I have a two-year-old PC that has been having issues recently. It has a Gigabyte Aorus Elite B550 motherboard, a Ryzen 9 5950X CPU, 32GB of RAM, and an RTX 4070 Ti GPU. For the past few months, it's been acting strange. It runs games perfectly, but when idling, it tends to freeze up after about 10 minutes. The screen goes black, but the fans keep running. The only way to fix it is to power it off and reboot. There are no blue screens or error messages.
Last night, it froze again, and now it won't go past the BIOS screen. I can access the BIOS and change settings, but any attempt to boot into the OS just restarts the PC. I've stripped down the system, only leaving the RAM and GPU connected. I've tested the RAM sticks individually and swapped slots, but nothing changes. I also removed all storage drives and tried booting with a new blank SSD, but it just says no OS installed. I attempted booting from a USB drive with a Windows 11 image, but it cycles back to the BIOS screen after a brief Windows logo. I'm wondering if the issue is with the GPU or possibly the CPU. The BIOS reports the CPU correctly, but I suspect the motherboard may be the culprit since downgrading the BIOS didn't help. I've never faced a hardware issue quite like this before!
2 Answers
It sounds like you've been really thorough with your troubleshooting. Have you considered creating a bootable USB with a live OS like Hiren's or Ubuntu? That might help you see if the issue is related to your hardware without needing to boot from your drives. Sometimes, if you disconnect everything else, and just try booting with a live OS, it can provide some useful information.
If you haven't already, check your power supply unit (PSU). Sometimes a failing PSU can lead to these kinds of problems. Make sure all connections are secure, and if you have access to another compatible PSU, testing with that might help rule out power issues. Also, keep an eye on your motherboard for any observable damage or bulging capacitors.
I tried booting with a UEFI USB of Ubuntu. It brings up the menu, but I keep getting errors or it just reboots. I managed to get a bit further after many attempts, but it keeps saying 'no live file system' and won’t recognize my keyboard for more interaction. The errors look like 'Hardware Error: CPU 0' and similar. It feels like it might be hardware-related.