Possible Motherboard issues... Oof

[The_Chief]

I have been having issues with my computer over the past year and I believe I have narrowed down the search to my motherboard. The symptoms are odd though... Let me explain.

 

Every few minutes my computer will completely freeze, both the screen as well as all input devices such as my mouse and keyboard. After around 1-2 minutes it will unfreeze and continue on as if nothing had occurred before. Additionally, my mouse/keyboard will freeze for around half a second once and a while.

 

Seems normal... Well that part is, let me continue.

 

Near the beginning of the issue period I had suspected that it may have been my graphics card that was dying (GTX 970) as the audio being routed through my HDMI cable (from my GPU) to my monitor was choppy along with games freezing every once and a while, likewise to my computer as a whole. Another anomaly was that even if routed my audio through my headset directly from a USB hub the audio was still choppy, same as when using the speakers on my monitor. The same occurred even while using the audio jack on the front of my case. I decided to remove my GPU simply to see if the GPU was the issue, and that sort of worked... The audio issue fixed itself, so now my audio is completely fine, both through my headset/audio jack and my monitor and the freezing issue has become less prevalent, though still occurs, be it only half as often... 

 

My second step after removing my GPU and realizing that the freezing had been barely affected (still bad) was to factory reset both of my drives (removed partitions and created new ones, yes there are better ways to do this but it was quick) and clean installed windows 10 on my computer. This didn't fix it, so I resorted to messing with my hardware again. I put my GPU back into my computer and immediately the audio issues resumed as well as the frequent freezing.

 

Through this troubleshooting I have narrowed down my search to the motherboard, an Asus H97-PLUS. This is where I'm stuck, though I have a hunch that it has to do with a PCI/Bus issue on my motherboard/CPU (i5-4690). I am pretty confident that it is not a RAM issue as many of the common symptoms apart from the freezing don't apply.

 

All help is appreciated! 

[God Speed.]

have u considered the cpu as the cause? 

[The_Chief]

I have, briefly. Through regular monitoring of the CPU, as well as the functions that cause a freeze I pushed that off to the side as an issue but it very well could be that reason. Do you know of any test environments to test the stability of a CPU?

[God Speed.]

1 minute ago, The_Chief said:

I have, briefly. Through regular monitoring of the CPU, as well as the functions that cause a freeze I pushed that off to the side as an issue but it very well could be that reason. Do you know of any test environments to test the stability of a CPU?

swap cpu's  if u have another lying around because cpu's can cause the issues as faulty motherboards. having said that the motherboard is much more likely to be the issue. see what ur cpu temp is at during gaming/high workload, that should give u a decent idea if it could be damaged... 

[The_Chief]

7 minutes ago, God Speed. said:

swap cpu's  if u have another lying around because cpu's can cause the issues as faulty motherboards. having said that the motherboard is much more likely to be the issue. see what ur cpu temp is at during gaming/high workload, that should give u a decent idea if it could be damaged... 

Sounds good, unfortunately I am only in possession of the CPU in my system currently... As for temperatures, I have a reasonable aftermarket Cooler Master Cooler and my temperatures while gaming/workloads rarely exceed 70 degrees...  

[The_Chief]

9 minutes ago, God Speed. said:

swap cpu's  if u have another lying around because cpu's can cause the issues as faulty motherboards. having said that the motherboard is much more likely to be the issue. see what ur cpu temp is at during gaming/high workload, that should give u a decent idea if it could be damaged... 

Sounds good, unfortunately I am only in possession of the CPU in my system currently... As for temperatures, I have a reasonable aftermarket Cooler Master Cooler and my temperatures while gaming/workloads rarely exceed 70 degrees...