Inexplicable Deep Freezes

NoTimeForAUsername · Nov 19, 2016

My specs:

CPU: Intel Core i7 4790 (formerly an AMD FX-8320)

Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z97-HD3 (formerly a GIGABYTE 970A-UD3P)

GPU: 4 GB ASUS Strix Nvidia GeForce GTX 960

RAM: 16 GB (2 individually bought kits of 2 4 GB sticks) Fury HyperX DDR3 @ 1866 MHz

PSU: 600W Corsair CX600

I've broken up the important information into chunks, as I'm terrible at cleanly formatting a post. Sorry in advance if this post is still a little messy.

I recently upgraded my PC from an AMD FX-8320 CPU on a GIGABYTE 970A-UD3P motherboard to an Intel Core i7 4790 CPU on a GIGABYTE Z97-HD3 motherboard. I initially bought an MSi Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard, and it gave me an ungodly amount of BSoDs and driver issues, so I returned it and bought the GIGABYTE board I mentioned earlier.

After installing Windows 8.1 and making sure it was as up to date as possible before going all willy-nilly installing my suite of applications, I'm getting "deep freezes", where my PC locks up so hard it doesn't even give me a BSoD. I literally NEVER ran into any problems while on AMD, so this came as quite an obnoxious surprise.

The freeze would occur when:

- Playing a game and having Google Chrome open at the same time (system would crash after
about 1 1/2 to 2 hours)

- Editing video in Adobe Premiere Elements (whichever the current version is) (system would crash after about 45 minutes to 1 hour)

When using Chrome or playing a game individually, the crash did not occur.

I went into my BIOS (GIGABYTE's UEFI DualBIOS with the fancy-pants modernized look, as well as Smart Tweak) and discovered via Smart Tweak that my RAM had been clocked 1 MHz faster than it was rated, and I also turned on an option to "enhance stability" with my RAM which was previously set to "auto". this seemed to fix my freezing issues with Chrome & Steam, as well as with Premiere.

However, the same kind of crash occured mere minutes ago while playing Overwatch with a friend and talking to him through Discord.

The only error that comes up in the Event Viewer is this:

"The Wise Boot Assistant service has reported an invalid current state 13."

XML version:

- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
<Provider Name="Service Control Manager" Guid="{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}" EventSourceName="Service Control Manager" />
<EventID Qualifiers="49152">7016</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2016-11-19T22:48:34.284856800Z" />
<EventRecordID>2954</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="672" ThreadID="1840" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>MSi_SUCKS</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data Name="param1">Wise Boot Assistant</Data>
<Data Name="param2">13</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

Wise Boot Assistant service is part of the program Wise Care 365.

I can't even begin to fathom what could be going wrong in this case, as I'm still pretty new to troubleshooting. Thanks in advance for any help anyone may be able to give me with this, it is VERY much appreciated!

UPDATE:

It turns out that the error from Wise Boot Assistant occurs on start-up, not after a crash. With my current boot from this morning alone, the error occurred twice in one second, and once more again 38 seconds later. This means that there are no errors being reported when the PC crashes. Interesting...

logainofhades · Nov 21, 2016

Run memtest, to check your ram, and crystaldisk to check your HDD health. Also, as an FYI, that is not a quality power supply.

NoTimeForAUsername · Nov 22, 2016

logainofhades :

Thanks for the reply

There were no errors reported during the 8 hours that I ran Memtest, and I wasn't entirely sure what the results from Crystaldisk meant in terms of my HDD's health. Here's the log from Crystaldisk's test:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 170.052 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 176.131 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.123 MB/s [ 274.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.616 MB/s [ 394.5 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 167.574 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 175.953 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.517 MB/s [ 126.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.523 MB/s [ 371.8 IOPS]

Test : 32768 MiB [C: 20.7% (386.3/1862.7 GiB)] (x9) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/11/22 19:10:02
OS : Windows 8.1 Pro [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)
2TB Western Digital Black Series - WD2003FZEX
P.S. Yeah, my PSU's definitely budget-y :langue:

that was one of the areas where I was willing to make a small sacrifice in order to have more in the budget for the CPU and GPU, certainly going to upgrade in the future. Any brands that you recommend?

logainofhades · Nov 23, 2016

PSU is the one corner you should never cut. The new CX550m/650m are good, Evga B2/G2/G3/P2, Seasonic. If crystal disk says the drive is good, up at the top, then you are fine.

NoTimeForAUsername · Dec 8, 2016

logainofhades :

Sorry for the extremely late reply, I actually forgot about this thread for a while. My PC actually started randomly shutting off, seemingly replacing the aforementioned deep freezing. I took my PC into my local computer store and they ran a benchmark for 3 days straight that pinned the CPU and GPU at 100% usage, and supposedly it didn't shut off once. So I brought it home just this past Friday (December 2nd) and it seemed just fine, as it seemed to handle my usual habit of playing a lightweight game like TrackMania while a YouTube video plays in the background. But on Sunday, it all started happening again.

I downloaded GTA V, and was in absolute awe at the fact that the new CPU could hold 60 FPS constantly enough to be able to justify keeping Vsync set to 60 FPS instead of 30. Of course, right after becoming immersed in the game, my PC gives me the deep freeze for the first time since the day before I took it into the shop. I restart my computer, load up GTA V, and go to the same area. Same freeze in the same place. I swap out both my fancy-pants mouse and keyboard for my more basic and generic ones, and travel to the same place in GTA once again to discover that this time, the freeze DID NOT occur.

This means that external accessories are probably the culprit, as the outlet the computer is plugged into was tested and appeared to be just fine. I'm going to see if there are any updates for my motherboard after posting this, and I'll leave an update on whether that fixes the issue or not.

NoTimeForAUsername · Dec 15, 2016

Over the weekend (Sunday more specifically), I reinstalled the driver that deals with the PCI-e and USB ports, as well as the general chipset driver, and it was perfect... Until just now (the following Thursday). I have no idea what's causing this, so I'm giving up and reinstalling Windows. I'll post another update with the results.

ripto · Dec 15, 2016

I keep getting random crashes (and follow-up pop ups saying display driver stopped responding and recovered) and sometimes just complete blackouts. My thread is here: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3265789/htpc-power-flickers-crashes.html

I haven't replaced the usb wireless keyboard/trackpad combo or re-installed Windows yet. Not sure what else I could do. Hoping you update this post with your results on re-installing Windows.

NoTimeForAUsername · Dec 29, 2016

(The same odd, not-always-a-full-paragraph-before-starting-a-new-line style formatting is back, so bear with me!

)

Welp, I completely wiped my HDD with Gparted (something I've done four or five times before thanks to Windows 10 breaking my PC) and reinstalled Windows. This time, I used my Windows 8 disc and went through the process of updating it to the point of being able to upgrade to 8.1, and then proceeding to update that as much as possible. This did not fix the issues at all, as I experienced the same hard freeze that brought me here in the first place about 35 minutes or so into a session of BeamNG.drive. Four days passed, and just last night it did the random shutoff thing while I was watching YouTube (with nothing else open no less!).

I did some googling and found out my PC was shutting off faster than the Event Log could fill out the values to the error code I was receiving (Event ID 41). The webpage I used (https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/kb/2028504) said to check five things: Overclocking, memory, overheating, power supply, and reverting BIOS settings back to their defaults.

Nothing in my system is overclocked, so that's out. I've run memtest for 8 hours straight on this system in the past, and everything came up clear, so that's out too. With a Hyper 212 EVO on my CPU and a whopping FIVE case fans blowing cool air through my case, I know for sure that nothing is overheating. I initially used factory settings, and began tweaking them due to the established issues.

By process of elimination, that leaves only my power supply. logainofhades had already pointed out that the PSU I went with wasn't a great choice, and now I'm starting to think that might be the what's causing the issue. I'm going to take my ailing rig back to my local computer store for some diagnostics, as I don't have the tools to test the power supply. I'll post an update when I get it back!

ripto · Dec 29, 2016

I doubt it's the PSU. Look at the tons of reviews on Newegg and Amazon for it. Corsair doesn't make garbage PSUs. And for what it's worth, I just replaced an Antec 400W PSU in my HTPC with the same Corsair PSU you have and I still have my shutdown issues.

NoTimeForAUsername · Dec 30, 2016

I took my PC to my local computer store yesterday, and instead of taking in my rig to be tested, the guy at the store gave me some advice. He told me that the problems I'm having are always related to power, and that I should invest in an Uninterruptible Power Supply, as the area where I live experiences frequent "brown-outs" (which means that wattage delivered to the house and therefore the electrical outlets can vary, causing instances where the outlet can't give the PC as much power as it needs). Let's just hope that this finally fixes the issue and puts an end to this massive saga of confusion. :lol:

NoTimeForAUsername · Dec 30, 2016

Welp, I think my power supply is just junk. With the PC plugged into the UPS, I decided to run Prime95. I set it to do a torture test on all 8 CPU threads as well as 14GB out of the 16GB of RAM, and after about 40 minutes or so (I wasn't really keeping track of time), it gave me a hard freeze. I restarted the PC, and ran another torture test on just 2 CPU threads and 14.5GB of RAM. This time it did the random shutoff about 20 or so minutes into the test. I noticed that the temperatures of the CPU were getting a little toasty, maxing out at 76 degrees Celsius and pulling around 120 watts from the wall when running the 8 thread torture test. The temperatures on the 2 thread test eventually got into the mid-60's.

I'll try plugging the PC into a different outlet and running another torture test before dropping 120+ dollars on a gold certified PSU, but right now, it's looking like that will be the case.

NoTimeForAUsername · Jan 1, 2017

Dear sweet mother of Gaben, I think I've done it! I THINK I FIXED IT!!!

After two failed torture tests in Prime95, I decided to consult my motherboard's user manual out of desperation, and that's when I noticed something... It was mentioned in the manual that the board supports 1333 MHz and 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM, and my RAM's speed of 1866 MHz appeared to be available as an "Overclocking Memory Profile". Not knowing (or caring at this point) how to enable the "OMP", I underclocked my RAM to the standard DDR3 speed of 1600 MHz and did another torture test in Prime95. With all 8 CPU threads and 12.5 GB of RAM being tested, my system valiantly soldiered on for one hour before I decided to stop the test myself. After playing with the thought of this whole three month debacle finally being over, I decided to fire up BeamNG.drive and set a playlist on YouTube to play in the background. An hour and a half later, and I was still gleefully driving my car off of cliffs while listening to the Game Grumps yell at Super Mario Maker.

This morning, I decided to play Wreckfest, another game that made my PC freeze and sometimes shut off. My PC handled it as a healthy system should, and the same can be said for Wreckfest's tech demo, Sneak Peek 2.0. It also displayed rock-solid stability during another Prime95 torture test, this one lasting for one hour and ten minutes.

I think we're finally out of the woods here, lads! I'll post an update here a week from now.

NoTimeForAUsername · Jan 7, 2017

A week later, and no freezes or random shutoffs! I FINALLY fixed it!

What went wrong: random inexplicable freezing and shutoffs

What caused it: my motherboard (GIGABYTE GA-Z97-HD3) only supports the standard DDR3 RAM speeds of 1333 and 1600 MHz unless an Overclocking Memory Profile is enabled. My RAM is clocked at 1866 MHz.

How it was fixed: I simply underclocked my RAM from 1866 MHz to 1600 MHz, and the freezes and shutoffs haven't happened since.

Now I just need to figure out how to enable OMP so I can get my RAM back up to its advertised speed (the option to enable OMP is grayed out in the BIOS, and I'm not sure how to fix that). Either way, it should be smooth sailing from now on.

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