Windows 10 freezing is this mobo, psu or software issue?

insider9

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Help will be most appreciated. It all started this weekend when we had a power cut.

Since pc started to freeze up (in Windows only, never happened in BIOS) mostly at idle. Run prime95 and it was all normal until stopped. It mostly happens spontaneously. It freezes for about 2 minutes. Display won't update but if you were to press Windows button on keyboard while it froze it would then bring up start menu however many times it was pressed after it "wakes up".

The worse it's been it would freeze for 2 minutes and the it would be fine for 2-3 minutes and freeze again, continuously.

I've tested it with different ram, run memtests etc. and used ram in a different pc so can rule that out. Same with SSD. Done a clean install of Windows 10. Oveclocking doesn't have any impact on this. GPU seems not to have any impact on this either.

Now here's where it gets interesting. After I pulled out a PCIe Wifi card the issue disappeared completely.

I then tested said card in another system and the card is fine. Also tried using brand new PCIe card and the issue came back. I then placed the card in another PCIe slot and the freezing came back :( even if i used 3rd PCIe x16 slot.

For the time being I'm using a usb stick for wifi but it bothers me knowing there's an issue. Both mobo and psu are under warranty so could send back but wondering whether anyone would point me towards one or the other. Or maybe a software issue. Although I doubt the last one since clean install of Windows and a clear cause/effect of inserting PCIe card.

Thanks for reading and if you've any ideas please share.

Specs in my signature.
 
Solution
Your motherboard had about 10 updates to the bios that all improved stability.
Get the latest bios and try again.

Save the BIOS file in the root of the C drive. (Make sure you unzip it)
Start up bios and go to the Easy Flash utility and navigate to the C drive.
Flash and hopefully it'll solve your stability issues.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z97PRO_GAMER/HelpDesk_Download/

Kurz

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Your motherboard had about 10 updates to the bios that all improved stability.
Get the latest bios and try again.

Save the BIOS file in the root of the C drive. (Make sure you unzip it)
Start up bios and go to the Easy Flash utility and navigate to the C drive.
Flash and hopefully it'll solve your stability issues.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z97PRO_GAMER/HelpDesk_Download/
 
Solution

insider9

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Thanks both I'll have a look and report back.

EDIT
Early signs suggest that the flashing BIOS helped. I've returned to the original setup with PCIe wifi card and it didn't freeze yet. I'll report back tomorrow to pick a solution after doing some more testing.

Thank you very much ronintexas and Kurz!
 

insider9

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Thank you very much for your help! It worked and after what I believe is sufficient testing I picked your answer as the solution.
 

insider9

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Just wanted to say thank you very much for your reply. You were absolutely right. Since Kurz replied faster I picked his answer as a solution.