My Windows 11 desktop has started freezing every time it wakes from sleep. The system powers back on, the fans spin, and the monitors detect a change, but there is no usable display. The main monitor initially reports no DisplayPort signal, then shows only a black screen. The keyboard and mouse are also unresponsive—Caps Lock does not toggle and Win+Ctrl+Shift+B has no effect—so I have to hold the power button to restart.
The system uses an ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard, Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4090, 4TB NVMe SSD, and 96GB of Corsair DDR5-6000 memory in a 2x48GB kit. XMP is enabled, but there is no PBO, Curve Optimizer, undervolting, or other overclocking. The primary monitor is connected to the RTX 4090 over DisplayPort, while the second monitor uses the motherboard's USB-C output. I have tried different cables and monitors, and the problem also occurs with only the primary monitor connected.
Windows, the BIOS, NVIDIA drivers, and chipset-related software are up to date. I use the Balanced power plan, with sleep set to 15 minutes. Disabling Fast Startup, turning off Link State Power Management, and disabling Deep Sleep in the BIOS did not help. The problem began after I temporarily changed the sleep timer to five hours and then changed it back to 15 minutes. The computer had worked normally for roughly two years before this started, and the failure now happens after every sleep cycle.
What could be causing the complete sleep-resume failure? Could it be related to Windows power settings, ACPI, the memory profile, the GPU, BIOS behavior, or PCIe power management?
3 Answers
This sounds like a failed sleep-resume cycle rather than a display-only problem, since the keyboard and mouse stop responding too. First, temporarily disable XMP and let the memory run at its standard speed. High-capacity DDR5 at 6000 MT/s can sometimes expose resume or memory-training problems even when normal operation seems stable. Also confirm that the AMD chipset driver is current. If sleep works at the default memory speed, that points toward memory stability or firmware handling rather than the monitor.
As a diagnostic test, try connecting the main monitor over HDMI instead of DisplayPort. DisplayPort wake-handshake problems can cause a black screen, although the fact that the keyboard and mouse are dead suggests the system may be freezing more deeply than a simple monitor issue. If HDMI makes no difference, the graphics connection is probably not the primary cause.
Reset Windows power plans to their defaults from an elevated Command Prompt with `powercfg -restoredefaultschemes`, then restart and configure the 15-minute sleep timer again. A corrupted or unusual power-plan setting can interfere with sleep and wake behavior, and this is a relatively low-risk step before changing BIOS or hardware settings.
After the BIOS update, the memory briefly went back to its default 4800 MT/s setting, but the problem still happened. I restored the 6000 MT/s profile afterward, so I’ll try resetting the Windows power schemes next.
I’ve used DisplayPort with this monitor for about two years without trouble, and HDMI would limit the refresh rate, but I’ll test it temporarily to rule out a wake-handshake issue.