Random freezes, guess I'm returning my new motherboard? Am I crazy?

Justice

I replaced my motherboard, graphics card, and RAM all in one swoop, and did a fresh install of Windows 10 using Microsoft's media creation tool. It started randomly freezing even before I was through the installation. I managed to reboot my way through the freezes, and I installed updated drivers for the graphics card and all the updated drivers from the motherboard manufacturer. I checked for a flash update for the motherboard/UEFI. I still got random freezes! So, I ran chkdsk for bad sectors on my SSD, ran the Windows memory diagnostic, ran Intel's CPU diagnostic tool, ran the Windows system file checker, and disconnected the DVD drive. And I still got random freezes!! I tried running Windows "reset," and it froze during that process. So, I pulled out the graphics card, disconnected the ethernet cable, reset the UEFI settings, and tried reinstalling Windows again from USB---and it froze twice during the process. CPU temp is good.

At this point, it's just a power supply that never gave me trouble before (and which is 500W vs the 230W that pcpartspicker thinks I'll need), motherboard with native video, CPU, SSD, USB keyboard/mouse, and the USB drive with the installation files. (I ran a read/write check on the USB drive, too.) I double-checked and reseated all the connections. And it still can't make it through setup without randomly freezing at different points.

I don't know what to do, so I figure I'll return the motherboard. Am I crazy? Is there anything I haven't tried?

(If it matters, the motherboard is an AS Rock Z370 Extreme4 ATX LGA1151, the CPU is an Intel Core i5 8400, and the RAM is two Corsair 8G Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000. The graphics card, now uninstalled, is a Radeon Pro WX 3100.)

BahamutZERO

Did you try only using one stick of RAM, and then the other? Might as well be completely thorough in your troubleshoot. If you have a spare keyboard try swapping that in too, I once had a dying USB keyboard sending ghost keyboard power button signals at random intervals. That was a real pain to diagnose.

Hard lockups sound like a motherboard or CPU or RAM or SSD connection or power supply problem though.

wunderbar

This is almost certainly RAM or motherboard. I'd eliminate the RAM as a potential issue before you RMA the motherboard.

Justice

Thanks for the tips! Could there be a problem with the RAM even if it passed Windows 10's memory test?

wunderbar

Justice wrote: »

Thanks for the tips! Could there be a problem with the RAM even if it passed Windows 10's memory test?

Yea, absolutely. The above suggestion of running with one stick of RAM at a time is a good one. You'll find out pretty quickly if it's one stick that is bad. If the behaviour continues, then it's likely something motherboard related.

Unknown

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Zilla360

Yup, late to this thread, but booting an http://www.memtest.org/#downiso live CD would have been the first thing I would have tried in this situation.
It sounds like either one or both of your sticks of RAM might be bad.

Justice

Thanks again for the help and suggestions! It turns out that it was the motherboard. Swapped it out and all the problems disappeared. It runs quite well, and my wife uses it for rendering motion graphics, so any slowing or memory crashes would be pretty noticeable.