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Solved New build frequent signal loss

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Hello everyone.

Here is my PC:

Gigabyte B450 DS3H
AMD Ryzen 7 1700(not overclocked)
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB 3200MHz x2
Samsung EVO 500GB
Corsair VS550 PSU
MSI Radeon RX580 8GB OC
Windows 10 Education

The computer ran perfectly for a month. Then one night i fell asleep while streaming a movie. I awoke in the middle of the night and the screen was blurry and frozen. The cpu fan and rgb light were functioning normally, but the mouse and keyboard were not responding so I did a hard shut down by holding the power button and went back to sleep. Over the following weeks the same problem started to happen more frequently, but while I was awake so I could see it happen. It would get halfway through a movie, then the audio would start to lag and the pitch would drop and sound like a cheesy slow-mo effect, then the picture would blur and freeze, and finally, after a few more seconds, the monitor would lose signal. The same as before, the fan and light are still on, but it wont respond until i do a hard reset. I did notice that the problem seemed to be less frequent when i used a usb headset. I even tested it by plugging in the headset right when the audio started to mess up and it actually worked and it finished the movie just fine. But the problem has become so frequent that my PC is literally not usable. It sometimes happens within 5 seconds of turning the thing on, and it never lasts more than 5 minutes. The only exception that I have found is if I manage to fire up Guild Wars 2 before it messes up, it works perfectly forever. I've played for 6 hours with no issue(with or without the headset), but the minute I close the game and open a browser, it screws up again. I don't have to open the browser, though. It will do the same if it's just idling at the desktop. I turned off all power saving features and it changed nothing. It will run in safe mode just fine.

At first I suspected a hardware issue, so i isolated as many things as I could. I used an old power supply that I had laying around. Same problem. I used 1 stick of ram at a time, Same problem for both. I used my graphics card in a different pc and it worked for hours. The motherboard doesnt have onboard graphics, so I couldn't try that. I reinstalled windows and disabled all updates in the hopes that it would work again since I had a good month before it started having these issues. Nothing has worked, though. I tried using new hdmi cables. My ps4 works perfectly on my monitor, so it's not that.
I found other threads that seem similar which suggest downloading minitoolbox and doing sfc /scannow, but the pc won't work long enough to complete the scan.

I'm at a loss at this point, so Id apprecite any help or suggestions.
 
If you're referring to cpu and gpu temps, yes I monitored those with the ryzen and radeon software. No issues while idling or playing games.

And it will run fine in safe mode.
 
in my experience, when things work fine in Safe Mode, that narrows it to a software fault.
and that includes drivers(software) for hardware.
and they can be painful to isolate.
much faster to bite the bullet and do a nuke from space approach.
so backup your data and do again what you did a month ago.

out of curiosity - why the Win10 Education version?
just trying to think of possible connections - like MS gives it a month trail or something.
 
in my experience, when things work fine in Safe Mode, that narrows it to a software fault.
and that includes drivers(software) for hardware.
and they can be painful to isolate.
much faster to bite the bullet and do a nuke from space approach.
so backup your data and do again what you did a month ago.

out of curiosity - why the Win10 Education version?
just trying to think of possible connections - like MS gives it a month trail or something.
I'm a student so I got a free Windows key, but I didn't get a choice of which version.
 
Corsair VS550 PSU
Not a good PSU to have when there is an add on video card involved as the VS and CX range of Corsair PSUs are only entry level/budget range power supplies and Corsair themselves state that even the Bronze efficiency rated CX range are intended for office type desktops only.

. I reinstalled windows and disabled all updates

I'm a student so I got a free Windows key, but I didn't get a choice of which version.
From where did you get the media to reinstall Windows.

Do you have the problem when signed into your school account, personal account or both.

You should not be disabling updates on any computer as the updates help to protect you from malware attack but it is even more important to keep Windows updated when it is used for school or work place use, if your computer were to get infected and then spread the infection across the school network there is likely to be serious consequences, if it happened in a work place the person responsible would most likely face a law suit.

Get Windows fully up to date and then post a Speccy url for us.
.
Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:
In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.
In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.
Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.
 
Not a good PSU to have when there is an add on video card involved as the VS and CX range of Corsair PSUs are only entry level/budget range power supplies and Corsair themselves state that even the Bronze efficiency rated CX range are intended for office type desktops only.




From where did you get the media to reinstall Windows.

Do you have the problem when signed into your school account, personal account or both.

You should not be disabling updates on any computer as the updates help to protect you from malware attack but it is even more important to keep Windows updated when it is used for school or work place use, if your computer were to get infected and then spread the infection across the school network there is likely to be serious consequences, if it happened in a work place the person responsible would most likely face a law suit.

Get Windows fully up to date and then post a Speccy url for us.
.
Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:
In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.
In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.
Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.


It seems the issue is a faulty pcie x16 slot. I don't quite understand how the problem was so inconsistent when the issue was with hardware, but when I moved the video card to the x4 slot it fixed everything. I updated windows and all drivers while using the x4 slot, then moved back to the x16 slot to test it and it crashed the moment windows booted. Obviously i went back to the x4 slot after that and it has worked perfectly for almost 3 days now.
I got in touch with Gigabyte support and they already approved my RMA request.
 
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