Computer freezes under high network usage

[NWA99]

Hello there,

I have finally decided to seek technical support as this problem I have has been frustrating me for a long long time now. 

This issue has been occurring for as long as my (semi-) new build has existed; about 8 months. I have done lots and lots of troubleshooting and as you probably can tell - with neither luck nor success. 

Whenever I start downloading (streaming as well of course) a usually large file using either Steam or JDownloader or even Chrome sometimes, my PC starts freezing after an unexpected amount of time (I use WiFi btw).
Using JDownloader however, I have noticed that every single time this happens, the average download speed keeps decreasing until it reaches 0 MB/s and only a 5-7 seconds after the computer becomes completely unresponsive, meaning a hard lock with no BSODS or anything - no mouse movement at all, no caps lock led working, nothing at all. I tried waiting for the PC to become responsive after a while but after several hours, it was still the same. So the only thing that's left is a hard reset, which is a big pain every time I have to do it.

 

I went to check for any errors in the Event Viewer, but no indicators pointing to an error, just the standard "The last system shutdown was not proper" due to unknown reasons - nothing else.

So what have I tried (this might not contain everything as I have really tried a lot and over the past few months I will surely have forgotten some things):

 

- Checked for faulty hardware (exchanged network adapter with my brother's, checked for HDD errors, ran memory check for several hours, stress tested GPU and CPU, changed some of the SATA cables). 
Only thing I did not try was try out another PSU, as the one I'm using is from my slightly older build from 2015, but still it should not be the problem as heavy gaming for a very long period of time does not cause any errors.
So I think all in all, the hardware should not be faulty - any crashes or at least freezes should occur while gaming otherwise, no?

- Completely wiping my disk and re-installing Win 10.

- Tried re-seating my RAM DIMM's and pressure-air-cleaning all components after re-seating them. I tried putting the network card (which is still a bit of a suspect to me tbf) into another PCI-e slot but it did not bear any fruit either.

- Checked of course for malware but there wasn't anything malicious there.

- Tried using the the all in one repair software from Tweaking.com, and went trough all the options, but nothing either.

- sfc /scannow, chkdsk, and Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth and its other forms were also all tried but did not show any problems.

- Setting hard drive to not sleep automatically after a while

- High-Performance enery mode

- Network adapter cannot control PC in terms of sleeping

- Flashed most recent BIOS update

- Updated CPU, GPU and network drivers

- Temps are also always fine. 

 

As I mentioned before, I might have forgotten to list everyting, so any further suggestions are really very welcome and I will be answering immediately, as I am really desperate at this point.

The problem with this issue is that is not reproducable at will, meaning it just happens after a while of downloading - can be after 2 minutes of downloading or after 6 hours of downloading - it's really very random.

Now I doubt it's a hardware issue, but what still comes to my mind is either a service or driver issue. I have not tried downloading or streaming from safe mode yet, but I am planning to, if everything else fails.

Now I've had the idea of monitoring the PC a long time ago, but that was not helpful at all either, because CPU usage stays the same, GPU does not show any unexpected behaviour or spikes and memory and disk usage are all the same as well. Network usage of course is a little high but that is natural due to the downloading.

 

I have used Task Manager, ProcessHacker, MSI Afterburner, HWMonitor and AIDA64 for monitoring but there is simply nothing that is being monitored which could be a lead.

As I also mentioned before, the issue with his problem is that it's very random - as in I cannot force it, it just happens all of a sudden. I tried out many situations, e.g. Gaming while downloading, watching Youtube while downloading and even leaving the PC completely alone while downloading but it just freezes after a while.

I have several programs running in the background, such as MSI Afterburner along with RivaTuner, Teamviewer, Rainmeter, Logitech Gaming Software (for my peripherals), TranslucentTB and Asus AURA Sync to name a few. I have thought about disabling them all of them and then re-enabling them one by one to try and force the the PC to freeze but that is a really big amount of labour that I'm currently postponing for a later occasion.

 

Now I have thought - is there a program that would monitor EVERYTHING that's happening on the PC, even if it's a huge resource hog, I would not care, that would show me the log after I hard reset the PC? A program that can monitor services starting up, drivers loading, background applications starting and closing and general hardware usage. Does anybody know of a program like that? That would help me a lot.

I usually like my PC to be very clean and optimized, and do not tolerate any bugs or crashes and what not, and try to solve all problems as soon as I find one but at this point I would even be willing to stop using Steam or downloading anything over JDownloader, if this would just avoid this issue, but even streaming Twitch or sports events results in a complete lockup after a while.

 

I am really desperate and any kind of help is really welcome, so I appreciate all the answers.

Of course, specs are:

MoBo: ASUS Prime X370 PRO

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 (at stock clock)

GPU: NVidia GTX 1080 Ti (also stock)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX CMK16GX4M2B3000C15 (2 sticks of 8 GB, dual channel, using XMP profile)

PSU: EVGA B2 750W 

SSD: Samsung EVO 850, 250 GB

HDD: 2x WD Blue, 1TB

Network: Gigabyte GC-WB867D-I (using the Intel AC7260 chip)

OS: Windows 10 PRO, using latest build

Let me know if I forgot any of the specs, as I'm currently a little tired and might have forgotten a thing or two and thank you in advance!

[NWA99]

Nothing at all?