I've been experiencing some frustrating issues with my PC recently. Here are my specs: ASRock B550 motherboard, Ryzen 5800X CPU, RTX 4070 Ti GPU, and what I believe is an 850W Corsair PSU. For a while now, my computer has been randomly freezing while idling, usually overnight when I leave it running. This initially seemed manageable, but it has been happening more frequently—mostly every night, and sometimes even when I step away for a few hours. The screen just freezes, no black screen or anything, and I simply reboot it to get it working again.
However, things escalated, and now I can't even reach the Windows login screen; the display goes black and loses signal during boot. Occasionally, I see the blue screen saying "Windows could not load properly," but that's infrequent. I checked the Event Viewer and found Error ID 18, which states a fatal hardware error occurred, specifically related to the Processor Core. I worried it might be thermal throttling, but my temperatures are fine.
In an attempt to troubleshoot, I tried overvolting and undervolting the CPU slightly, but that didn't help. I even booted into Ubuntu from a USB drive, which worked for a while but eventually froze overnight after about 10 hours. At this point, I'm really starting to think a new CPU might be necessary, but I'd love any other input or suggestions before making that call!
2 Answers
First thing to check are your temperatures! If they’re good, try resetting your BIOS by removing the CMOS battery and flashing it to the latest version. This might just do the trick, and don't forget to run everything at default settings afterward. Good luck!
Before you decide on a new CPU, I’d check your RAM and GPU. Sometimes, the PSU can also cause issues like this. It sounds like a hardware problem, so try troubleshooting each component one at a time. You might find the culprit without having to buy a new CPU.
Ugh, it’s frustrating though! I might end up using a test bench I have just to isolate the issue. I did do a CPU stress test earlier and everything was fine, but I guess I need a broader approach.
Thanks for the tip! I'm currently working on this, but I have to remove my GPU since it's vertically mounted, which is a hassle. I'll update here once I'm through.