My PC is acting all squirrely

[Berkut]

Been going on for a while on my gaming desktop.

It just crashes a lot. Usually when it goes to sleep mode, it doesn't wake up. Gives me an error screen some of the time, and other times it just reboots.

I suspect memory. But I am loathe to replace the memory, and then find out the motherboard is the problem. Thinking about just upgrading CPU/MB/memory. I am kind of due. I currently have a AMD Ryzen 7 7200X.

Thinking about a Intel i5-12600 ($280), a Asrock Z690M, and 32GB of DDR4/3600 Ram ($100). I already have a NVidia 2070 GFX card, and I think that will continue to be fine for now. Have a good case as well.

Seems like about $600 gets me a pretty nice new system that should last another 3 or 4 years.

Thoughts?

[Grey Fox]

Do a mem test?

[HVC]

I had an issue with power save on sleep mode after a windows update. It'd go to sleep and not wake up. I also had the added benefit that once in a while I'd have to unplug the computer for a few minutes or it wouldn't turn on. Maybe try turnoff that function first?

[Berkut]

Memory testing comes back ok.

[Berkut]

My main fear at this point, I suppose, is that the error is coming from my graphics card. In which case replacing everything BUT the graphics card would be rather....expensively not useful.

[DGuller]

I used to have a problem with my PC not restarting after a Windows update, or successfully starting very sporadically.  It turns out that disconnecting a spinning HDD which I used for quick backups of my SSDs solved it.

[grumbler]

I'd think power supply before video card.  How old is the PS?

[grumbler]

Memory testing comes back ok.

What about float testing?

[viper37]

Usually when it goes to sleep mode, it doesn't wake up. Thoughts?

that is usually a video card problem.  I've had this problem before. The random crash could be either GPU or memory, but combined with sleep mode not coming back, I'm pretty sure it's a GPU problem.

Unfortunately, I know of no good software to test this.

You could try cleaning the GPU fan(s) first, see if it's a heat problem, before replacing the GPU.  In fact, do it for all the computer fans, CPU&case.  If the problem persists, replace the GPU.  Prices are getting good, Nvidia and AMD.

[grumbler]

If you think that it is a GPU heat problem, you can find out on YouTube how to disassemble and clean it.  Did wonders for the temps on mine (I also replaced the thermal paste since I had the thing apart anyway).

[Berkut]

Seems unlikely to be heat - it never fails under load. Just when the PC goes to sleep, mostly.

Well, I should not say "never", rarely is a better description.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Check the hard drive. That sounds a bit like what happened with my laptop HDD. Computer often crashed after waking from sleep and also had other squirrely issues. I tested it and bad sectors were multiplying like rabbits. I replaced it with an SSD and everything works well. Honestly, if you're using an HDD as a main or only drive you should replace it with an SSD (128 or 256 are pretty common and not too expensive), with a second (or third, in a RAID 1 setup) large capacity HDD if needed.