PC Crashing to Black Screen Randomly and on Boot

thescouselander

thescouselander

thescouselander

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27 Apr 2024
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The Cotswolds
I've been having a problem with my desktop PC that seems to be getting worse. It started with random crashing to a black screen (no signal detected) and recently it's started happening at boot. The confusing thing is there's no errors in the windows logs and the ASUS motherboard displays random LED colours on the crash. The crash also happens when in the BIOS and the green LED is lit when that happens.

MemTest86 hasn't found any errors and when the PC boots I can game for many hours without issue. I've reseated everything including the ram, GPU and CPU.

Has anyone got any ideas as to what's going on here? I'm starting to wonder about the PSU but not sure how best to confirm that.
 
Have you tried a different HDMI\DP cable and tried a different port on the GPU?

If its a pre built system from OCUK and still has warranty have you tried calling their support?

Do not want to do anything that may void your warranty
 
freddie64 said:
What PSU is in the system?

You really should contact OCUK about this though.
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Yes, I'll contact OC but I want to make sure I've done as much trouble shooting as possible before giving up and sending it to them.

The PSU is a 1000w Kolink Regulator gold.


Last night I discovered the EFI System partition was corrupted so I rebuilt that and now the system boots faster but I haven't had time to test it all properly. I also now have a new problem that the setting in the BIOS that disables USB power in the soft power off state isn't working so the USBs stay on when the PC is powered down. Tried reflashing the BIOS and no change so I'll try a CMOS reset when I'm back from work.
 
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So after a bit of whack-a-mole I think there's more than one issue at hand. Rebuilding the EFI System partition seems to have resolved the boot issues and I've got the USB S5 state to work properly. I then disconnected Asus' aura sync from the GPU which I think is part of the problem. I did see a nvlddmkm crash with events 153 and 14 this morning but the system didn't hang and kept logging and the GPU maintained the signal to the monitor although the screen was black. So the problem now is to get rid of the dreaded nvlddmkm errors. I've seem some on here blame the gpu power cable but there's plenty of other theories around. Has anyone got any experience of this?
 
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thescouselander said:
So after a bit of whack-a-mole I think there's more than one issue at hand. Rebuilding the EFI System partition seems to have resolved the boot issues and I've got the USB S5 state to work properly. I then disconnected Asus' aura sync from the GPU which I think is part of the problem. I did see a nvlddmkm crash with events 153 and 14 this morning but the system didn't hang and kept logging and the GPU maintained the signal to the monitor although the screen was black. So the problem now is to get rid of the dreaded nvlddmkm errors. I've seem some on here blame the gpu power cable but there's plenty of other theories around. Has anyone got any experience of this?
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In my case it was psu related, but that was a combination of an older model PSU and transient spikes on my 3080.

Don't think that's likely to be your problem here, but what psu do you have? The specs are awfully vague about it, which is never a good sign.
 
adrichardson81 said:
In my case it was psu related, but that was a combination of an older model PSU and transient spikes on my 3080.

Don't think that's likely to be your problem here, but what psu do you have? The specs are awfully vague about it, which is never a good sign.
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So I seemed to have got rid of most of the problems with my latest change being to bump up the LLC level by 1 in the BIOS. It all seems pretty stable now except for when I've been using the PC and then shut down and switch on again it POSTs but won't boot - it will boot fine after a few minutes though. Could be the PSU I suppose or maybe the SSD?

As above the PSU is a Kolink Regulator Gold 1000w. I've tested that with a PSU tester and it looked ok.
 
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tamzzy said:
^
Why are you not sending the computer back to Ocuk?
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Because of I can fix it myself that's preferable to packing it all up and being without it for however long it takes to fix.


Re the CPU I'm not ruling that out but to explain the LLC thing further I'd turned that down a bit to mitigate the high voltage spikes that were said to be happening and causing the degradation. It ran fine like that for a while until December when the instability started and looking back that was the time I flashed the latest microcode so I guess the CPU won't run at the lower LLC with the latest version. It's set to Auto now and the instability and driver errors seem to be gone during use at least.

What I'm now left with now is the occasional boot problem if I cold start the PC just after heavy use. What I'll get is POST to green light but no boot then POST to white light and no boot and then it boots on the third attempt. If I start it when it's not been used for a while it will boot straight away.
 
Thing is, you could have a possible faulty CPU, a NVME drive that needed a firmware fix for the Windows 11 24H2 update and a PSU that while it is better than what used to be supplied is still a budget brand.

I understand you don't want to be left with no PC, but it seems you have done enough trouble shooting so if it's still not right, use the warranty.

Have you done the firmware update for the NVME? Not sure if this would cause your problems, but it does need doing though.
 
freddie64 said:
Thing is, you could have a possible faulty CPU, a NVME drive that needed a firmware fix for the Windows 11 24H2 update and a PSU that while it is better than what used to be supplied is still a budget brand.

I understand you don't want to be left with no PC, but it seems you have done enough trouble shooting so if it's still not right, use the warranty.

Have you done the firmware update for the NVME? Not sure if this would cause your problems, but it does need doing though.
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Fair points but if I need to send it back I'll do it while I'm away somewhere and not needing the PC which I will be in the near future. That said I've been investigating a bit more this morning and established that I could reproduce the boot problem by running Furmark for 10 or 15 mins and then shutting down and starting up. Since its probably the only thing I haven't touched yet I re-seated the SSD and its been booting on the last few tests but I'll give it a real test later after some gaming.
 
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