AB350M Pro4 - Random Freezing/Lock Ups

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   Over the past several days, my system -- which has run fine for several months since it was built in June 2018 -- has been randomly freezing/locking up, forcing a manual power cycle.

These freezes can occur after hours or even minutes after boot, whether the system is active or idle, independent of any running programs.  Video and input freezes, audio may continue for a few seconds, though not always. When the freezes started, there were a couple BSODs sprinkled between them, but no dumps were generated properly, and nothing of note to be found in Event Viewer.

At the time the freezes started, I had begun using an Android emulator, Bluestacks.  At first, I thought the freezes were related to it, and/or the specific game I was playing at the time.  But through much troubleshooting, testing alternate software, etc...eventually I started to notice the freezes would still happen independent of whatever I was doing.

I have tried monitoring temps with Speccy and have seen nothing unusual.  Samsung Magician has not reported any issues with temp on my SSD either.

The only two quirks I've noticed that might give any clue as to the cause are:
1) Right before these freezes started happening, the rear USB port (bottom left 2.0) that my LED keyboard was plugged into, seemed to fail. It took more than one reboot to register on that port again.
2) The system freezes prior to POST on Restarts. Full shutdown and cold boots are fine, but restarting from Windows or even BIOS results in a hang.

All my drivers are up to date, even tried updating BIOS to 5.50.  No change in behavior.
I'm at my wits end for a solution, given the lack of available information.  All my attempts to research similar issues point to the fact that this is just a seemingly poor quality motherboard and needs to be replaced.  Which I'd like to avoid, but I feel I'm running out of options.

MY BUILD
--------
Motherboard: ASRock AB350M Pro4
CPU: Ryzen 2200G
RAM: 2x 4GB Patriot Viper DDR4-3000 (@2933) QVL
GRAPHICS: Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X 2GB
SSD: 240GB Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe
PSU: Corsair CX550M

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Niccador Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 31 May 2018 Status: Offline Points: 44	Post Options Post Reply Quote Niccador Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: AB350M Pro4 - Random Freezing/Lock Ups Posted: 04 Feb 2019 at 8:50am
	Over the past several days, my system -- which has run fine for several months since it was built in June 2018 -- has been randomly freezing/locking up, forcing a manual power cycle. These freezes can occur after hours or even minutes after boot, whether the system is active or idle, independent of any running programs. Video and input freezes, audio may continue for a few seconds, though not always. When the freezes started, there were a couple BSODs sprinkled between them, but no dumps were generated properly, and nothing of note to be found in Event Viewer. At the time the freezes started, I had begun using an Android emulator, Bluestacks. At first, I thought the freezes were related to it, and/or the specific game I was playing at the time. But through much troubleshooting, testing alternate software, etc...eventually I started to notice the freezes would still happen independent of whatever I was doing. I have tried monitoring temps with Speccy and have seen nothing unusual. Samsung Magician has not reported any issues with temp on my SSD either. The only two quirks I've noticed that might give any clue as to the cause are: 1) Right before these freezes started happening, the rear USB port (bottom left 2.0) that my LED keyboard was plugged into, seemed to fail. It took more than one reboot to register on that port again. 2) The system freezes prior to POST on Restarts. Full shutdown and cold boots are fine, but restarting from Windows or even BIOS results in a hang. All my drivers are up to date, even tried updating BIOS to 5.50. No change in behavior. I'm at my wits end for a solution, given the lack of available information. All my attempts to research similar issues point to the fact that this is just a seemingly poor quality motherboard and needs to be replaced. Which I'd like to avoid, but I feel I'm running out of options. MY BUILD -------- Motherboard: ASRock AB350M Pro4 CPU: Ryzen 2200G RAM: 2x 4GB Patriot Viper DDR4-3000 (@2933) QVL GRAPHICS: Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X 2GB SSD: 240GB Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe PSU: Corsair CX550M

xhue Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 17 Aug 2018 Status: Offline Points: 634	Post Options Post Reply Quote xhue Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 04 Feb 2019 at 9:20pm
	My bet is incompatuble or loosely seated RAM. Check a thread from thomas1986. Guy had same mobo and RAM as you do. Even his CPU is almost the same. Try the steps described in the thread I mentioned and let us know how it went.

Niccador Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 31 May 2018 Status: Offline Points: 44	Post Options Post Reply Quote Niccador Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 05 Feb 2019 at 12:01am
	The RAM is listed at confirmed compatible on the QVL. XMP is enabled, running at 2933, 16-18-18 The system has been running strong for 6 months, and hasn't been shuffled around. Forgot to mention that I ran MemTest86 UEFI...made 4 passes without a single error, took a couple hours. That being said, I'll try swapping and reseating the sticks.

xhue Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 17 Aug 2018 Status: Offline Points: 634	Post Options Post Reply Quote xhue Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 05 Feb 2019 at 3:41am
	Thomas' RAM was also chosen from the QVL, yet he had a bad stick. 6 months strong without any (known) jolts or hard vibrations, plus a sudden instability mosr likely means some part is transcending to the Eternal Silicon Valley. Such lockups that you have are rarely SW related, although Win 10 updates tend to break almost everything. You may also try running only 1 stick of RAM for the sake of testing. Recording temp and volt values with HWiNFO is also an idea, just to check for abnormalities before the lockups occur. Maybe Win 10 error logs and events will shed some more light too?

Niccador Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 31 May 2018 Status: Offline Points: 44	Post Options Post Reply Quote Niccador Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 28 Feb 2019 at 7:55am
	Sorry for not responding to this sooner. RealLife(tm) happened, and i've been focused on other things. Only coming back to this persistent problem this past week. I responded to a more recent similar thread, and will be following that with interest. In the meantime, I'm still beating my head against a wall with this one. I'm about to do another teardown right now, and some additional testing, and will try to update this shortly with more details.

Niccador Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 31 May 2018 Status: Offline Points: 44	Post Options Post Reply Quote Niccador Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 09 Mar 2019 at 9:40am
	Bringing this back over here, because I never should have hijacked Mati98's thread, and don't want my continued troubleshooting to get things even more convoluted. @ xhue: I took your suggestion to contact support. Been a few days, still waiting on a response. In the meantime, I keep looking for possible answers. I have some HWinfo logs taken before/during a crash... I thought they'd offer some hard evidence, but honestly, I'd don't know quite what I'm looking at or looking for. I'd happily post them if someone wants to take a gander. I've had two unique crashes in the past day or so that might offer some further insight based on behavior... The first unique crash was actually a "near-crash": While playing some Neverwinter and running HWInfo waiting for a crash, the sound started crackling and the inputs and screen started to freeze per a normal crash -- but then, I noticed my keyboard (a backlit LED KB), completely shut off. It flickered on and off a few times, and the video stuttered along....and then everything seemed to recover. I tabbed out of the game, stopped the current HWInfo log and restarted a new log. Went back into the game for a couple minutes to wrap up, then exited the game. Within 0-3 seconds of exiting, the system froze up at desktop. This particular crash is also the first one to generate any kind of obviously related information in Windows Event Viewer -- not flagged as an Error or Warning, but just Information from Windows Error Reporting. A Live Kernel Event, a crash of the usb extensible host controller, which explained the keyboard behavior. After this, I did some further testing. Realized I hadn't tried removing the NVME drive and using a standard SATA. So I did that. Still crashes, but.... The second unique crash was actually very much the same as the others. In this instance, I was watching using Plex Media Player. Like "normal", inputs froze, video froze, no HDD LED, but audio continues normally. But then, for whatever reason this time, I noticed that prior/during this crash, the activity/wait icon (the circle that spins next to your mouse cursor), was still spinning. So, the screen was frozen....yet not actually frozen? It breaks my mind. No noteworthy entries in the event viewer this time. I feel like this must be some sort of power fluctuation at the motherboard level, but I can't seem to find/prove it.

Niccador Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 31 May 2018 Status: Offline Points: 44	Post Options Post Reply Quote Niccador Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 13 Mar 2019 at 11:02pm
	Wow. A full week without a single response from Tech Support, apart from the original confirmation. Not even a canned "Please perform these troubleshooting steps you already did" response. Great first impression. Guess I'll just have to buy another board, and provided that solves the problem, begin more aggressively harassing them for an RMA or outright reimbursement of my purchase.

Niccador Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 31 May 2018 Status: Offline Points: 44	Post Options Post Reply Quote Niccador Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 23 Mar 2019 at 6:24am
	Over 2 weeks now with zero response from support. Guess it's time to start leaving reviews...those they seem to respond to. (grumble) Anyway, the problem is/was definitely rooted in the board. I took a gamble on a cheap refurb MSI B350 Bazooka, and it's been running perfectly for the past couple days. Only time will tell, but it looks good for now. During disassembly, I noticed that the VRM heatsink above the CPU was not fully secured, and rocked freely. (The pins were locked in, but the thermal pad obviously had no hold there, like the other one did.) Possibly part of the problem, though I was unable to observe any actual readings to confirm this. Either way, it's time for them to honor their warranty.

xhue Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 17 Aug 2018 Status: Offline Points: 634	Post Options Post Reply Quote xhue Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 23 Mar 2019 at 3:26pm
	Thanks for the follow-up! Sadly, things like this happen. Just get your money back and have a thing or 2 in mind next time.

Niccador Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 31 May 2018 Status: Offline Points: 44	Post Options Post Reply Quote Niccador Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 23 Mar 2019 at 11:06pm
	Seeing as we're well past NewEgg's return period, I figure the only chance I have of recouping is getting this thing replaced and then reselling it. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to get anything done.