Is it possible to troubleshoot a mobo that may be freezing up?

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DrewW

DrewW

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  • #1
    After 30 to 45 minutes of gaming, there's a good chance my machine freezes. I'd thought it was my video card that was in bad shape after being rode hard and put away wet after 5,000 hours of VR. I just upgraded to a 4070S, my GPU temps are way down, but the freezing continues. Processor is solid, re-applied the thermal paste and bought new fans (mostly to make my kid learn how), and switched to a better PSU already.

    How do I identify if this is a mobo issue? Any other ideas?
     
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    cerberusTI

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  • #4
    I would check the event log to see if anything is implicated.

    If not, you have options of swapping things out, or getting a copy of hwinfo and trying to determine if anything looks weird in terms of temperatures or voltages.

    Setting ram to JEDEC standard and supported values for your platform if it is not already is also a good thing to try.
     
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    Deathmonkey

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  • #5
    DrewW said:
    After 30 to 45 minutes of gaming, there's a good chance my machine freezes. I'd thought it was my video card that was in bad shape after being rode hard and put away wet after 5,000 hours of VR. I just upgraded to a 4070S, my GPU temps are way down, but the freezing continues. Processor is solid, re-applied the thermal paste and bought new fans (mostly to make my kid learn how), and switched to a better PSU already.

    How do I identify if this is a mobo issue? Any other ideas?
    Click to expand...

    Detailed specs are needed but ...

    You said you re-pasted the CPU. What are those temps like?

    Are you using water cooling? If yes an the temps are bad, you get to trouble shoot that ... woo hoo!
     
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    jwbaker

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  • #6
    Like the rest of the comments, I want details. But I have had good luck stabilizing systems by just turning off all the l33t b.s. they come with these days. Disable all the overclocks, run your memory at JEDEC speeds, respect the CPU manufacturer's power and thermal parameters, etc. For example my 14900K could be driven into instability with the stock BIOS settings on both an Asus and an MSI motherboard, but simply backing everything off to factory specs, no silliness, stabilized it.
     
    Nevarre

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  • #9
    RAM can be finicky. I had a pair that ran great for a year, passed every diagnostic test when tested in isolation, but they were both individually bad and either one alone started to cause lockup/reboots. Different RAM = stable.

    When in doubt, try your RAM one stick at a time or swap in different RAM if you have the option. Running at lower than EXPO/XMP may help, but honestly if you're not getting at least close to ~XMP/EXPO settings and have to run at JEDEC, it's defective ($0.02) and should be replaced. Overclocking past the manufacturer specifications is a different story.
     
    malor

    malor

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  • #10
    Nevarre said:
    RAM can be finicky. I had a pair that ran great for a year, passed every diagnostic test when tested in isolation, but they were both individually bad and either one alone started to cause lockup/reboots. Different RAM = stable.

    When in doubt, try your RAM one stick at a time or swap in different RAM if you have the option. Running at lower than EXPO/XMP may help, but honestly if you're not getting at least close to ~XMP/EXPO settings and have to run at JEDEC, it's defective ($0.02) and should be replaced. Overclocking past the manufacturer specifications is a different story.
    Click to expand...
    I'm not sure if it's the same person repeating their symptoms, or if we've been seeing more of that, but it sounds like at least some of the time, RAM is supporting its stated overclock potential out of the box, and then failing later at that exact speed, even though the motherboard is using it according to its XMP figures.

    I've seen comments about that three or four times in the last few months. Again, I don't know how that translates to actual failures.
     
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    jwbaker

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  • #12
    malor said:
    I'm not sure if it's the same person repeating their symptoms, or if we've been seeing more of that, but it sounds like at least some of the time, RAM is supporting its stated overclock potential out of the box, and then failing later at that exact speed, even though the motherboard is using it according to its XMP figures.

    I've seen comments about that three or four times in the last few months. Again, I don't know how that translates to actual failures.
    Click to expand...
    In my view, you should always do a run of memtest86 (or its equivalent for your platform) if you change RAM timing.
     
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