Freezing caused by CPU overheating?

Ray7600

Commendable
Oct 5, 2016
36
0
1,540
Hello all,
I own an AMD A8-7600 APU(rest of my system specs at the end) and have been having freezing issues for quite some time. 'Freezing' specifically meaning the screen freezes at the last frame that was rendered, mouse and keyboard are unresponsive and there's no sound. The power-indicating LED blinks but the hard drive LED is off. A hard reset is necessary every time. And after manually switching it off, it doesn't turn back on immediately either. Only the power LED turns on, ALL FANS ARE SPINNING but no light on hard drive LED and system won't boot up. I have to wait a couple of minutes(as if to cool it down) and then the PC boots up like normal.

This happens specifically during heavy gaming(lately has been happening while I play Battlefield 1) and more often during afternoons(when it's hotter) than at night. I tried keeping the case panels open and the freezing stopped happening for a couple of days but was back yesterday afternoon. Mind you, I played BF1 yesterday night as well and then it ran fine, no freezes.

I had this issue for the first time in March this year when I borrowed my friend's old Sapphire HD 7770 card and was playing AC Revelations. Back then the freezing would sometimes take place even when the CPU was under barely any load like the BIOS menu or while installing drivers etc. I disabled the iGPU and reinstalled drivers and that stopped the random freezes but during gaming it would still freeze occasionally. Initially I suspected that the HD 7700 was the culprit and it was overheating(since it usually reached 80-90 °C while gaming) but since then I have bought a new Graphics Card, the NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti which runs wayy cooler(50-56 °C under full load) but the freezes haven't stopped. I also suspected the hard drive overheating but monitoring HDD temps with HWMonitor showed it staying between 41-44°C throughout so it definitely isn't overheating. Finally I started monitoring CPU temps using the CPU tctl reading from HWMonitor(which is consistent with Thermal Margin readings from Overdrive) and saw that it maintains an average temperature of 61°C during gaming i.e. 9-10℃ Thermal Margin(since max operating temp of A8-7600 is 71.3℃). However, every time my PC froze during BF1(CPU usage stays usually aroynd 90-100%), the temp read about 62.5℃. And this happened 4-5 times, every time the freeze happening around 62.5℃. Room ambient temperature was about 35-37℃(Indian summer).

So is it possible that an overheating CPU is causing these freezes? Because even at 62.5℃, the CPU is almost 9 degrees lower than it's MAX Operating Temperature.

If not, what else could it be?
And I must add that I tried stress testing my syatem using a variety of applications like Furmark, OCCT, Aida64 etc. Back in March the system froze twice, once during a Furmark test and once during an OCCT power supply test(all done using the extremely hot HD 7770) but since then I NEVER had a freeze during stress tests. However, freezes during heavy gaming continue to occur.

Fixes I already tried but to no avail:
1) Clean re-install of drivers(using DDU) to the latest version
2) Updating BIOS
3) Updating chipset drivers

My complete system:
AMD A8-7600(uses stock AMD cooler)
2x4GB DDR3 1600 Mhz Corsair Valueselect RAM
Gigabyte F2A68HM-S1 Motherboard
Zotac GTX 1050 Ti 4G OC
Antec VP 550P(brand new bought in March 2017)
Toshiba 1TB HDD
Windows 10 64-bit

Never overclocked anything.

Desperately looking for a fix.

P.S.- I was playing BF1 at the Ultra preset at 1366×768 resolution at a fairly steady 60 FPS
 
Solution
With a motherboard it's hard to diagnose. You have to test everything else and eliminate them from the fault. Seems like you've went through everything else other than the RAM Mobo or HDD. I'd start with the HDD though since it's an easy part to change/replace and see if you can get an old one off a friend to try out in your system. I've had a bad HDD before that would lock up my PC like you're saying.

Ray7600

Commendable
Oct 5, 2016
36
0
1,540
@CountMike But isn't that option just to trigger a warning tone when CPU crosses specified limits? I don't think it affects the temps themselves does it? Seems just like an option to alert the user when temps rise(which I don't need since I'm already monitoring the temps in realtime).
Correct me if I'm wrong.
 

Ray7600

Commendable
Oct 5, 2016
36
0
1,540
@xTotalx That's interesting and frankly no one seems to have suggested that to me before.
Could there be any way I can test it to confirm?
Also, if a faulty mobo was the cause, wouldn't it also fail under stress tests(which run perfectly fine) ?
 

xTotalx

Prominent
May 14, 2017
7
0
520
With a motherboard it's hard to diagnose. You have to test everything else and eliminate them from the fault. Seems like you've went through everything else other than the RAM Mobo or HDD. I'd start with the HDD though since it's an easy part to change/replace and see if you can get an old one off a friend to try out in your system. I've had a bad HDD before that would lock up my PC like you're saying.
 
Solution