cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Freezing and sleeping, Skylake issue?

Otakon7
Level 7
Hello,

I'm new to the forums so pleased to meet you.


I've been having issues with my PC I built a few months back which I can't seem to resolve.

Not sure if this is one issue or two seperate ones, but this is the order of things it happens:

1. Randomly, every few days (depedning on the settings in BIOS, every 3 to 9 days), my PC would freeze, sometimes I get a glitchy screen, sometimes I get a random solid color. Once this happens, the keyboard and reset button stop to work. Hard shutdown is the only thing I can do.
- Worth noting that after I updated to the latest BIOS (704), the freeze happens every day.

2. After hard shutdown and turning the PC on again, the PC is like in a sleep state, it works (you can hear the fans, all lights are on) but there is no signal on the monitor and once again, the keyboard and reset button don't do anything (mouse is lit, but doesn't do anything).
- When this happens, no matter what I do (clear CMOS, take out battery, simply uplug it for a while...) it keeps booting into this "sleep" state, only after a few hours does it boot normally, after which the CMOS reset kicks in if I did anything with it.

So, while the freezing is managable, the fact I can't use my pc for hours after it happens is kinda making it hard to work on it. I did a lot of things, sent to the repairs a few times, but nothing worked (well, nobody can't find te fault that is). I am currently trying to get my hands on some different RAM to see if that will help, if not, I dunno what to change.

My system:
* i5 6600 (non k)
* Asus z170m-PLUS
* WD Caviar Blue 1TB
* 2x4 Kingston HyperX Savage 2400 Mhz DDr4
* XFX TS 550w
* Windows 10 (was windows 7, same issues)

If you need some extra information, please tell me what you need, thank you.
20,402 Views
21 REPLIES 21

Nate152
Moderator
Hello Otakon7

Welcome to the ROG forum.

Depending on your gpu I will lean towards your psu causing you problems.

What gpu do you have?

NemesisChild
Level 12
Pull out your graphic card and see how it behaves with only the onboard Intel iGPU.

I'm not a big fan of your XFX PSU, how old is it?
Intel i9 10850K@ 5.3GHz
ASUS ROG Strix Z490-E
Corsair H115i Pro XT
G.Skill TridentZ@ 3600MHz CL14 2x16GB
EVGA RTX 3090 Ti FWT3 Ultra
OS: WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe M.2
Storage: WD Blue SN550 2TB NVMe M.2
EVGA SuperNova 1200 P2
ASUS ROG Strix Helios GX601

quark54
Level 8
Are you oveclocking? If so set to optimised defaults. And maybe clear the CMOS too.

Check all temps... CPU under load, GPU under load.

I'm using the iGPU (HD 530) so can't do much there.

The whole PC is 3 months old, everything is freshly bought.

I did try default BIOS settings, it freezes under 12 hours, when I disable C states, EIST and overall play with the settings, I can get extra days (up to 9) without freezing (though it seems the latest BIOS update makes it so it freezes every day no matter the settings).
This is a non-k CPU so I'm not overclocking (not using the BCLK OC if that's what you mean). Although, most stuff in the BIOS is set on AUTO so it might be OCing it without my knowledge.

Temps ae around 35 when idle, go up to 60 when gaming, go up to 80 when stress testing. The board is around 40 at stress but worth noting the freeze happens no matter what I do, even if I idle, it's like a timed event. Event Viewer gives no info around the time of freeze.


In case you haven't seen this, it does seem to be tied to this:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2830772/skylake-build-randomly-freezing-crashing.html

But I can't seem to get people to tell me what their exact issues are, since it seems the solid color and sleep is unique to me (though the color happens only with DVI, on VGA, the screen simply says there is no input).


P.S. The Pc was under heavy stress testing for a whole week (Prime, Memtest, Furmark...) when I sent it to the repairs, nothing happened, all worked well.

Otakon7 wrote:

In case you haven't seen this, it does seem to be tied to this:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2830772/skylake-build-randomly-freezing-crashing.html


Check update. was a RAM timing/voltage issue.

maf23 wrote:
Check update. was a RAM timing/voltage issue.


I did, but it doesn't really help much to know that, I did try changing the values, but nothing helped.

EDIT: on a side note, decided to run sfc again, and this time it found some things.
It seems to be unable to fix opencl.dll, which seems to be a common issue with windows update giving corrupt files. It could be related, but given a lot of people have this (most don't even know they do), probably not.

quark54
Level 8
Have you tried one stick of ram at a time to determine if there's a dodgy stick or indeed slot? I know you ran Memetest, but in my experience it's not foolproof.

If you continue to have issues, I'd consider Asus support. Especially as it got worse when you installed the latest BIOS.

You can pick up a PSU tester on Amazon really cheap if you want to check the PSU. Whats the make of the PSU? Wattage? How many amps on the 12 volt rail?

What about the diagnostic LED's on the motherboard, any lit? Do you have the Q-Code feature? If so any code displayed when it has issues?

Nate152
Moderator
A 550w psu should be enough with just using the iGPU but it still could be what's causing you problems.

It could also be a bad stick of ram as quark54 mentions.

What did the repair shop test/check?

@Quark: Yeah, I've tried all slots for both RAM sticks, I used memtest+ and HCI memtest (as well as the windows memory tester). But apparently, with Z170+Skylake, you need specific RAM for it to work (aka, it needs to be from the QVL).

The PSU is in general of a hier tier, made by Seasonic, it has 45A on the 12v, but of course, there's always a chance of it being faulty.

Getting a PSU tester might be a bit tricky since I have no means of ordering online, but I'm sure the shop where I bought the PC has one (problem is, the problem happens once a week or so, so it's hard to diagnose at the right moment, they kinda started getting annoyed by me so I'll send it to them again only if needed.)

As far as I can see, the board only has one LED light, which I guess shows only on/off. No Q code sadly.


@Natel: Well, they tested Prime, memtest, some HDD tools, pretty much all standard stuff, they also left it streaming overnight.
Problem was they used their own HDD for testing for 3 days, then swapped to mine, which might have resetted the freeze, though this was during the days it took 5-9 days for it to freeze, so I guess it never fired or it means that it doesn't trigger under full load (the fact it chnages when I change the power saving optionsi n BIOS would indicate it only happens when things fluctate, but if it's constantly under load, the voltages don't go up/down I guess).

I'm planning to wait for another BIOS update just to see if it helps at all, if not, I have to either force a RMA (since from the shop's perspective, if it works during the time they test it, it means it must be something on my end, hence, it's not broken), buy new RAM to see if it was an issue, or contacting Asus (wasactually planing to do that first, but all the data you have to input kinda scared me off)