PC Freezing - Hard Boot Required

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Gnosisfox

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Aug 24, 2016
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Disclaimer: I am not PC literate, a lot of the lingo I will struggle to understand so bare with me.

Hello,

Not long ago my PC's power supply died. I decided to upgrade parts of my PC to improve my gaming experience etc. However I keep running into this issue where my PC will hard freeze cutting out the sound. I am unable to use my keyboard or mouse, so I am required to hard boot my PC, this problem happens unexpectedly and it happens when I'm gaming OR browsing the net.

I am using windows 10 and my specs are:

Processor: AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor
Installed memory (RAM): 8.00 GB
System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor
Display adapters: AMD Radeon (TM) R7 370 Series
Powersupply: 750W Corsair CX750M, Hybrid Modular, 80 PLUS Bronze, 1x140mm, ATX, PSU

I have made sure my drivers are updated and I can't see anything that seems to be an issue.
I have also checked my event viewer and there are no errors which stand out as out of the ordinary.

ALSO I have swapped my ram with my flatmate to test to see if its the ram causing this issue however the problem still happens when using his ram.
On a side note, the ram is the only item which I have not changed / upgraded.

Please feel free to ask for more information, sadly I am honestly out of clues or ideas on how I could fix this. I have also seen a few threads where people have similar issues but I was unable to find an obvious answer.

Thank you in advance.
 
Solution
amtseung
Your temps look pretty good for your graphics card, so I'm ruling out AMD GPU's bad habit of locking up shortly before VRM failure. However, for an FX CPU, 68C is really high. They're really only allowed to run up to 61C, according to AMD, before they thermal throttle. Ideally, they should be kept at or under 55C under full load. I know, it's incredibly stupid to have the world's most power hungry and inefficient CPU to have the lowest thermal limit, but hell, everything Bulldozer/Piledriver and related architecture was garbage to begin with. Even at the beginning, the first FX CPU was a downgrade from the previous generation! (I'm not kidding. I had an FX 8320, and it was worse than my 965BE.)

Run the AMD Overdrive utility while your...
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amtseung

amtseung

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Jan 28, 2014
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Have you checked to see your hard drive (or SSD, whatever your boot drive is) isn't causing the problem? Do you regularly defrag your HDD (trim your SSD, never defrag it)? If it's an HDD, have you ever dropped it? Even a two foot toss onto a pillow is enough to ruin some hard drives. I did that once, never again will I toss an HDD unless I'm trying to kill it.

Another possibility would be a faulty RAM slot. Even if the sticks are good, a bad slot will still do it in. If you've got 2x4GB sticks, and you check resource monitor and roughly 4GB is "hardware reserved", something is wrong. Regardless, try running memtest86 or Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool. We're not trying to test the memory sticks themselves, but the slots they go into. Make sure you're following the proper procedure when messing with hardware (IE never touch anything while it's powered on).

I doubt your GPU is at fault, because that'll raise a different set of hard crashes/display faults, like pop up messages about display driver faults/recovery and screen artifacting.

Is everything plugged in nice and securely? A SATA plug slightly falling off the back of the hard drive could make your system hang too...
 
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Gnosisfox

Commendable
Aug 24, 2016
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1,510


Hello,

Thanks for getting back to me. I ran Windows Memory Diagnostics and I had zero errors come up.
In regards to the SSD, I bought a new one which is what the PC currently boots from, however I still have my old one plugged in. My flat mate has mentioned that I should try and defrag, which is what I shall do shortly. I don't recall ever dropping any of my components I'm very cautious with them. I also trust all plugs are put in correctly as I have recently bought a new corsair case, to counter any over heating, so we were pretty thorough in making sure things were plugged in :).

 
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amtseung

amtseung

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DON'T DEFRAG AN SSD. EVER.
Unless you're trying to destroy it. When you optimize an SSD, it's called trimming. Trim utilities were more commonly seen in Mac OS X since auto trim functionality wasn't built in until 10.11, but there are ways to accomplish this in windows. The easiest way is to open control panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Defragment and optimize your drives, and then just optimize all your drives. It should take a couple of seconds, and bam, that's done. From the same menu, you can set it to run scheduled. Now it's automatic.

Other things to try:
- Run DDU and then reinstall the latest drivers. This will rule out possibilities of display driver conflicts.
- Install CCleaner, and then run the regular cleaner and registry cleaner.
- Install CPUID HWMonitor. What are your temps when nothing is running?
- Install Prime95, and run a torture test on small fft's for a good 20-30 minutes. What are your CPU temps?
- Install Unigine Heaven, or Valley, and let it loop for about 20-30 minutes. What are your GPU temps?
- Run both Prime95 and one of the Unigine benchmarks at the same time. What are your temps?

There are a couple other things I can think of, but let's start with these.
 
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Gnosisfox

Commendable
Aug 24, 2016
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Sorry, I did only optimize :)

CCleaner run.
HWMonitor temps: CPU 28-30C.
Prime95: CPU after 20 mins - 68C, keep in mind I have a cooling fan which kicks in if it reaches 70C.
Ungine Engine: After about 20mins GPU got to 72C.
After running both together the temps are: CPU 68 and GPU 66



 
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amtseung

amtseung

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Your temps look pretty good for your graphics card, so I'm ruling out AMD GPU's bad habit of locking up shortly before VRM failure. However, for an FX CPU, 68C is really high. They're really only allowed to run up to 61C, according to AMD, before they thermal throttle. Ideally, they should be kept at or under 55C under full load. I know, it's incredibly stupid to have the world's most power hungry and inefficient CPU to have the lowest thermal limit, but hell, everything Bulldozer/Piledriver and related architecture was garbage to begin with. Even at the beginning, the first FX CPU was a downgrade from the previous generation! (I'm not kidding. I had an FX 8320, and it was worse than my 965BE.)

Run the AMD Overdrive utility while your CPU is under load, and just observe the temperatures. Keep in mind that the temperature reading in Overdrive isn't your actual temps, but the number of degrees C you have until you hit the thermal limit.

Time to control those CPU temps. If you're running the stock cooler, I'm sorry to say, run that thing at full blast all the time, and see if the problem doesn't go away. Also, keep track of your motherboard temps, available also in HWMonitor. If your SYSTIN reading starts to climb consistently, that's another source of your problems. I don't know what CPU cooler you're running, but you either need more fan speed or a better cooler. If it's a stock cooler, check to see the clips on either side are in properly, and that the lever is tightened all the way to tension the leaf spring thing that runs across the cooler. If you've got an aftermarket, I hope it's fastened properly and that you have enough thermal paste in there. FX cpu's require a puny bit more than the average guide will tell you, since the heat generating surface is massive.

I'm not surprised your FX8350 is causing a buttload of system-wide issues. My 8320 did.
 
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