AM4 B350/X370 black screen crash thread

[Dschingis]

Hi guys,
I've read the whole thread as I have the same problems as some of you mentioned: system freezes leading to black screens after which all IO devices don't work until the system is restarted.
The black screens are happening very randomly, sometimes while using a mail client, while browsing the web, while playing a video using VLC etc. Strangely enough it never happens while I'm playing a game.
I also noticed that sometimes before the black screens happens, my system starts to "stutter". My mouse becomes unresponsive or starts to stutter and with it the whole system.
In some cases I get a black screen which means I have to restart, in others my mouse/system becomes responsive again and everything is fine for the next few minutes/hours.

I've tried several things:
- Updating my BIOS to 0615 and then to 0803
- Installing AMD's energy management plan
- Setting the BIOS to default values
- Using D.O.C.P for my RAM

Not sure what else I can try. As I said, I'm running stock settings & default BIOS settings.
If anyone has any ideas, I'm desperate to try anything at this moment even dancing around the rig with candle sticks.
Cheers!

Here's my exact setup:
1700X @ Stock
2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666MHz
ASUS Prime B350-Plus
1x 256GB Samsung 850 SSD
1x 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
Corsair VS650 - 650W PSU
Windows 10 Enterprise -> Build 15063.413 (incl. Creators Update)

Edit:
I just realised that these "stutters" happen when all the cores are clocked @ 3492MHz at the same time. The system then throttles the cores down to ridiculously low values such as 100MHz or sometimes even as low as 3MHz. I've attached a screenshot of the min and max values.

 

[gavinh87]

Hi guys,
I've read the whole thread as I have the same problems as some of you mentioned: system freezes leading to black screens after which all IO devices don't work until the system is restarted.
The black screens are happening very randomly, sometimes while using a mail client, while browsing the web, while playing a video using VLC etc. Strangely enough it never happens while I'm playing a game.
I also noticed that sometimes before the black screens happens, my system starts to "stutter". My mouse becomes unresponsive or starts to stutter and with it the whole system.
In some cases I get a black screen which means I have to restart, in others my mouse/system becomes responsive again and everything is fine for the next few minutes/hours.

I've tried several things:
- Updating my BIOS to 0615 and then to 0803
- Installing AMD's energy management plan
- Setting the BIOS to default values
- Using D.O.C.P for my RAM

Not sure what else I can try. As I said, I'm running stock settings & default BIOS settings.
If anyone has any ideas, I'm desperate to try anything at this moment even dancing around the rig with candle sticks.
Cheers!

Here's my exact setup:
1700X @ Stock
2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666MHz
ASUS Prime B350-Plus
1x 256GB Samsung 850 SSD
1x 256GB Samsung 830 SSD
Windows 10 Enterprise -> Build 15063.413 (incl. Creators Update)

Edit:
I just realised that these "stutters" happen when all the cores are clocked @ 3492MHz at the same time. The system then throttles the cores down to ridiculously low values such as 100MHz or sometimes even as low as 3MHz. I've attached a screenshot of the min and max values.

You say you are stock but it appears you are are 3.9ghz.....
What vcore are you using at that speed?
It sounds like an unstable CPU overclock to me.

The stupidly low frequency could be a big caused from another program trying to read values at the same time or you have messed up pstates somehow.

 

[gavinh87]

Ignore the above. I can see that's xfr boost. It's too hot here!!
Are you using another other monitoring program?

 

[Dschingis]

Not at the moment, no.
I've had Ryzen Master running as well as CPU-Z but these problems occur even if I have no monitoring program running at all.
I know that some of you only reported issues when monitoring programs where running but for me that doesn't seem to be the case.

In my first post I forgot to mention that I use a Corsair VS650 650W PSU, but that shouldn't be the problem either.

Edit: I will go back into my UEFI to take some screenshots of my settings which I will upload in a few minutes.

Just had another black screen while uploading these images, this time the screen came back on and Windows made the sound of USB devices being plugged in oO
Aaaand another one only a few minutes later, this time it was an instant black screen with no stuttering before and I had to restart. This is so frustrating.

 

[eyetrip]

Can you adjust teh SOC votlage on your board?

If so, set it to 1.175v

Edit: never mind, if I took time to look at photos, I would see you can, so yeah, set it to 1.175v

It may be high, but want to be sure to give it enough.

That was the primary cause, especially combined with gpu software like afterburner

Edit 2:
oh, and drop your ram to 2400 for now while testing the soc voltage.

 

[Dschingis]

Alright, tried it out and it's running fine so far but it's hard to tell if it'll stay that way.
Should I avoid running HWMonitor or are the issues only coming up if you run multiple monitoring software simultaneously?

Edit: Only a minute after posting this, I started HWMonitors and 30 secs later my system started to stutter and I had a black screen. Screen came back 2 secs later, stutter gone and again Windows makes the sound as if a USB device is plugged in.

 

[eyetrip]

Alright, tried it out and it's running fine so far but it's hard to tell if it'll stay that way.
Should I avoid running HWMonitor or are the issues only coming up if you run multiple monitoring software at simultaneously?

Just disable all monitoring software for now.

Just try it for a while with the increased soc and lowered ram

 

[Dschingis]

Here's an image of my Ryzen Balanced energy plan.
The minimal performance of processor @ 80% seems a bit off, could you guys compare it with yours?
Thanks for the help by the way.

 

[eyetrip]

Here's an image of my Ryzen Balanced energy plan.
The minimal performance of processor @ 80% seems a bit off, could you guys compare it with yours?
Thanks for the help by the way.

Oh, use high performance profile as well.

Have suspected that Ryzen Power plan of causing issues.

I just use high performance and set min processor state to 60%

 

[gavinh87]

I've had issues with ryzen power plan also.
It also wouldn't hurt to give your memory a little more voltage, 1.3v should do until you want to go higher than 2666.
There were reports over at overclock.net about hwmonitor crashing because of the update rate. Are you using the latest version?

 

[Dschingis]

Another two black screens during the last hour. :/
Increasing the SOC doesn't seem to do any difference.
Tried it with both High Performance and the Ryzen Power Plan.

I've had issues with ryzen power plan also.
It also wouldn't hurt to give your memory a little more voltage, 1.3v should do until you want to go higher than 2666.
There were reports over at overclock.net about hwmonitor crashing because of the update rate. Are you using the latest version?

Just checked, I've got the latest version (1.31.0). Thing is, HWMonitor itself never crashes for me. If something crashes/freezes it's the whole system.
I'll try upping memory voltage to 1.3V. What's really confusing to me is that the system won't even work at Stock everything (CPU, MEM, UEFI etc.).

 

[gavinh87]

Another two black screens during the last hour. :/
Increasing the SOC doesn't seem to do any difference.
Tried it with both High Performance and the Ryzen Power Plan.



Just checked, I've got the latest version (1.31.0). Thing is, HWMonitor itself never crashes for me. If something crashes/freezes it's the whole system.
I'll try upping memory voltage to 1.3V. What's really confusing to me is that the system won't even work at Stock everything (CPU, MEM, UEFI etc.).

What happens if you dont use hwmonitor/hwinfo at all?
What GPU are you using?

 

[Dschingis]

Same thing, freezes and black screens, sometimes after 5 mins, sometimes after an hour and sometimes after 12 hours.

I'm using a Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Dual-X. Also, I know it shouldn't make any difference, but I'm using a dual monitor setup. Both BenQ 24", one's 60Hz the other is 144Hz.

 

[gavinh87]

Was this GPU previously ok in another computer?
Also, turn the performance bias to none or off in the BIOS/UEFI
That caused a lot of issues for me.

 

[Dschingis]

GPU works fine with my old i7 setup.
Also I'm not sure but I think if the GPU would be causing issues, I'd have problems playing games, but oddly enough I never get a black screen or system freeze when I'm playing a game. Even if I've been playing for 4+ hours.

I'll try turning the performance bias off and get back to you guys.

 

[gavinh87]

GPU works fine with my old i7 setup.
Also I'm not sure but I think if the GPU would be causing issues, I'd have problems playing games, but oddly enough I never get a black screen or system freeze when I'm playing a game. Even if I've been playing for 4+ hours.

I'll try turning the performance bias off and get back to you guys.

It was just a thought, did you have both monitors with the i7 too?
If that doesn't work then don't use DOCP for the memory. Select 2133 for now and leave all to auto. Just to eliminate any timing errors.

 

[Dschingis]

Just had another black screen a minute ago, so I turned performance bias off for now, we'll see if that changes anything.
If that doesn't work I'll disable DOCP for my mem.

Meanwhile I am going to put my old i7 system back together and run it, just to see if the old system still works fine with my GPU, SSD and PSU.

 

[Dschingis]

Another black screen with performance bias off.
Turned DOCP off for now and left everything on Auto. Currently running @2133Mhz.

Quick question, right before a black screen did anyone of you notice any system stutter at all?

 

[eyetrip]

Another black screen with performance bias off.
Turned DOCP off for now and left everything on Auto. Currently running @2133Mhz.

Quick question, right before a black screen did anyone of you notice any system stutter at all?

Only stuttering for me was under load, which was caused by software.

Do you have a disk you can install a fresh copy of windows on to?

Would be more useful if you could. Find a reliable way of inducing the black screen though. Have you tried realbench.?

 

[Dschingis]

Today I disconnected all the all my HDDs and SSDs but one, and installed Win10 on it, leaving all my BIOS settings default.
Then I proceeded to install the chipset driver as well as the graphics driver. No Ryzen Master, HWMonitor etc.

Everything seemed fine so far. Ran Realbench for half an hour -> fine.
Then I opened op Firefox again to check something and there it was again. Mouse started stuttering and half a second later I got a black screen. Stangely enough the displays came back on, a second later but that's it for me.
If the sys won't even work on a fresh windows install @stock clocks etc. I am not sure I want to take the time and further research what might be the problem here.
Also this is the second to last day that I can send my system back to Amazon, whch I will do later.
Anyway thanks for the help guys. Hope you won't run into any further problems with your rigs.