Question Issue with fairly new PC

[ascendant]

I built this PC about six months ago or so. While the PC I built prior to this was extremely stable, and it was extremely rare it would freeze or crash, this one seems to do so pretty regularly. I would say 2-3 times a week, it freezes up and becomes non-responsive, forcing me to do a hard reset to get it working again.

Here is the hardware:
Case - Lian Li LANCOOL 216 RGB ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply - Corsair RM850x (2021) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Motherboard - MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard
CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 4.7 GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler - Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler
Memory - G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory
Video Card - XFX Speedster SWFT 319 Radeon RX 6800 16 GB Video Card
Storage - Western Digital WD_Black SN850X 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Backup Storage – Same WD drive as above

I have WhoCrashed installed, and crash logs and everything necessary enabled, but it never gives me any information at all. I suspect it could be a windowed game that I play off and on (Watcher of Realms), but I am not 100% sure on that. It's extremely frustrating, because of course with an SSD, I'm worried about hard resets. So far, no issues with my drive, but I don't want to keep risking it. At the same time, I've checked all my specs, temperatures, voltages, and all of those things are completely normal, no crash logs, not a single thing to give me any indication as to what's causing the PC to stop responding.

Not sure if it helps narrow down what it could be, but what happens is when I click on things, some things sort-of respond on the window, other things don't. And when I click on start to try to reset, or ctrl atl del, sometimes it will open that window, sometimes not, but even when it does, it won't let me restart. Even if I can click on the restart option in it, it doesn't actually restart the PC. So, all I can do at those points is a hard reset.

I'm open to any suggestions anyone would have to try to figure out the source of this problem.

 

[bba-tcg]

A good place to start would be testing your RAM memory. I suggest letting the test run overnight.

 

[3-5105]

It is also recommended that you test the RAM, because the RAM has a large amount of reading and writing in the daily state, so it is not too much to test for several hours or even more than ten hours.
If the RAM is OK, you need to check if there is a problem with your CPU..

 

[In2Photos]

Was this a fresh Windows install or did you migrate it from another system? Is your BIOS up to date? GPU drivers? Have you checked with AMD to see if there are any issues with their drivers on the game you play? I agree running a memory test is a good idea. You could also try disabling EXPO if it is on and try it like that for a test period.

 

[mindless1]

I would say 2-3 times a week, it freezes up and becomes non-responsive, forcing me to do a hard reset to get it working again.

I suspect it could be a windowed game that I play off and on (Watcher of Realms), but I am not 100% sure on that.

Stop playing it for a couple weeks and see if that helps? Same for overclocking if you are.

Otherwise, I'd start with a few hours of memtest86+ and then Prime 95's large in place FFT's test, while monitoring temps and voltages, then a gaming stress test, again watching temps/voltages.

If you're worried about file corruption, make a partition image backup. If you already have file corruption, time to reinstall (everything?... at least the OS).

 

[ascendant]

A good place to start would be testing your RAM memory. I suggest letting the test run overnight.

What would be your suggestion on the best way to test the ram?

 

[bba-tcg]

What would be your suggestion on the best way to test the ram?

As mindless1 suggested, memtest86+, https://www.memtest.org/ or memtest86, https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm. would be the best way. Windows even comes with a memory testing utility.

 

[In2Photos]

What would be your suggestion on the best way to test the ram?

Windows has a built in RAM test, but running something like MemTest86 from a USB would be a good choice as it is a little more thorough.

Edit: bba-tcg beat me to it.

 

[erwin1978]

I've just learned that memtest86+ and other memory testers may have incompatibility with certain motherboard bioses and can return false positives or freeze during the test even if the memories are fine. It's maddening.

Have you checked Windows Event Viewer for System Logs?

If it's a video card freezing you can try this key combination to forcibly reset the driver: Win + Ctrl + Shift + B