System freezing up without explanation

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System freezing up without explanation

07 November 2022, 01:34:25

Ive been on my current install since a few months already and at some point I had the issue that my PC would suddenly lock up and the only way to reboot was with the power switch.
My first guess was that this was an issue with my GPU since its quite old already, so I bought a new one.
I put the new GPU into my system and was disappointed when I observed that I still have the same Issue.
Sometimes the PC freezes up and audio still plays, but most of the time everything freezes up.
Note this only happens when playing games.
My first thought was hardware failure so I spent days stress testing every component in my PC and I didn't get any instability.
Not being able to find the problem, I decided to look how things went on Windows 10. Surprise, I dont freeze anymore. Tried the old GPU and I also dont freeze there.
Then I started digging in my Linux install and tried everything I could think of, different kernels, switching from TSC to HPET, different proton versions, digging through logs at /var/log but I could not come to any conclusion.
Tried resetting BIOS and not changing any setting in it, tried disabling C states, ran endless stress tests to confirm my hardware is stable and Im back where I started.
Its also noteworthy that the game that I play (Apex Legends) doesnt fully max out my hardware and I hover around 70% GPU usage so I dont think its unstable hardware.

My current specs:
Ryzen 5 5600X
RX 5700XT
MSI 470X GAMING PLUS
16GB 3200mhz RAM
latest packages from the repos

Re: System freezing up without explanation

Reply #1 – 07 November 2022, 19:17:54

These problems are very tough to solve. Your best bet would be a second PC/laptop to ssh into your gaming box and have dmesg -wHT and tail -f /var/log/everything.log (or /var/log/everything/current if on metalog) running. If you're lucky, you'll get a hint.

Re: System freezing up without explanation

Reply #2 – 07 November 2022, 19:57:00

If you are using harddisk which has damaged sectors then it causes random freezes
or you have bad ram (faulty) test ram sticks one by one using https://memtest.org/ scan for bad ram addresses

Re: System freezing up without explanation

Reply #3 – 08 November 2022, 06:00:51

>If you are using harddisk which has damaged sectors then it causes random freezes

Good point, try getting a health status of your drive by this commnad:

Code: [Select]

# smartctl -H /dev/sdX

Re: System freezing up without explanation

Reply #4 – 08 November 2022, 07:03:04

Sadly I do not own a second system or failing hard drives, I'm on nvme.
As I've said I've stress tested using YCruncher and Unigine benchmarks and everything was stable there. Tried 5h of memtest without issues

Re: System freezing up without explanation

Reply #5 – 08 November 2022, 09:19:58

I had the same problem, but it was my fault.
On a PC with 4GB RAM I forgot to create a SWAP partition.

Re: System freezing up without explanation

Reply #6 – 08 November 2022, 11:13:15

aqyx, I got a similar problem always with a Ryzen cpu Ryzen 3 4300. I solved the problem using the LTS kernel 5.15; with all the other kernel, when I use some multimedia program, the system casually crash and the only way is to use the power button to restart.

With the new 6.x kernel something is better, I can have at least 1/2 an hour before the notebook crash.

What I want to try is to install a new version, from the scratch, and to verify if the problem is yet present. I my opinion this is something changed into the kernel after the 5.15.

Re: System freezing up without explanation

Reply #7 – 08 November 2022, 11:55:30

I would first activate the Option "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp".

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboard_configuration_in_Xorg#Using_X_configuration_files
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboard_configuration_in_Xorg#Terminating_Xorg_with_Ctrl+Alt+Backspace

I would not start the game in full screen but in a window and keep an eye on the running processes.
Even if you don't find the reason why your desktop freezes, you can at least Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to avoid the reboots.

Re: System freezing up without explanation

Reply #8 – 15 November 2022, 00:32:07

I will for sure try this and see if I get any results.