Puzzling crashes

[German_John]

Hey all,

I've got a real head scratcher. My PC randomly crashes - hard reboots, sometimes freezes. No BSOD or anything. 

 

Specs

• CPU: Ryzen 5700G (recently bought used)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M DS3H (rev 1.3; recently bought used)
• RAM: 4x8GB GSkill Aegis 3200MHz / 1x16GB Corsair Vengeance 3200MHz (XMP off in both cases)
• GPU: Acer Predator RTX 2070 
• PSU: Seasonic G12 GM 650W (new)
• Case: Fractal Pop Air (new)
• Cooling: Arctic Freezer 36
• Storage:
  • 1x 1TB Crucial NVMe SSD (Windows 10)
  • 1x 960GB Kioxia SATA SSD (Ubuntu 20.04)
  • 1x Toshiba 3TB HDD (mass storage)

Issue: 
Random crashes, either hard reboots or freezes. No blue screen. 
Happened initially, went away after turning XMP off. Returned after a few days, with very high frequency (often, Windows would not be stable for more than a few minutes). Though occasionally, Windows will be stable for several hours. 

In Ubuntu, two crashes seemingly happened, but I wasn’t around for either one, so I can’t verify what happened, and the system was stable for many hours (as opposed to a few minutes for Windows). 

 

Troubleshooting steps I've taken (to no avail):
Turning off C-States in the BIOS

Swapped RAM (see spec list above)

 

Other issues with the PC: Ground(?) noise through one of my USB audio interfaces (Presonus Audiobox USB 96) when GPU is under load; other interface (Behringer UM2-Phoria) does not have these. 

I don’t think it’s tripping overcurrent protection (or other PSU issues, really). Crashes do not occur under load (CPU or GPU), but seemingly random. 

 

I suspected hardware issues, but since Ubuntu was so much more stable, I’m very confused. If it were e.g. an issue with the CPU, I would expect the issue to persist more across OSs, but I might be wrong. 

I also do not think it’s a thermal issue. Running Prime95, the CPU does turbos up to 4.4GHz with temps going up to 60C (Packages, cores max out around 50C). GPU running Furmark gets a bit toasty (over 100C on the hotspot), but I was able to run Far Cry 6 (which is pretty hard on my 2070) for a good while without crashing.

I did not do a fresh install of Windows (or Ubuntu, for that matter) after the upgrade. I would like to avoid that (for laziness reasons, lots of manual config for my work), but I did make a full backup yesterday and have a Windows 10 install stick ready (created yesterday, too). I thought I might get away with it since I stuck with AMD. 

Event viewer shows a few warnings and errors. Warnings mostly relate to DistributedCOM. Errors relate to TPM-WMI (I disabled Secure Boot) and NetBT. The event logging service also encounters errors for channel Nefarius-Drivers-HidHide. 

 

The most recent error before the last crash was: 

The Secure Boot update failed to update a Secure Boot variable with error Secure Boot is not enabled on this machine.. 

Though it happened several minutes before the crash, so I don't think that was it. 

 

If you have any insights, I'd be very appreciative.

[emosun]

52 minutes ago, German_John said:

I did not do a fresh install of Windows (or Ubuntu, for that matter) after the upgrade. I would like to avoid that (for laziness reasons

Ok so you skipped what isn't a diagnostic step but rather... just a step that is normal when changing the base hardware.

 

Drive jumping isn't a windows feature , it's a happenstance,  and trying to diagnose problems when the machine isn't even in baseline condition ( a fresh install) is a waste of time. Do the bare minimum and install the operating system.

[Mark Kaine]

you're on the right track imo... its just both these ram options are less than ideal,  i recommend bdie for AM4 cpus...

 

also make sure the *correct* bios is installed... these can be pretty chaotic in which cpus they support depending on vers number. 

 

also if you can make sure *newest* chipset drivers are installed. 

 

 

1 hour ago, German_John said:

after the upgrade

im sorry its a bit unclear, what upgrade? 

 

old specs vs new specs, please?

[German_John]

1 hour ago, emosun said:

Ok so you skipped what isn't a diagnostic step but rather... just a step that is normal when changing the base hardware.

 

Drive jumping isn't a windows feature , it's a happenstance,  and trying to diagnose problems when the machine isn't even in baseline condition ( a fresh install) is a waste of time. Do the bare minimum and install the operating system.

See, I thought that as well, but it did also crash (apparently) in Ubuntu, which surprised me. But yeah, I guess I'll reinstall Windows tomorrow and get back. Thanks! 

[German_John]

14 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

you're on the right track imo... its just both these ram options are less than ideal,  i recommend bdie for AM4 cpus...

 

also make sure the *correct* bios is installed... these can be pretty chaotic in which cpus they support depending on vers number. 

 

also if you can make sure *newest* chipset drivers are installed. 

 

 

im sorry its a bit unclear, what upgrade? 

 

old specs vs new specs, please?

Sorry, I seem to have skipped the most important bit. I upgraded CPU, motherboard, and PSU (and case and CPU cooler). I'll reinstall Windows and see what happens 

[German_John]

Sorry for the very late reply - I wanted to make sure the PC is actually stable (it had a stable period of a few days before). Seems to be solid after a re-install of Windows.