AB350 Gaming-iTX/ac - freezing (oh no...)

And there's another one freezing ...

Hello everyone,

just finished my iTX Build with r5 2400G on the ASRock AB350 Gaming-iTX/ac and after installing everything and getting into testing everything my system begins freezing. Just out of nowhere ...

System specs:
ASRock AB350 Gaming-iTX/ac - BIOS 4.50
Ryzen 5 2400G APU - Noctua NH L9x65
G.Skill Trident Z 16 GB PC4000 CL19 (running @3300 / CL14 1,4 V)
Samsung 830 128 GB SATA SSD (old but that's what I just had lying around)
Philips 47" LCD TV over HDMI (again, that's what was just there when I was done)
Windows 10 Pro (latest built, just downloaded it 1 week ago)
Latest drivers for ATI Radeion, LAN/WLAN, AUDI etc. (downloaded via ASRock Shop Tool)


First I started playing Assassin's Creed Black Flag which I just had there to try out. It runs OK as far as I can tell but it could use some Ryzen optimizations I guess. However I was fine but there was a specific mission where the game crashed just after completing it, screen stayed black, audio plays then stops and some wired artefacts appear on screen. I played it again and it freezed at the same point.

I went to uefi and changed the RAM timings from CL14 to 15 but doesn't help, it freezes again just at the same point. After 4-5 tries I gave up but because everything else was ok and temps where just fine I thought it's just a bug in the game or an issue with the drivers because it's a quite old game on a quite new system.

After that I wanted to go into stress testing a bit and began to download 3D Mark. It should take quite while because my WifI is bad here in the basement. After a while I looked at the download status and it didn't change anymore, I thought the WiFi just dropped and it's resyncing but when I grab the mouse I noticed it was frozen!?

I thought ok, that may happens with a brand new System where maybe some settings are not optimal or thermals may be an issue because cooler not sitting perfect. I did reset and restarted the download and after another while again same thing but this time I watched it. The connections seemed to be lost - it stopped downloading but not abborting it, just stays at the actual speed but no data coming through. Everything else looked normal, I moved my mouse around to see if it was frozen but it wasn't yet but a few seconds later it did freeze again.

After that I went to the uefi once more and turned the RAM down to it's default timings (CL19) but at 3200 ofc and with default 1.35 V.

After this I had no more freeze for the next half hour before I shut down the system.

I completed the 3D Mark download and ran the 3D Mark Time Spy test. The first time it stopps with an error after the first demo but no details about the error. Maybe my switching between 3D Mark and AMD Master tool caused the problem. I ran it a 2nd time and it was OK! CPU Temperatures where waaay below any critical (about 50-60° at max).

One interessting thing, 3D Mark GPU test ran quite bad, I was wondering why but at the end it says my GPU was unknown and drivers not acceptet!? But on the start screen it showed up correctly!? Could there be any connection between the freezes and an eveutal broken gpu driver? I don't think so but who knows...!?

Okay guys, that's quite a bit information but I think you'll need as much Information as possible to find the problem.

Maybe it's just the RAM becaue after setting it to default timings it worked but maybe it was just coincidence. I will do some more testing tonight, I plan to go for RAM testing, they SHOULD make 3200 CL14/14/14/14/34 1.4 Volts and as they are Samsung B-dies I belive they will. Just as the FlareX do. Maybe I need to go down to 2933!? I don't know? Any ideas?

Otherwise I'll try the new Bios, I heard of an WiFI issue, could there be any connections? Because the freezing only happens while downloading over WiFi!?


EDIT:
Upon further investigations I think this freeezes could really be caused by the WiFi bug. I wasn't awate of that bug before because I thought there's just a problem with wifi not working at all (that's what I had read before) but now I found a post on reddit where some people described exactly what happened to me. They say streaming videos or other network heavy things like just downloading a huge file will cause bsod or freeze almost 100% after a couple of minutes or at least half an hour / hour. So that's exactly what I experienced last night while downloading 3D Mark.

This should USUALLY be a quick thing over my cable network but because I was in the basement LUCKILY my WiFi connection was bad enough to keep the download running for about 15-20 minutes.

I say luckily because otherwise I may wouldn't be able to see the freeze and would have a much harder time figuring it out later when the system runs stable but begins to crash out of nothing when, for example a windows update is loading in background or something like that. This way I was able to eliminate parameters quite easy, I'll flash 3,51 tonight and see if this fixes the freezing issue!



Edited by Thenightstalker - 15 Mar 2018 at 4:08pm

stree wrote: Could you state exactly, the chipset and gpu (Radeon) drivers installs? This must be chipset first and then the Radeon drivers, because if you install the Radeon first, the video drivers in the chipset pack will overwrite with graphics drivers that will give problems.

I'd bet I did it in this order mainly also because of my slow WiFi connection.
But I installed all the drivers through the ASRock App Shop.

I remember downloading all drivers except ATI Radeon AiO because I wanted the smaller ones to be done first. Also I knew that display drivers usually should come last because they often interfere with others.

So I think I did it that way. But I can't really tell which drivers the ASRock Utility offered me, there was a HD Audio as well as an Intel Networking device driver and a 3rd one. Are there 2 different Network drivers for LAN and WLAN controllers? In that case there was no specific chipset driver at all. But I used the latest Windows 10 built and did all available updates straight after installing Windows. So they myght already have been installed with the system?

However, I don't think this caused the freezing, maybe that's why AC BF crashed and 3D Mark didn't know my GPU and driver...!?

I was pretty sure everything was/is ok just because there where noc issues, no error messages in my device manager and all devices seem to work as they should.

But you're right, that was a bit to easy.

I didn't chose anything, I installe the ASRock App Store app and in this there's a drivers/updates section where it shows me ATI Graphics drivers, LAN Drivers and HD Audio drivers which I installed because they defenitely where missing.

But I think I should try to do it again the way you described. Therefore I'll unsinstall the ATI Drivers completely, as well as the LAN / WLAN Drivers and download the specific chipset and latest ATI Radeon Drivers directly from ATI.

So I'll get this first:
https://support.amd.com/de-de/download/chipset?os=Windows%2010%20-%2064

Then go there:
https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Software-for-Ryzen-Desktop-Processors-with-Radeon-Vega-Graphics-Release-Notes.aspx

and get the drivers for Ryzen APU Graphics.

After that I should be done, right?
Or do you think a clean Windows 10 reinstall would be better?

K, I'lll give it a try tonight ;-)
I'll also upgrade Bios to 4.51 to fix any possible wlan issues.

Get back here with results.

Assasin's creed origins is BRUTAL on systems thanks to it's excessive DRM and less than ideal optimization. This is a well known issue that brings any system even remotely falling short of recommended specs to it's knees. Give it a google, there may be some workarounds/tricks to pick things up.