Hi everyone - I've just recently built my first new PC in almost a decade. I've got a lot of past experience building but am currently stumped on this one.
I picked up a Ryzen 9 7900X3D, Asus Prime B650-Plus MB, 32GB (2x16GB) Team Force 6400MHz RAM, a Thermalright AIO liquid cooler and am currently using a 6650 XT GPU until a new 7900 GRE is delivered. Also have a Corsair 850e PSU.
Build went smooth, all parts recognized in BIOS, no worries. When I installed Windows 11 I began to have random crashing, through the install process, once it was installed, etc. The PC would crash between 10s-60s after bootup, consistently. When this happened there was nothing in the logs, Event viewer captured nothing other than an error after bootup saying the PC had restarted from an unexpected shutdown, but I could not figure out what was going on. Eventually I got to the point that having only 1 stick of ram in the system would keep it stable, I never had any crashes doing this. Now, I tried both sticks, in slots 2/4 on the MB and they both worked perfectly fine on their own, in either slot. As soon as I'd add the 2nd stick the system would go through the cycle of crashing.
I figured it might be the MB since each RAM stick was fine on its own so I RMA'd the board. While waiting for the new one to show up I decided to try installing Win10 and it seemed to be much more stable than Win11, I thought it was fixing the problem, but alas it was only delaying the crashes up to 10-15 mins. However same result as Win11, no error logs anywhere I could find. I did once get a BSOD and it mentioned a heap problem, which from my Googling indicated a memory error, so I ordered a new set of T-Force RAM, just to compare against the old set in case it ended up being a RAM issue. Got the new RAM, installed it and tried installing Win11, and same issue as before, so doesn't seem to be a RAM problem. On a lark I thought since I have 64GB of RAM I may as well install it - and amazingly the system is much more stable. It still crashes, but seems much more random than before and I can use the PC for a while without it happening.
I have the RMA board now from Amazon, but haven't installed it yet because now I'm wondering if it's a board issue with it actually being busted.
The PC is still shutting off and rebooting randomly, and while browsing MB's for fun it dawned on me the cheap (relatively) Asus board I have only has 1 8-pin atx 12V power socket. Almost all other MB's I see have 2 8's or an 8 and a 4-pin. It made me realize my crashes aren't like standard Windows crashes but more like the PC just shuts off for a second then reboots itself, with no errors as it's instantaneous.
So I'm left here wondering what to do next - does the 7900X3D require more than 1 8-pin power? The MB supports the CPU so I would assume it was capable of running the chip, even if it spikes in power or whatever but I'm starting to wonder if that's my problem?
Should I swap the MB's anyway and see if the issue goes away? Is there anything I can do to validate my CPU is fine and not causing the crashes? I'm just not sure where to go. This build cost me a ton of money and it's really discouraging I can't use the machine for more than a few mins at a time. I just realized the potential power issue 5-mins before writing this post but maybe it's me grasping at straws.
Anything anyone could offer to help would be super appreciated.
Thanks very much.
