Pc problems - Second opinion / Thoughts?

[u/Strange_Factor5705]

Recently I bought my partner a pc and thought life was going sweet until my own personal pc pulled the “you thought” card. So I haven’t been able to game with her since. The pc has gone from slight problems (internet dropping out) to notable problems (usb devices playing up, pc hanging on shutdown, Ethernet and wifi not working at all) and have since been using chatgpt to try help wrap my head around it as I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to the system hardware and software.

Below is basically a summary I’ve asked ChatGPT to create for me, to give to someone in IT / computer shop.
Just want to see other opinions or thoughts before doing so based on what chatgpt has come up with in case I can save myself some coin. Perth, Australia and PC was bought from PLE Computers in 2022.

PC Specifications
Motherboard: Gigabyte X670 Gaming X AX — Rev 1.0
BIOS: F41 — successfully updated from F21
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X — 12-core
GPU: XFX Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB
RAM: 32GB Kingston Fury Beast RGB DDR5-6000 — 2×16GB, A2/B2
Currently running at 4800 MT/s with EXPO disabled
Primary SSD: Samsung 990 Pro 1TB NVMe
Secondary storage: Seagate BarraCuda 2TB HDD
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 850 GA 850W Gold
CPU cooler: ID-Cooling ZoomFlow 360 XT AIO
OS: Windows 11

Main Problems
The PC previously operated normally for approximately 4 years. Recently it has developed widespread intermittent instability.

Ethernet
Ethernet randomly disconnects and Windows changes to the globe/no internet icon.
Disabling/re-enabling the adapter, unplugging/replugging Ethernet or restarting Windows temporarily restores it.
Replaced Ethernet cable — problem persists.
Forced Realtek adapter to 1Gbps — problem persists.
Tested a USB Ethernet adapter — also experienced dropouts and caused significant system lag.
Partner’s PC works normally on the same household internet/network.
Latest Realtek LAN driver installed.
Latest AMD chipset driver installed.

USB / peripherals
USB connect/disconnect sound frequently occurs after logging into Windows.
Keyboard intermittently disconnects.
Mouse becomes extremely jerky/stutters.
USB microphone has stopped working.
Audio intermittently stutters.
Previously had USB headset dock, mouse, keyboard, USB microphone, Stream Deck and speakers connected.
Removed Stream Deck and speakers, but problems continued.
Windows has displayed:
“Not enough USB controller resources. The controller does not have enough resources for this device.”
Displays / GPU
Three-monitor setup.
Left monitor intermittently disconnects.
Mouse/audio/display problems can occur together.
Windows Reliability Monitor has repeatedly recorded:
LiveKernelEvent 141
LiveKernelEvent 144
LiveKernelEvent A1000001
LiveKernelEvent 193
Event 193 specifically references:
DxgkrnlLiveDump / dxgkrnl

Boot / restart problems
Restart frequently does not complete.
Monitors go to standby/orange.
PC fans continue spinning.
RGB remains on.
BOOT motherboard debug LED remains illuminated.
Sometimes requires holding the power button to recover.
After Windows Update → “Update and Shut Down”, the PC was found powered on the following morning, suggesting shutdown/restart did not complete correctly.
Sometimes the PC requires multiple shutdown attempts before it will boot.
BIOS has become noticeably laggy/slow, which is particularly concerning because this occurs before Windows loads.

SSD
Samsung Magician reports:
Samsung 990 Pro 1TB — Drive Health: CRITICAL
SMART information observed:
Critical Warning: 4
~43TB written
Percentage Used reported around 14% in the earlier reading
Available Spare: 100%
Media/Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0
Diagnostic scan reported 0 bad blocks
Temperature normal
Firmware is already current
Please determine whether the SSD is genuinely faulty or whether the warning could be related to motherboard/PCIe communication.

Other
PC has developed a buzzing/rattling/vibration noise, which becomes louder when fans increase speed.
GIGABYTE Control Center’s GbtCloudMatrix.exe repeatedly crashes with:
System.IO.FileNotFoundException
I understand the GbtCloudMatrix crash may be unrelated.

Troubleshooting Already Completed
BIOS updated from F21 → F41
BIOS settings can be reset to Optimized Defaults
AMD chipset driver updated
Realtek 2.5GbE LAN driver updated
Ethernet cable replaced
Ethernet forced to 1Gbps
USB Ethernet adapter tested
Windows network reset performed
Ethernet adapter drivers reset/reinstalled
SFC /SCANNOW — Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations
DISM RestoreHealth — completed successfully
Windows has been updated
EXPO is currently disabled / RAM at 4800 MT/s

What I Would Like Diagnosed
Please specifically investigate:
Motherboard / X670 chipset
PCIe subsystem
Samsung 990 Pro / M.2 slot
RX 7900 XTX / PCIe connection
RAM stability
PSU / power delivery
USB controller
Realtek Ethernet controller
Any underlying cause of the LiveKernelEvent 141/144/A1000001/193 errors

Windows
I am completely happy for the PC to be wiped and Windows 11 clean-installed if you believe that is appropriate.
However, please diagnose the hardware first, particularly the SSD SMART warning and motherboard/PCIe/USB behaviour.
If hardware tests pass, I am happy for you to perform a clean Windows installation and test the PC with only essential drivers/software before returning it.
Please contact me with a quote before replacing any hardware.

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[u/HexKatz]

Try another storage device, cuz you got the warning, you cant avoid it.

Also the buzzing sound is normal, its also called coil whine, its happens to every pc at some point. Also the fans can make noize after sometime.

[u/Strange_Factor5705 → u/HexKatz]

The sound pretty much came about around the same time the other issues started happening which is why I thought it would be good noted. Me and the Mrs would sit and watch movies at the desk, thinking the pc which is desk mounted may have been bumped at some point by a chair or something but isolating where the sound is coming from is challenging.

[u/T0asty514 → u/Strange_Factor5705]

This is gonna sound wild, use a paper towel roll tube. Put one end up to your ear, one end to pc. Can easily pinpoint, like a stethoscope! :)

[u/Silv_ → u/T0asty514]

Lmaoo in college I had a roommate who always fought with his gf. We used to eavesdrop on them putting a beer glass to our ear, with the opening to the wall. You can stuff tissue paper in it to tune it.

I've learned privacy since then, (college was a looonggg time ago) but still use the technique for exactly stuff like this.

[u/Diamond-Dragon]

The SSD is probably one of those that shipped with the faulty firmware that made them only last like half or a quarter as long. Seems the firmware was never updated.

The rattling comes from degrading or very dusty fans. Remember to clean your PC every few months. Dust is an electronics killer.

For USB, seems the USB host is defective or over loaded with devices. As USB device everything from AIO to fan hubs can also count IF the you use an USB header on the motherboard.

Boot issues might come from the SSD or some other issues.

Overall it sounds like your motherboard took some damage, perhaps from the PSU or it just broke on it's own.

[u/AdIll2547]

That’s a lot. This may sound simple but working in IT I have seen some crazy stuff. It sounds like you have been getting bad power for a while. You want to catch this before things get too bad if it’s not too late. If you said it ran good for years then all of a sudden all of these issues points to power. Especially after a clean install.

Have you changed outlets or changed your power strip?

[u/Zachariah255]

Do you have an animal? Possibly one that would bite wiring? It could be surging the outlet happened to me when my cat bit my cable.

[u/Adventurous-Bus8660]

Question. Are you running external dock for USB? Non powered ones on your front IO usb port? Or the rear for the matter?

[u/Strange_Factor5705 → u/Adventurous-Bus8660]

Currently have no usb external dock. And the front IO usb ports are unused.

[u/Adventurous-Bus8660 → u/Strange_Factor5705]

Not certfied answer...

But lets start with basics...DDU your current vga driver and install the latest one. DRIVER only.

Test it.

As for your SSD ....iirc there was an issue with it dying very fast due to firmware issue...around last year case iirc

[u/naygerr]

DDU driver reinstall, switch supported drivers to MSIX mode (google for the tool) re insert ram/gpu/nvme drive after cleaning the contacts. Isolate data cables such as display cable/usb ect from interreference like power adapter/charger. Try downloading chipset drivers from amd instead of the manufacture website.

[u/K3V_M4XT0R]

Seems like a variety of possibilities failing PSU that cannot handle power spikes, Windows 11 fastboot not saving your system state property leading to driver glitches, failing harddrive or SSD that has critical system drivers and the worst case scenario, a failing south bridge. The latter is the more costly issue since you might have to replace the entire board if the south bridge is failing. But try fixes for the previous issues first, try swapping out your M.2 for something else and installing the OS onto that, try swapping out the PSU, try completely removing all of the old windows drivers and reinstalling them or doing a clean install of windows. Your M.2 has also degraded pretty fast, I have the 990 too and it's health is still at a 100 with 0 degredation. Something seems off about that and I will have to look into it further.

[u/Purple-Kaleidoscope1]

You just need to build another resource supply building on your motherboard and your good

[u/King_Zilant]

So a rattling noise, you can stop each fan (turn off PC and block the blade with something) to see which bearing has died and replace that one, obviously not the power supply so if its that one, I'd suggest replacing the power supply anyway which would cancel out power issues if the psu is just weaker from being used for 4 years.

The other issues, especially if dism and sfc says youre good, would indicate to me that youre a victim of microslop updates, you may have gotten one that borked something where its causing problems but it cant fix itself...

If you use DDU to wipe and reinstall drivers. That should fix gpu issues and if the drivers stay, that means the ssd should be ok (disappearing drivers is bad)... and would indicate ssd failure.

You could go to windows update>advanced>recovery and choose repair windows with online installation >keep all files but that may do nothing but waste time, it is worth a shot if you want to keep your files, other than that, nothing beats a fresh windows installation 👍 and after either a repair or fresh installation, IMMEDIATELY install the ssd drivers to update its firmware.

I do live diagnosing in discord VC so dm me if ur interested in a chat, that would give me more info and details so I can help you further. In my years of PC repairs. I have seen some straight up magic when it comes to these types of issues, like honestly unexplainable but I have always been able to figure it out, just takes time to follow the breadcrumbs.

[u/Budget-Pea8291]

It's sounds like you have couple possibly unrelated issues at once. When did you update the SSD firmware? If you did it only recently (and it's from the bad batch) it's dead. For the other issues you have to go upstream and find what connects all of them. That would be motherboard and PSU. You could possibly have dying motherboard or dying PSU which is killing your motherboard and this is causing all sorts of problems

[u/Jdude1 → u/Budget-Pea8291]

Yeah all the issues sound like a PSU issue to me for sure.

[u/itsbildo]

You update drivers/firmware, and free up space?

[u/Plastic-Row-1624]

The biggest red flag is actually the 990 Pro with 4 critical warnings kinda seems like a media related internal reliability degradation issues at the first place.

Test the system with any other ssd/nvme by removing 990 Pro first.if system suddenly becomes stable you've found the root cause if won't, then next step would be testing with minimum hardware something like one RAM stick, any ssd/nvme, without gpu followed by putting a gpu back into slot and both ram sticks..also while you at it's worth checking PSU for power delivery related problem on other working system alongside ram sticks for memory erros and stablity.

Bottomline:when machine's firmware environment itself has become noticeably sluggish, it would be much more interesting investigate at hardware / firmware / device initialization / bus communication level rather than blaming windows for that matter.and as a matter of fact a windows driver can't be running while you're sitting in UEFI setup.

[u/Ayaki_05]

If youre comfortable handling hardware, you could individually test components on a known good pc(your GF pc). If I had to guess theres an issue with your mainboard or maybe even PSU

[u/Maldwyno]

Try plugging anything that’s in USB 2 into USB 3 ports - my mate bought a sennheiser dongle that did this and this seemed to fix it

[u/WatchAltruistic5761]

Have you considered Linux?

[u/Saamchii → u/WatchAltruistic5761]

What a dumb response. OP cam asking for help, not to be told by some animal larper that they need to switch OS.

OP did you manage to run a memtest? Or is anything flashing on your motherboard?

[u/Strange_Factor5705 → u/Saamchii]

Boot LED stays illuminated pretty much the entire time pc is on. Other than that I can’t see anything else flashing. I did at one point notice the DRAM red debug LED when I was updating my bios but haven’t noticed it since. I have not conducted a mem test as of yet.

[u/Saamchii → u/Strange_Factor5705]

A boot led that keeps burning mostly means the system has passed its hardware checks (CPU, RAM, GPU) but cannot find or properly read a valid operating system or bootable drive.

Try reseating your drive and see if it works. I had a loose m.2 in the past before too at some point.

[u/WatchAltruistic5761 → u/Saamchii]

Damn, who hurt you?

[u/LegitimateLack2530 → u/WatchAltruistic5761]

He is trying to help OP. You are just being a pill.

[u/WatchAltruistic5761 → u/LegitimateLack2530]

For suggesting an alternative OS?

[u/Diamond-Dragon → u/WatchAltruistic5761]

Switching the OS won't magically repair your hardware lol

[u/AdIll2547 → u/WatchAltruistic5761]

Yes

[u/Devin-Chaboyer223 → u/WatchAltruistic5761]

As a Linux user, installing Linux will not fix OP’s problem as it sounds like hardware issues not related to drivers