Random computer hangs

[cochiorsebi]

Specs

CPU: Ryzen 3 1200 at stock speeds

GPU: Gainward Gtx 1050ti

Motherboard: Asrock AB350M Pro4(updated to bios 4.90)

PSU:Corsair CX450 (grey)

RAM: 2x4gb 2400mhz G.Skill(reduced to default, 2133mhz)

HDD: an old 500gb WD Green (5-6 years old)

Two Arctic case fans

OS: Windows 10 Pro x64 Version: 10.0.17134 Build 17134

Problem

My computer randomly freezes every few days for a few seconds even at very light load(simple internet browsing) and then unfreezes. It seems that only the usb devices are affected, since video output works perfectly(it happened to me in a game and everything except the screen froze, there was also no lag in the game while the freeze was happening). When the freeze happens one of two things happened: once the hdd simply shot up to 100% during the freeze and another time there was a windows error message in the task manager that brought HDD usage up to about 80-90%. The freezes started a few days after i reinstalled windows.

Attempts at fixing it and diagnosis

I disabled all the overclocks i have done before(for the cpu and ram), ran HDD diagnosis tests(no errors shown), disabled superfetch, windows search and some settings in advanced power options("Link state power management" and "turn off hard disk after").

Probable causes

My theories are these:

-The HDD is on its last leg: its a 5-6 year old WD Green hard drive that about a year ago started making weird screeching noises . Since no errors were shown in the WD diagnostics programs I believe it could be a mechanical issue.

-The motherboard is faulty: its an Asrock AB350M Pro4 which i heard has caused many issues to people, but their motherboards usually cause them hard freezes that require a restart, a thing i do not need to do. It could also be that all USB ports get simultaneously shorted causing every usb device to disconnect, i doubt this one though.

-A driver issue: In the event viewer i noticed i got the event 28 error during the time of the last freeze(which also coincides with the windows error message in the task manager), which I read is related to driver issues.

-Windows is corrupted: I read that many people had these short freezes on windows 10, and since the freezes happened only after reinstalling windows, its quite likely that i somehow corrupted it.

Any ideas on what the problem could be?