I’m in the process of putting together a new rig, and getting hard lockup/freezes (ctrl+alt+del does nothing, it just locks up, have to cut power to reboot). Here is currently what is connected to the system (it’s in the test-for-POST stage, sitting on the mobo box):
CPU: AMD Ryzen 1700X
CPU Cooler: [air cooled] CoolerMaster MasterAir MA610P RGB fancy thing that sucked to install because the wiring for the fans is almost unreachable when you have non-presidential man-sized hands.
Mobo: MSI Gaming M7 ACK (latest BIOS as of time-of-post installed) – WiFi card that came with the mobo is not installed at this point, for troubleshooting purposes I did a fresh install without the WiFi module installed to eliminate the need for Windows to install drivers for it, in case that may have been the root cause.
Memory: 4x 8GB Corsair LPX 3200MHz (these modules are on the QVL for this motherboard)
GPU: Gigabyte RX Vega 56
PSU: Corsair HX750 Gold (the semi-modular model)
Storage: Boot drive is a WD Black 512GB M.2 NVME, and an ADATA SX7000 512GB M.2 NVME is the other M.2 slot
So, a fresh barebones install of Windows 10 x64, I’m talking downloaded the ISO from microsoft, flash it to a USB thumb drive and installed (luckily with USB 3.0 and M.2 NVMe this only takes about 5 minutes, because I’ve done it 6 or 7 times at this point). Absolutely no other software installed other than the latest AMD drivers and whatever drivers Windows installs by default. I’m getting hard lockups/system freeze shortly after logging in to windows 10. Hard lockups - the whole thing just freezes, no ctrl+alt+del, no nothing. I have to cut power either by shorting the Front Panel power pins on the mobo or turn off the PSU.
Event viewer, to my knowledge (navigating those logs is a goddamn mine field), isn’t reporting anything substantial – unless I’m looking in the wrong category (I’ve checked System Events, and the general Critical one – i forget what they call that). The only thing it reports is the unexpected shutdown, at least that I can find. May need some tips & tricks for where to look in Event Viewer as it’s not user friendly in the least bit.
Troubleshooting done so far:
- I let Memtest86 do an 8-pass RAM torture test last night, it reported 0 errors, so I don’t think it’s bad memory modules.
- Burned about a half an ounce of very good weed contemplating how I’m going to explain to my old lady that the $850 graphics card I bought doesn’t work, and that I may not be able to use it, and Newegg may fight me about returning it. I might be homeless next week, in which case none of this will matter.
- I booted to an Ubuntu 17.10 Live image and it functioned fine, idle and under a load, for 3 hours without freezeing. This leads me to believe it’s a software issue – either Windows 10 shenanigans or with the AMD Windows drivers.
- Currently I’m letting it idle after a fresh install of win10 BUT NOT installing the AMD drivers, to see if I still get a lockup. So far (15 minutes in) it seems to be OK. 15 minutes is much much longer than I got with the drivers installed.
- Currently the connected display is a big beast of a monitor (HP Omen 32), connected via DisplayPort. During troubleshooting I’ve tried connecting it via HDMI instead, and tested having freesync both on and off. Also tried a totally different display that does not have Freesync. Nothing had any effect, still locks up with AMD drivers installed.
- Via the process of elimination (my favorite troubleshooting technique) this is leading me to the conclusion that the AMD drivers for vega are… well, shit. Or they’re just buggy. But, they could be shit.
Now look, I’m OK with Linux, as a matter of fact that’s my OS of choice, but this is supposed to be a gaming machine – I paid thru the nose for the damn card. unfortunately for gaming – if you want to play the newest titles, Windows is your only option realistically. I say this as a somewhat experienced Linux user and fan of that OS, but for gaming it’s just not the best choice (hopefully this changes more quickly with the advent of Vulcan, etc.).
I’m curious if anyone else has had any issues with the x64 Win10 AMD drivers? I can’t for the life of me figure this out, I mean it’s brand new hardware, fresh out of the boxes. The RAM is good insofar as I can tell, I don’t think that’s the issue. BTW, 25 minutes into the fresh Win10 install without the AMD drivers, still not frozen. I contemplated calling AMD tech support, but honestly calling tech support for any company these days is #1 a waste of time and #2 an exercise in frustration and #3 sometimes I can’t even understand their thick Indian accents (no offense intended, it’s just reality). Plus they probably wouldn’t tell me anything useful anyway, I’ve already done most of the stuff their scripts likely say to try.
EDIT: ~ 45mins booted up without AMD drivers installed, no lockups yet.
EDIT 2: Getting close to 1.5 hours of on-time with no freezes or lockups. I’m 85% sure at this point that the issue is with the GPU drivers. I could be wrong however, who knows.
Ok so if the GPU drivers are the problem… what is the end-user recourse here? There isn’t another option (on Windows) for drivers is there?
If anyone has any advice, troubleshooting tips, commands to run, logs to look at (event viewer tips would be appreciated, I am not well versed with that tool), etc. ANYTHING I’m listening, and it would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.