It comes and goes, occasionally I’ll go a month or two without any issue.
There were no hardware changes that first started this happening, my computer just began freezing completely independent of whatever I’m doing – gaming, watching youtube, idle, etc. When it freezes, there is absolutely no way to get it back without hard rebooting, and if I leave it frozen for a while, the fans will get incredibly loud until I do the reboot.
The single time I’ve been able to recover without a hard restart after the computer froze was unplugging the HDMI cable (connected to my secondary monitor) from my GPU, plugging it into the motherboard’s HDMI port (it didn’t come on), and then plugging it back into the GPU’s HDMI port.
On top of freezing, it will occasionally instantly shut off with no warning. When either of these things happen, it’s anybody’s guess if it will struggle to boot again – most often it will. It starts to boot, the lights come on internally, and then it’ll randomly shut off again, and continue trying this cycle until it works. During this time, the fan lights and whatever other lights inside go on and off sporadically.
I initially thought it was PSU related, so I got a new one – same problem. I have tried memtest, during which the computer froze about 4 hours in (32gb ram) and never recovered (it showed 0 errors at the time of freezing for what its worth), so I pulled out two of the memory sticks in hopes they were the problem – but it changed nothing.
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3Jq4QP
- CPU: Intel Core i5-8600K 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($205.00 @ Amazon)
- CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 (rev. 1.0) ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
- Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2400 CL15 Memory
- Memory: Patriot Viper 4 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
- Storage (OS): Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
- Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
- Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5″ 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
- Video Card: Gigabyte GAMING OC GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB Video Card
- Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case
- Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (2021) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully
Modular ATX Power Supply - Monitor (Primary/DP): Dell S2716DG 27.0″ 2560 x 1440 144 Hz Monitor
- Monitor (Secondary/HDMI): Asus VS248H-P 24.0″ 1920 x 1080 Monitor
Windows 11 Education installed on one of the SSDs.
Here are my event viewer logs from an hour when it occurred, let me know if a broader time range would be more useful.
Here’s a video of the boot loop.
I would greatly appreciate any help.
