Question When is it appropriate to pull and replace, versus upgrade piece-meal? (Freezing, black screens, won't power-off)

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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,552
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My main rig is a Ryzen 3600 (6C/12T), with 240mm CoolerMaster AIO LC kit for AM4, decent case, optical drive, 4x8GB Trident RGB 3600 DDR4 RAM, and currently, 2x Asus TUF GTX 1660 Super cards, mining on GPUs and CPU. Antec 750W Gold PSU. Storage is a pair of Intel 660p 1TB QLC NVMe drives.

I've been having more reboots lately, and they're happening more often since I starting doing PrimeGrid for a race. I should note here that I had my RAM @ XMP 3600 (runs mostly fine), FCLK @ 1800 (to match RAM), and CPB and PBO DISABLED, which means that my CPU maxes out at 3.60Ghz Ghz, rather than 4.0Ghz all-core, and my temps under water are mostly maxed @ 70C. Yet I get reboots.

Something really obscure, blue-screen, something about kernel access levels and IRQLs and locks, but not the usual "IRQL greater or equal" one.

I don't know if it's my RAM, my CPU, my mobo, my PSU, or GPUs or GPU drivers, or even my Windows 10 installation (fully patched, AFAIK).
I could start swapping components, run for a week or two to test, and keep testing, but what it the problem is more-or-less "systemic", "old system"?

I don't particularly WANT to replace the whole thing, but I could. I have some X370 mobos with 5GbE-T ports on them (ASRock Professional), and I could get some 3900X CPUs to drop in for $450 or so, I believe. Along with some 3600 RAM, and some fresh new SSDs (have a couple of unused 2TB ones).

Maybe I should update my AMD chipset drivers, and my NVidia GPU drivers, to start with, that would be something that would be basically zero-effort to try and fix the issue.

Edit: OK, updated my AMD chipset drivers for B450 for Windows 10, there were new ones, and updated NVidia drivers to the newest "Studio Drivers".

Edit: Oh, whoops, my current mobo is an Asus B450-F ROG STRIX Gaming ATX. Newest BIOS for Win11.
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,552
10,171
126
Turns out that running PrimeGrid on the 5900X, it would throttle to 0.5Ghz every 5 seconds for a moment.


I think my AIO has the same problem as the PC in this video.
 

lakedude

Platinum Member
Mar 14, 2009
2,686
485
126
Flaky problems like this are hard to track down. Sounds like you are doing a great job so far.

Got a few things to consider. Static, especially in the winter can cause these kind of problems with USB devices. A metal case mostly protects the sensitive bits but the USB port is a weak spot in my experience.

Connections can be an issue. I had an older AMD system that would lose its mind about once a year. Reseating all the connections would fix it for another year. Never did narrow it down because it was easier to just unplug everything.

Finally the kind of software you run not only stresses your system but may just have some bugs. I've had fairly awful luck with waking from various sleep/hibernation mods to the point I just disable those features in the power settings. With SSDs boot time is not an issue so the computer can conveniently be turned off when not in use.

At one time I had 12 systems crunching various projects but didn't have 12 monitors so a kvm was used. Oh a kvm can cause wake issues as well.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,552
10,171
126
Not 100% sure that the AIO is knackered either. I don't hear the pump whine, but that could be that I'm getting older.

If it wasn't cooling OK, wouldn't I see higher temps? Idle in BIOS is 57C for CPU (5900X).

In Windows, with global C-states off, mining XMR algo on all 24 threads, temps only hit 72C in HWMonitor, and no throttling, not like PrimeGrid's load.

We'll see if it crashes while mining on CPU; I've updates the ROG STRIX B450-F BIOS to 4702, ComboPI V2 1.2.0.6b. Supposed to fix some stability issues.

Edit: Still rebooted, BIOS 4702 didn't fix the problem. :(
 
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