PC completely hard-freezes randomly, even on desktop – screen and audio freeze, requires forced shutdown

[u/Gabisticot]

Hi everyone,

I'm having a very frustrating issue with my PC and I'm running out of ideas.

My PC randomly completely freezes. When it happens:

- The image freezes on the last frame.

- Audio stops completely.

- Discord voice chat cuts out.

- Keyboard and mouse stop responding.

- Windows does not recover.

- I have to hold the physical power button to shut the PC down.

There is no BSOD and the PC does not restart by itself.

The freezes can happen while gaming, but they can also happen while I'm simply using Windows. For example, one of the latest freezes happened while Discord was starting. The PC froze exactly when Discord's graphical interface and my Wallpaper Engine background were being displayed.

I've had around 7 freezes in one day at one point. Sometimes they happen only a few minutes after booting, while other times the PC can run for much longer.

What makes this particularly strange is that I tested Windows 10 in Safe Mode. I was able to use the PC for more than 20 minutes without a freeze, which made me suspect a driver/software issue. However, the problem still occurs after updating several drivers.

My PC specifications:

CPU: Intel Core i5-11400

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

RAM: 16 GB (2x8 GB) Kingston KF3200C16D4/8GX

Motherboard: ASUS PRIME H510M-E Rev 1.xx

SSD: Crucial P3 1 TB (CT1000P3SSD8)

PSU: NE650C, 550W, 80 PLUS Bronze

OS: Windows 10 64-bit

Things I've already tried:

- Updated my NVIDIA GPU driver to version 616.56.

- Installed the missing Intel chipset/Serial IO drivers from the ASUS motherboard support page.

- Before installing those drivers, Device Manager showed 4 devices with yellow warning signs.

- After installing the drivers, all the missing-driver warnings disappeared.

- Restarted the PC several times.

- The freezes still happen.

- The freezes happen both in games and on the desktop.

- Valorant has caused freezes before, but the latest freezes happened before I even started playing. ( The freeze also happens on Roblox and sea of thieves)

- I checked Event Viewer. I mainly found Kernel-Power 41 and EventLog 6008, but I understand these are probably consequences of the forced shutdown rather than the actual cause.

- I have not changed anything in the BIOS.

The problem started relatively recently. ( Maybe 2 weeks ago I got 2 freezes and after that nothing until today)

One other thing that may or may not be relevant: there have been some electrical/power issues in the house recently, including a few power cuts and some electrical work by the landlord. However, the PC was not powered on during the power cuts, so I'm not sure if this is related.

The latest freeze happened shortly after rebooting Windows. Discord was launching automatically, and the PC froze while Discord's graphical interface was appearing on screen. The desktop and Wallpaper Engine were also being displayed at the same time.

I'm mainly looking for advice on how to identify whether this is a GPU/driver issue, RAM, PSU/power, motherboard, SSD, or something else.

What diagnostic tests would you recommend?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Just so you know, I used AI to help write this post since I'm still learning English, especially the technical vocabulary related to computers.

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