After replacing power supply PC keeps freezing

[tallonius]

Hi,

Last weekend, during the hot spell, my PC turned itself off. Thinking that maybe a fan had failed I opened the case and checked - all fans were working but the PC would only stay on for a few minutes before turning off. Guessing it was the power supply I added a new one, and it worked again.

But since then I've had various boot errors, and my boot order has changed. Once the machine boots up, it often freezes, with the little blue swirly thing going round, and nothing will work till it stops. When it doesn't stop, I have to reboot it, and back to square one. It seems to have a particular problem with Outlook and Photoshop, so I now don't dare run them both at the same time.

Thinking maybe I had unseated a memory stick I did a diagnostic check to see how much memory was detected and it correctly identified 16Gb.

I had replaced a G7 880W PSU with a Corsair 850W unit - slightly lower power - but the PSU before that had only been 700W so I knew I had plenty to spare and I have added little hardware to my PC in the time since.

I also noticed that Windows app were taking a long time to load, and Windows Search Indexing is turned off - weird…

I'm not a techie by any means but I've built several PC's in the past (though not this one) so I'm not a total novice either. Everything seems seated properly as far as I can tell.

What could it be that would give this variety of symptoms, in particular the weird boot order change?

Thanks.

PC SPEC:
- Windows 10 - version 2004 (OS Build: 19041.572)
- Intel Core i7 3770K Processor 3.50 GHz
- Asus P8B75-M LX Basic Micro ATX Motherboard
- 16GB Corsair PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 Memory (2 x 8GB sticks), Channel # Dual, DRAM Freq 798.2 MHz,
- Samsung 860 series: 1Tb SSD (upgraded from original 250Gb SSD)
- 3 other (mechanical) hard drives - two internal, one external
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super graphics card

 

[rbdouglass]

Try disconnecting the three HDD and reboot

 

[Charles Smith]

Wow, what a walk down memory lane. How long have you had this? I did some online research. Your CPU was first released on August 6, 2012, your motherboard was first released on ‎August 5, 2015. Your graphics card came out somewhere around November 22, 2019, so it's a bit newer. When was the last time you checked for a BIOS update. As long as there's nothing physically broken you should probably start there. There's a program you can get from cnet downloads, it's called Belarc Advisor, from the website, "
The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, network inventory, any missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, security benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server." There are others, but this is the one I use. It can tell you what the software and programs are on your PC, If and OS updates are missing and everything is done on your computer, none of your information is sent anywhere. Have you thought of getting or building a new computer? Some newer software just can't run on what's considered Legacy hardware. I don't know if you've heard of it, but there is a program for your motherboard called Asus Armoury Crate. When run, it will tell you what motherboard software is out of date with links to download newer files. If you try this, read through the list, uncheck everything are only check off stuff you need. If you don't recognize something leave it unchecked. This program does have some software you don't want or need. See if software updates are your problem before replacing hardware, unless you decide to get a new computer. One other thing you might check or replace is the button battery for your BIOS chip. Removing and replacing it just resets your BIOS to it's original default setting. Everything I suggested except for the battery are free. If you try any of this, please post a reply to say something did or didn't work. That will help others in the future.

 

[FJRPilot]

I have 2 PC's. One I just built and the other is 12 years old. The old PC runs faster than most store bought new ones I have seen.
Age isn't so bad if it is kept up to date. Other than that check the CPU heat sink. I have seen PC's kept free of dust but had clogged heat sink fins. Just a thought.

 

[B-Man]

Wow slightly older than my pc.
But mine still runs great with a nvme drive on a pci adapter... graphics card is only a gtx 260 though....

Being that old have you cleaned out the fans and heatsink with all the dust and even reapplied thermal paste... sometimes the paste can go hard and maybe you have knocked the heatsink when doing the power supply and its not seating 100% anymore...
Have you checked the temps or done a stress test? I don't think it would be the programs causing it just the load they put the system under.
Maybe try reseating the ram if you haven't aswell.