Intermittent freezing (including in BIOS) - I built my daughter a gaming PC (Z690, Intel i9, GeForce RTX 3080) was fine for a year, no changes made.

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Hi All, I'm not sure where to go to and hoping someone on the forum could help or recommend someone who could.

I build my daughter a relatively high end gaming PC last summer and it was fine until a couple of months ago when it started freezing when stressed in games. I re-seated all of the components and even replaced the heatsink paste on the CPU which helped for a while but then it slowly got worse to the extent now it won't run for more than a couple of minutes. Even when off for a long period of time, when I look at temperatures in the BIOS everything looks good other than the chipset temperature which is well over 60 degrees.

My current suspicion is either the motherboard is faulty (I have seen a recall but it seems to be related to water-cooling the chipset which I'm not doing) or the power supply isn't sufficient (but I would expect that would have caused issues from day one).
I don't really want to start buying parts to change out without knowing what the cause is so I'm a bit stuck and could use some advice.

The build is as follows:
  • ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 FORMULA, Intel Z690, S 1700, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, SATA3, M.2, 10GbE/ax WiFi, USB 3.2 Gen2x2/TB4, ATX
  • Intel Core i9 12900K, S 1700, Alder Lake, 16 Cores, 24 Threads, 3.2GHz, 5.1GHz Turbo, 30MB Cache, 125W, Retail
  • 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair DDR5 Vengeance White, PC5-44800 (5600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 36, XMP 3.0, 1.25V
  • 1TB Samsung 980 PRO, M.2 (2280), PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe SSD, MLC 3D V-NAND, 7000MB/s Read, 5000MB/s Write, PS5 Compatible
  • ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX™ 3080 V2 White OC Edition 10GB GDDR6X with LHR
  • Lian-Li UNI SL120 Addressable RGB White 120mm Fan x 10
  • Corsair iCUE 5000T RGB Tempered Glass Mid-Tower ATX PC Case — White
  • Corsair CX-F RGB Series CX750F RGB 80 PLUS Bronze Fully Modular ATX Power Supply White
  • NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB AIO CPU Water Cooler with LCD Screen White - 360mm
Picture of build below (during it's better days) if anyone's interested:

53123564845_28ff615b47_m.jpg


Thanks,

Stephen
 
Haha, I like your style, keep it on its toes :cry:. Will definitely start with the SSD though, and if that proves to be the issue hopefully I can get it to stay up for long enough to flash the firmware. A quick search confirms similar symptoms, would have been the last place I would have looked TBH.
 
Thanks for all the useful replies everyone. So here’s where I am:
  • Setup the pc in a different room with my own power cable, monitor, keyboard and mouse, no additional peripherals - still freezes.
  • Removed the GPU (motherboard has onboard graphics) - same frequency of issues but instead screen freezing where it is and mouse not moving it goes blank.
  • Removed the SSD (kind of eliminated the Windows install early on as it was still freezing in the BIOS menus) and it still freezes. Initially downloaded Samsung Magician to install but unfortunately PC doesn’t stay up long enough.
  • Removed each RAM stick and ran with a single one but in both cases still froze.
Kind of running out of options without buying something to swap out.

Quick question, can I unplug the AIO cooler and all the fans to eliminate them without anything overheating? At this stage the longest I’ve had it on without freezing is probably less than 5 minutes.
 
I set to defaults and disabled turbo and it didn’t help.
Temperatures look okay, I left unplugged overnight and went straight to BIOS first thing this morning and it still froze in less than 5 minutes, but I managed to check temps first.

My gut feel is still the power supply, when I built the system the quick calculations I did were just under 750W and I went with a 750W bronze supply because my daughter wanted more of that RGB goodness! Now regretting not going to 850W. Saying that, just removing the GPU should have significantly reduced the load, but I guess if the damage is done the supply could still be unstable.

I’m considering buying this as my first test - hopefully that will be more suitable:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-05l-as.html
 
Thanks, glad I asked first. Really hope it’s that, what is the minimum I need in the motherboard to get into the BIOS menus? Will it work without CPU? It’s difficult not having spares to switch out, if I have to replace something I’d like to know it’s the faulty part. I always felt the power supply was the weakest link of the build anyway so can kind of justify to myself changing it even though it may not fix the issue.
 
So I changed the power supply and the problem still persists - so much for my gut feel. And my wallet. At least I was able to do a much better job of cable routing as the 1000W supply I got had far more outlets and cable choices than the 750W one I replaced.

My next point of call was to remove the CPU as @d_brennen suggested (yes, I should have done that first but I’d already placed the order by then).

Now the PC isn’t freezing anymore for the short bursts I’ve had it on (promising) but according to the BIOS the CPU temp is 100 degrees so I‘m reluctant to keep it on. There seems to be a good distribution of heat paste and I tightened the screws slowly in the order the AIO manual recommended. In case I’m doing something stupid, I’m attaching photos below:

Motherboard socket:
https://flic.kr/p/2oXaeZA

CPU bottom:
https://flic.kr/p/2oX9d8F

CPU top:
https://flic.kr/p/2oX55iZ

AIO Cooler bottom:
https://flic.kr/p/2oX88F3

BIOS temps:
https://flic.kr/p/2oX55jR

AIO temp:
https://flic.kr/p/2oX9d9N

I’m scared to run it for too long as is if that temperature readout is correct, surely from cold only going into BIOS it can’t get that hot in less than 30 seconds? I’m wondering if I caused anything else when recabling.
 
So an update, it’s been a while partially due to a mix of buyers remorse and procrastination! Full disclosure - I induced the CPU overheating fault by plugging the AIO cable that connects to the pump in backwards. Idiot, luckily it didn’t do any damage.

Anyway, it hasn’t frozen yet, I’ll get my daughter to stress it with some games this evening to test properly.

Things I did (thanks everyone for the advice):
- redid the heat sink paste evenly with a more reasonable amount (IE less).
- made half the fans intake and half exhaust.
- plugged the radiator fans directly into the CPU fan header on the motherboard rather than the Lian-Li control box.
- added an internal USB hub (SATA powered) as there weren’t enough headers on the motherboard for the Corsair control box, the Lian-Li control box and the Kracken AIO cooler.
- Replaced the 750W Corsair power supply with a 1000W ASUS one.
 
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