHz
Video Card: ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
MotherBoard: ASUS ROG Strix B550-I Gaming
Power Supply: Corsair SF Series, SF600, 600 Watt, Fully Modular Power Supply, 80+ Gold Certified
RAM: G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3600

 

I built the PC about 2 years ago but have had the same issue a few times now.

 

Timeline:

2021 October - Built PC

2022 September - PC started freezing, swapped PSU, everything was good for a few months

2023 February - PC started freezing, swapped SSD, everything was good for a few months

2023 May - PC started freezing again, swapped GPU, everything was good for a few months

2023 July (now) - PC started freezing again 

 

A few weeks ago I started getting BSOD (in addition to the freezing) and I suspected it was a driver update due to a recent Windows Update + GPU driver update. I tried rolling back the drivers, and then also tried reinstalling Windows. I no longer get BSOD but I'm still getting freezes. Since then I've tried updating BIOS and updating drivers (via Windows) but neither seems to have helped.

 

I ran Memtest86 which failed on 1 stick of RAM. I've since taken out that stick of RAM and Memtest86 passes. I ran some OCCT stress tests: CPU 30 min successful, Memory 30 min successful and Power 30 mi then pc froze. The Power test failed after 12 minutes with CPU 77C/GPU 75C (I attached a screenshot I had to take with my phone because my PC was frozen).

 

What should I try next here? Are there any other tests I can try or hardware parts I can swap out? Any help here is appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

[BlackManINC]

1 hour ago, schwlfty said:

Hi everyone, first time posting here and I'm looking for some help troubleshooting my PC.

When gaming my system will freeze becoming completely unresponsive until I hold the power button down to force shutdown. In this state the screen is frozen with the audio stuck (i.e. electricity like sound) and the mouse + keyboard are unresponsive. Recently it started happening every time I game (usually after ~10 minutes).

 

Specs:

OS: Windows 10 Pro

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X - 6-Core 3.7 GHz
Video Card: ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
MotherBoard: ASUS ROG Strix B550-I Gaming
Power Supply: Corsair SF Series, SF600, 600 Watt, Fully Modular Power Supply, 80+ Gold Certified
RAM: G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3600

 

I built the PC about 2 years ago but have had the same issue a few times now.

 

Timeline:

2021 October - Built PC

2022 September - PC started freezing, swapped PSU, everything was good for a few months

2023 February - PC started freezing, swapped SSD, everything was good for a few months

2023 May - PC started freezing again, swapped GPU, everything was good for a few months

2023 July (now) - PC started freezing again 

 

A few weeks ago I started getting BSOD (in addition to the freezing) and I suspected it was a driver update due to a recent Windows Update + GPU driver update. I tried rolling back the drivers, and then also tried reinstalling Windows. I no longer get BSOD but I'm still getting freezes. Since then I've tried updating BIOS and updating drivers (via Windows) but neither seems to have helped.

 

I ran Memtest86 which failed on 1 stick of RAM. I've since taken out that stick of RAM and Memtest86 passes. I ran some OCCT stress tests: CPU 30 min successful, Memory 30 min successful and Power 30 mi then pc froze. The Power test failed after 12 minutes with CPU 77C/GPU 75C (I attached a screenshot I had to take with my phone because my PC was frozen).

 

What should I try next here? Are there any other tests I can try or hardware parts I can swap out? Any help here is appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

Not sure whats happening with your PC, but ASUS recommends a 750 watt power supply for your specific GPU on their own website. You have a 600 watt power supply.

[schwlfty]

26 minutes ago, BlackManINC said:

Not sure whats happening with your PC, but ASUS recommends a 750 watt power supply for your specific GPU on their own website. You have a 600 watt power supply.

Good catch I didn't see that - thanks for the reply! Before I try buying a 750W PSU..

 

I noticed the specs page says (https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/graphics-cards/dual/dual-rtx3060ti-o8g/techspec/)

Quote

 

* Our wattage recommendation is based on a fully overclocked GPU and CPU system configuration. For a more tailored suggestion, please use the “Choose By Wattage” feature on our PSU product page: https://rog.asus.com/event/PSU/ASUS-Power-Supply-Units/index.html

And then following that at the bottom of the page under "Choose by wattage" if I plug in AMD Ryzen 5 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti it says it recommends 550W (with overclocking off).

 

Also when I plug in the specs into pcpartpicker the estimated wattage is actually under 400W. But do you think it would be worth trying a more powerful PSU anyways?

 

[BlackManINC]

13 minutes ago, schwlfty said:

Good catch I didn't see that - thanks for the reply! Before I try buying a 750W PSU..

 

I noticed the specs page says (https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/graphics-cards/dual/dual-rtx3060ti-o8g/techspec/)

And then following that at the bottom of the page under "Choose by wattage" if I plug in AMD Ryzen 5 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti it says it recommends 550W (with overclocking off).

 

Also when I plug in the specs into pcpartpicker the estimated wattage is actually under 400W. But do you think it would be worth trying a more powerful PSU anyways?

 

 No idea. I find it odd that it doesn't account for power spikes, which certain RTX 30 cards were notorious for. I assumed that was what the 750 watt was coming from, because the 3060TI isn't nearly that power hungry. Barring potential faulty hardware, my PC actually froze once before specifically because of corrupted system files, which you can verify with this command in either powershell or command prompt (opened as admin).

 

sfc /scannow

It never happened again after this command found the corrupted files and replaced them with clean ones. I run this command at least once a week, ESPECIALLY after a windows update since there is nothing stopping an update from corrupting files on the standard and pro editions of windows. 

[schwlfty]

1 hour ago, BlackManINC said:

 No idea. I find it odd that it doesn't account for power spikes, which certain RTX 30 cards were notorious for. I assumed that was what the 750 watt was coming from, because the 3060TI isn't nearly that power hungry. Barring potential faulty hardware, my PC actually froze once before specifically because of corrupted system files, which you can verify with this command in either powershell or command prompt (opened as admin).

 

sfc /scannow

It never happened again after this command found the corrupted files and replaced them with clean ones. I run this command at least once a week, ESPECIALLY after a windows update since there is nothing stopping an update from corrupting files on the standard and pro editions of windows. 

 

Oh wow - just ran sfc /scannow and it found + successfully repaired some corrupted files. I assumed since it's a fresh windows install there wouldn't be anything corrupted but I guess not. I attached a copy of the CBS log.

 

Quote

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19045.3208]
(c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

 

C:\WINDOWS\system32>sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan.  This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them.
For online repairs, details are included in the CBS log file located at
windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For offline
repairs, details are included in the log file provided by the /OFFLOGFILE flag.

 

Maybe unrelated but I also noticed in Reliability Monitor I have this "Controls the DTS audio processing object" event that occurs many times per day. I updated my audio drivers but that didn't seem to help. I attached a screenshot of that event.

 

CBS.log

[BlackManINC]

15 hours ago, schwlfty said:

 

Oh wow - just ran sfc /scannow and it found + successfully repaired some corrupted files. I assumed since it's a fresh windows install there wouldn't be anything corrupted but I guess not. I attached a copy of the CBS log.

 

 

Maybe unrelated but I also noticed in Reliability Monitor I have this "Controls the DTS audio processing object" event that occurs many times per day. I updated my audio drivers but that didn't seem to help. I attached a screenshot of that event.

 

CBS.log 14.91 MB · 0 downloads

Yeah, I haven't looked at the log yet, but the fact that corrupted files were found despite a clean installation of Windows just shows that you can't trust ANY change made to not fuck something up. On the enterprise edition of Windows this isn't a concern. But the average user will use no more than the pro edition at best. Hopefully this fixed the freezing. 

[schwlfty]

Ok unfortunately looks that didn't fix the freezing. I ran Memtest86 again and it has errors but freezes before completing. The OCCT Power stress test also still freezes. 

 

I think at this point it has to be a problem with the CPU or MOBO (which would also explain why swapping the other parts never fully fixed the problem). I'll first try swapping the RAM and if that doesn't help then I'll try rebuilding with a new MOBO + CPU + 750W PSU.

[schwlfty]

Update: I got a new motherboard + CPU and don't seem to have any issues anymore!