ASRock.com Homepage
Forum Home Forum Home > Technical Support > AMD Motherboards
  New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - Freezing issue guidance wanted
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search Search  Events   Register Register  Login Login

Freezing issue guidance wanted

 Post Reply Post Reply Page  12>
Author
Message
r2b2nz View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie


Joined: 15 Feb 2018
Status: Offline
Points: 11
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote r2b2nz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Freezing issue guidance wanted
    Posted: 15 Feb 2018 at 4:36pm
I've recently built a new machine (my first build in quite a while) with the following components and have been having issues with freezing/reboots in Windows 10, Linux, Memtest86, and even the UEFI setup screen.
CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
MB: ASRock AB350M Pro4
Memory: Kingston HyperX 2x8Gb DDR4-2400 (HX424C15FB2K2/16)
Graphics: MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti GAMING X 4G
PSU: EVGA SuperNova G3 550W

I've tried running Memtest86 in Single CPU mode with each DIMMS in all slots and each time the machine either freezes or reboots (no actual errors reported). Strangely when the machine has been off for a while, the freezes/reboots take longer to manifest themselves but once the machine has had a freeze, other freezes happen usually in the 6-8 minute period of Memtesting.

In Windows 10, starting from a "cold" PC, I can sometimes use it for 2 to 3 hours but from then on it will freeze randomly - sometimes after minutes, sometimes after an hour or so.

Have checked the CPU & motherboard temps after a freeze and they are usually sitting at a max of around 50 celsius for the CPU and about 40 for the MB.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about whether this issue sounds more likely to be memory, motherboard, or CPU related so that I know which one I should look to RMA first. Unfortunately I haven't found anyone else with a DDR4 capable machine to test the memory separately.

Any thoughts/advice greatly received!
Back to Top
Xaltar View Drop Down
Moderator Group
Moderator Group
Avatar

Joined: 16 May 2015
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 22508
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Xaltar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Feb 2018 at 6:24pm
What kind of airflow do you have around the VRM section? 

If your case is cramped and airflow to the CPU socket area and surrounding components is bad that could easily cause freezing and restarts as the power circuitry triggers thermal protections. Usually a fan aimed down onto that area sorts things out. 
Back to Top
wardog View Drop Down
Moderator Group
Moderator Group


Joined: 15 Jul 2015
Status: Offline
Points: 6447
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote wardog Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Feb 2018 at 10:38pm
Originally posted by Xaltar Xaltar wrote:

What kind of airflow do you have around the VRM section? 

If your case is cramped and airflow to the CPU socket area and surrounding components is bad that could easily cause freezing and restarts as the power circuitry triggers thermal protections. Usually a fan aimed down onto that area sorts things out. 


Bingo!

See at lot of this on small board/small case builds.

Quiet does not relate to proper airflow.
Back to Top
Erasmus_Tycho View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie
Avatar

Joined: 20 Jan 2018
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Status: Offline
Points: 85
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Erasmus_Tycho Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Feb 2018 at 2:19am
What others have said, sounds very much like a component is shutting down due to thermal limitations/protections especially when you mention the "cold boot".
ASRock x370 Taichi V4.4| Ryzen 1800x | 16GB x 2 DDR4 3200 (14cas) | GTX 1080 Ti K|NGP|N | WD NVMe Black 512GB | 2 x 500GB Samsung EVO 960 | Corsair HX1000 | EK Custom Loop (360mm rad + 280mm rad)
Back to Top
r2b2nz View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie


Joined: 15 Feb 2018
Status: Offline
Points: 11
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote r2b2nz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Feb 2018 at 3:23am
Thanks for the replies - personally I wouldn't say its cramped but then again crampiness is a bit relative depending on what you are comparing it with :)  I don't have another case fan spare but I've got a relatively good size USB fan that I'll point at the components whilst doing a run to see how that goes. (For reference the case is a Corsair Spec-M2 MicroATX case)

Just reading back what I wrote originally I should have probably pointed out that 95% of the time freezing is a problem rather than rebooting and when the machine freezes sometimes it does carry on processing some stuff for a short time (e.g. once it froze when playing a video but the sound carried on playing for about 20-25 seconds before that froze too). Is that still likely to be a problem with VRM overheating as reboots seem to be the biggest symptom from things I've read rather than freezing? (It does sound like a good potential for the cause of the issue so not dismissing it but figured I'd ask the question :) )

Also just a few quick questions related to the overheat theory:
* I'm assuming that the Overheat protection in the BIOS only refers to cutting out when the CPU overheats and not the VRM components as I did a brief test with that disabled?
* Would it be normal to not see high temperatures in HWMonitor/BIOS HW Monitor screen following a freeze? (i.e. would the temperature spike and drop so quickly that you wouldn't see any evidence there?)
* Is there a particular temperature which the thermal cut-out triggered by or is the cut-out monitored by other factors? 

Thanks again everyone for their replies so far - it gives me great relief in having people to bounce ideas off and makes me more hopeful of solving my issue before I lose all my hair :)


Edited by r2b2nz - 16 Feb 2018 at 3:24am
Back to Top
Prodif View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie


Joined: 11 Apr 2017
Status: Offline
Points: 79
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Prodif Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Feb 2018 at 12:38pm
r2b2nz
Experts shall understand it, it is better to give to service center.
ASRock x370 Taichi (bios v2.36) / Ryzen-1800X / Crucial CT16G4DFD824A x2 / GPU: AMD R9 NANO / SSD NVMe Samsung 960 PRO MZ-V6P1T0BW (M.2) / HDD SATA 3TB x6 / PSU: Corsair AX860i
ps. RedDragon, by AG
Back to Top
Xaltar View Drop Down
Moderator Group
Moderator Group
Avatar

Joined: 16 May 2015
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 22508
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Xaltar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Feb 2018 at 3:02pm
I am happy to answer your questions as best I can but in situations like this it's as simple as throwing a fan in there and seeing if the problem goes away Wink

So, here goes.

Overheating can cause any number of issues from slow, choppy performance to hanging (brief freezing that resolves itself) to full thermal shutdown and being unable to power on the PC again until the components have cooled down.

Quote * I'm assuming that the Overheat protection in the BIOS only refers to cutting out when the CPU overheats and not the VRM components as I did a brief test with that disabled?
Overheating protection (the setting) applies only to the CPU. VRM temps are not monitored by the UEFI. 

Quote * Would it be normal to not see high temperatures in HWMonitor/BIOS HW Monitor screen following a freeze? (i.e. would the temperature spike and drop so quickly that you wouldn't see any evidence there?)
Yes, it would be normal to see all temps reporting as OK in monitoring software. As I said above, these temps are not reported. I would imagine because it would require a thermal sensor for each of the VRMs on the board which in the case of a 12 phase power design could be very expensive. Thermal shutdown/issues here are detected not by monitoring temps but by voltages going out of tolerance due to heat. Once the power controllers (chips on the board) detect this they trigger safeties to protect the system.

Quote * Is there a particular temperature which the thermal cut-out triggered by or is the cut-out monitored by other factors?
As I said above, this is determined via other means with VRM overheating. As components overheat their conductive properties are altered causing voltage fluctuations. When this happens protections are activated or, if they are not it is because the fluctuations are small and within tolerance but rapid (this is called ripple) which will likely cause freezing and instability symptoms. 

These things are a little more complex than my answers reflect but I believe I have given enough detail for you to get a better idea of how it works Wink
Back to Top
alinadem View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie


Joined: 12 Feb 2018
Location: North America
Status: Offline
Points: 24
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote alinadem Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Feb 2018 at 11:27pm
I can't imagine it to be VRMs, I have a crashing issue with this board, ASRock AB350M Pro4 and it results in a random crash, sometimes web browsing, other times gaming, random always, with a hard crash leaving a static image on the screen requiring a forced shutdown or reboot, sometimes with no display, consecutively needing another reboot to fire it up. 

We've placed a nice cougar 120mm fan right on the vrms, and the cpu cooler isn't stock also, everything is default clocks, and the vrm heatsinks aren't hot to touch. 

Installing the latest bios, defaults, a2, b2 for ram, a1 b2 for ram, now on a2 with one dimm, installed latest amd chipset drivers, fiddled around with everything in windows, gave more voltage for the ram dimm, still that same crash since day one of purchasing it, turning off overtemp protection in UEFI also didn't change anything. Ryzen power plan also didn't change anything. 

Reseated cpu power, 24pin power, ram, reset bios numerous times.

Things to try still:

Beta Bios 4.63
Firmware update for Crucial m500 (doubt this is affecting it, as it ran flawlessly in my ps3)
Reseating of CPU (maybe?)

But nontheless, from my experiments I doubt it is temperature related...Wish you luck and please update us here! so many asrock ab350m pro4 owners being plagued by similar crashes
Back to Top
alinadem View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie


Joined: 12 Feb 2018
Location: North America
Status: Offline
Points: 24
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote alinadem Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Feb 2018 at 11:29pm
Back to Top
r2b2nz View Drop Down
Newbie
Newbie


Joined: 15 Feb 2018
Status: Offline
Points: 11
Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote r2b2nz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Feb 2018 at 9:29am
Originally posted by Prodif Prodif wrote:

r2b2nz
Experts shall understand it, it is better to give to service center.

I've tried - I submitted an ASRock Technical Support form a few days ago but I've yet to hear anything. I'm guessing that perhaps I've fallen into the same trap as Kingston Technical Support who are all unavailable from the 14th to 21st due to Chinese New Year.

So figured in the meantime while I wait I'd ask people who might have been here before.
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  12>
  Share Topic   

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.04
Copyright ©2001-2021 Web Wiz Ltd.

This page was generated in 0.188 seconds.