Strange pc behavior giving me false hope

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dakota.davenport93

Dec 5, 2018
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Ive had my gaming rig for a couple of years. Ocasionly it would lock up after boot up and desktop launched. Then, while playing a game, it made a loud sound and froze. When i restarted it wouldnt post or even give video. I did some tinkering and thought it may be my mobo. I wont have a new one till Christmas. So it's been turned off for about a month. Out of curiosity, I booted it up to bios and now it's not freezing. Is this a temporary fix that will inevitably occur again? Should I return the new mobo?

Sorry I forgot to mention I stripped it down to just mobo, cpu, psu, and one stick of ram. It was still freezing in the uefi bios if I managed to get it to post.
 
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Lutfij

Lutfij

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When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. List them like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:

How old is your PSU? Are you on the latest BIOS update for your motherboard?
 
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dakota.davenport93

Dec 5, 2018
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Oh my bad. Lets see
Cpu - Intel i7 6700k
Mobo - asus z170k
Ram - 2 adata 8gb xpg gaming series
Storage - adata 240 GB ssd / 1 TB wd blue HDD
gpu - 2 msi radeon rx 480
Psu - High Power 800w
Case - I forget the exact model but its a mid size corsair with a glass side panel.
Os - windows 10 home ultimate

As for the othwr questions: the psu is as old as the rest of the build, but I used it to power my friends pc when his died recently and it seemed fine. Not 100 percent sure though. And I flashed the bios when the problem started about a month ago.

When it did the full freeze it would not post 50 percent of the time, or freeze in bios the other 50 percent. If I reseated the ram it would sometimes work. But since it was freezing in the bios with nothing else plugged in, I figured the mobo was faulty.

Thanks for the reply.
 
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Wolfshadw

Wolfshadw

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From my experience, the loud noise you are hearing is coming from the graphics card which is not getting sufficient power. Power supplies degrade. Poor quality ones can degrade faster than better quality ones.

My own experience was with a 500 watt Cooler Master power supply. I was running into system crashes with my 7800GS AGP. I was told to install a better quality power supply. I had an Antec 450 watt PSU and I asked myself, how could a lesser powered PSU stop my crashes, but it did.

If you can, test with a better power supply, but if not, that would be my first suspect.

-Wolf sends
 
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dakota.davenport93

Dec 5, 2018
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@Wolfshadw

Ive actually got the pc on and running completely normal right now. Nothing has been replaced and all of my components are now plugged in again. Would a bad power supply sometimes work and sometimes not work? Ever since I built the pc, it would randomely lock up on the desktop a few minutes after a reboot. If it made it past the few minutes it was generally fine. When it froze, it was completely locked. Even they keyboard leds for caps and num lock were unresponsive.

I appreciate the insight friends.
 
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Wolfshadw

Wolfshadw

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Yep. From my experience, the system would run fine until I put the graphics card under heavier usage (playing a game). Otherwise, the system ran fine.

-Wolf sends
 
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Wolfshadw

Wolfshadw

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First step in troubleshooting is duplicating the error. If you're using a different stress test (other than the game) to stress the GPU and it's not crashing, it's time to switch back to the game to make it crash again.

Is there a certain point in the game where it crashes consistently?
Does it always crash after a certain amount of time passes?
Does it always crash at the same view on screen?
If you lower the game graphic settings, does the system still crash?
Have you researched to see if anyone with similar system specs experiences the same (long shot)?

-Wolf sends
 
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dakota.davenport93

Dec 5, 2018
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I dug around the internet for days with no similar posts. My issue is duplicating it. Its always been random. Generally it would happen a few minutes after booting into the os. After the big crash, it wouldn't even post. After reseating everything and having nothing but ram, boot drive, power and cpu, it would sometimes post, then freeze in bios after a few minutes, or boot to windows and then freeze. Removing the boot drive, it would sometimes post and then freeze in bios, and then only work if I reseated ram, or not post at all. All the leds on the mobo and fans would turn on. Fans would spin. But I got no beep codes. Even without ram.
 
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Wolfshadw

Wolfshadw

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It's possible, just not as likely. In my 21 years of PC building, I've had multiple power supplies fail, but only one motherboard and even then, it was only a PCI-E slot (just so happened to be the only PCI-E slot on the ASRock 939Dual-SATAII motherboard).

Can't rule it out, however. Just that checking the power supply is a far simpler process than testing the motherboard. I would note that stress testing the graphics card also tests the motherboard. I can't think of an instance where the motherboard would fail inconsistently save for dust and shorts. When was the last time you checked the underside of the motherboard for dust/debris/dead mice/etc...

-Wolf sends
 
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dakota.davenport93

Dec 5, 2018
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My back panel is off right now and I don't see any dust, debris, or dead animals haha. I try to keep the rig fairly clean. So if a sketchy power supply is the more likely cause, I have 3 follow questions.

1. What psu would a professional recommend? Preferably not bank breaking.

2. My current board is the asus z170 k. The new board I ordered is msi z370 300 series. Is that enough of an upgrade that I should just keep it and have the asus as backup, or no?

3. What would cause no beep codes?
 
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Wolfshadw

Wolfshadw

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1) Any power supply that is successfully running in another similar system with similar power requirements. If you had to purchase one, I'd probably look to something from Antec or Seasonic in the 550 watt range (sub $50).

2) Is the Z300 series board you ordered even compatible with your Core I7-6700K? I don't believe so. Check the CPU Support List on the motherboard manufacturer's support page. If you got a new CPU, I missed that.

3) A failed power supply or a failed motherboard. Again, without being able to duplicate the error, these things are hard to diagnose. If you can duplicate failed beep codes more often than crashing in games, then I'd lean more towards a failing motherboard.

-Wolf sends
 
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dakota.davenport93

Dec 5, 2018
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In case anyone is following or having a similar problem, I found the solution. I decided to just run one stick of ram because I wad tired of putting both in when I had to keep reseating them after a crash. So it started up fine for once. No crash. I restarted several times to make sure. Curious, I took that stick out and put the other one in. Lo and behold, it failed to boot then booted once and crashed. Then booted once and randomely restarted. I marked the sketchy one witha sharpy. Ran a memory diagnostic tool. It failed at 9 percent. Running the tool on the second stick now. It completed several passes with no error. Thanks for everyone input. This site is invaluable and I hope my results can help someone some day.
 
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