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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

What surprises me is that his writing seems to imply that the computer freezes but then manages to recover and continue as if nothing happened. I’d have expected it to lock up forever and/or crash & reboot.

Would be interesting to see system logs (if any) after such an incident - they could contain some clues as to which parts go offline (he mentioned USB devices going off) during the problem.

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This was (is) a lack of clarity in my entry. When the system locks up, it only recovers by rebooting through the BIOS; it doesn't resume operation from some suspension. System logs cut off abruptly at the time of the hang, with nothing abnormal even a few seconds before the time and no kernel messages sent out through netconsole (I don't have a serial console available).

(I'm the author of the linked-to entry.)

People are talking about freezer spray, but really you need to substitute parts, first, until you narrow it down. PSU, RAM, GPU, motherboard, CPU. Start with RAM -- it's easiest and most likely, and you can get along on half for a while, just to see.

RAM, PSUs and motherboards are remarkably cheap to replace.

When you say the power was cut to your USB keyboard, could it perhaps have been reset and in a unenumerated state? If you have a multimeter it could be useful to check the various power rails in the bad state.

Try running Memtest86 and lower the temp while it runs.

When it's locked up, measure the voltage on the grey wire of the ATX power connector (while plugged in).

It should be 5 volts.

If it's 0 volts, your issue is in the power supply.

If it's 5 volts, your issue could be in either the power supply or motherboard.

Professional overclockers usually use liquid nitrogen (LN2) to cool down their CPUs to <0C, but significantly below this point the thermal paste between the CPU and its heatspreader will snap [1]. If this system ever saw extreme cold, like leaving it in a car overnight in the winter, or being transported in <0C plane/truck storage, that might be a possible explanation.

It looks like you have the i7-8700K and a suitable motherboard/CPU cooler for overclocking, and from what I've read, the stock thermal paste isn't enough for it which is why Intel switched to soldered IHS's with the 9700K. I'd try replacing the thermal paste if I were you, here's a video showing how to delid it [2]. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut is the best paste in my opinion, and it's super cheap.

If this doesn't work, you could try posting your story to the HWBot forums [3] and see if anyone has any ideas.

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/splave-overclocking-wor...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ixxYDMFR24

[3] https://community.hwbot.org/

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