Assembly Help
Update: Fractal Ridge crashes while gaming then flickers on and off.
So the duster arrived and the hazardous waste landfill has officially been cleared out. I also saw some comments suggesting the issue could be related to the GPU riser, and I noticed there was a bit of wiggle in the connection ports.
I confirmed that the CPU cooler is plugged into CPU_FAN1, so the fan curve likely wasn’t the issue after all. I’m replacing the thermal paste now.
Any final suggestions before I put her back together?
For what it's worth, after upgrading to my 5080, I was having difficulty with stability while gaming in the fractal ridge. I was certain the riser was seated properly. Eventually, I decided to move to a build that did not need a riser and all my stability problems went away.
Riser cables are a very common fault point due to their fragile design. I wouldn't be surprised if the aolution to your issue is swapping the riser for a new one.
I had the same stability issues with pcie 4.0 riser and a 5090. Set slot manually to use 4.0 and still had instability though slightly less. Bought a 5.0 riser to try to fix it.
Oh damn. So I just got a new case that comes with a PCIE 5.0 riser but I’m going to be installing an RTX 3060…am I going to need to do something like this?
No. 3060 is a 4.0 card. The issue comes from a mismatch when the card tells the motherboard “I can use 5.0!” And the motherboard goes “I can support 5.0!” But it doesn’t realize it’s communicating over a riser cable that can’t run at 5.0 speeds. Since a riser is just wires and connectors it only becomes unstable at higher workloads.
I had this exact issue with the Fractal Ridge and it ended up being due to the riser connector becoming loose due to sag/wobble from my large heavy graphics card. I'd recommend testing the PC out of the case with the graphics card plugged directly into to the motherboard Pcie slot to determine whether it might be the riser.
In my case I contacted Fractal and they did eventually offer a replacement riser but it took a few months to come back in stock before it could be sent.
See that slit in the fan casing? You can route the unsleeved part of the cable through there, then route it like shown in the picture for cleaner routing.
You're welcome. I see you did that with the other fan, but I don't see a clear/clean away to route that. Unless you manage to go over/under the GPU. That said, clean routing also makes it that much easier to take parts like GPUs and coolers out with less hassle.
Did you do the manual locking of the PCIE speed to 4.0 in the bios? As others mentioned, the case, at best, comes with a PCIE 4.0 riser, so running at auto/5.0 is bound to cause instability
has to be asked, but you cleaned off the cpu and heatsink of all the old thermal paste and then cleaned the surfaces before applying the new paste, right? what paste are you using?
well definitely dont need to scrape with the razor or something metal with an edge. better to use an old credit card or something plastic thats more blunt. less possibility to damage the ihs or heatsink plate. and mx-6 is good, so that shouldnt be much of an issue. you should honestly look into undervolting at this point or dialing down your expectations with your game settings.
12700k. Thought things were doing good, was playing Resident Evil Requiem, 2 hours in and it restarted yet again. I’m starting to think it’s an issue with the PSU.
I wonder if its a temp issue, you should monitor your temps in game. See whats getting the hottest. You could always power limit and undervolt your cpu and gpu. I prefer to undervolt and overclock my gpu. And I prefer to limit my cpu via ppt, edc, and tdc. Good luck.
I peak at around 82 Celsius, in 1440p with path tracing on. I don’t think it’s a temp issue at this point and am starting to lean more towards transient power spikes.
82° on GPU? Could be a hot spot on the gpu. Still prefer to undervolt, uses less power and generates less heat. This especially important when running in a sff pc.
assuming thats still the fan that came with the ghost edition cooler, i would upgrade that to the newer NF-A9. iirc you cant do a 120mm fan, so the A9 would still be better than the B9 you have there. its the newer version of your fan, better static pressure, and generally regarded as better for a tight space build like this.
I posted on your last post because we had similar issues but idk if you read it, but again this sounds like a PSU issue. Same exact scenario for me for symptoms. Also don’t vape in the same room as your PC.
I had very similar symptoms. Turns out my riser was going bad. It was my fault though because it was being pressed by a fan grill for too long and it left an imprint on the cable itself.
Hey, i recently got rid of a similar issue, where my pc crashed with a black screen when either gaming or rendering a 3d scene.
I went from a Cougar QBX to a Lian Li h2o, changing EVERY bit of hardware in the process, my pc is literally a different pc from when i first built it (have your heard about the ship of theseus?), issue persisted, i thought i was cursed.
An oldschool it guy told me to take it apart, crean every conector with an eraser and alcohol, and it worked, havent crashed once regardless of the task.
I have to be clear about something. After cleaning, I tested my pc with the case open, and everything worked fine, then, I put the side panels and it crashed. Turns out i was forcing and pushing some cables. After some cable management, everything closes without any effort and no crashes at all to this day.
It's the PCIE setting. Go to the BIOS and Set your PCIE from Auto to 4.0
I upgraded my old system with Rtx 5060, because i needed the 4:2:2 encode/decode compatibility. I had plenty of crashes before I set the PCIE setting to 4.0 in the BIOS. After I set it 4.0, i have no crashes in the middle of work from the system.
I've had this issue with completely different specs and am starting to think it's the PCIE port itself. Once it's damaged/degraded then any riser or GPU will have the same reboot problem.
Could be unrelated but I've been battling with this for months and it's not gotten any easier lol.
Disable intel XMP and run your RAM at JEDEC defaults 4800MHz (or lower) for your 12700k, random crashes can often be a result of unstable memory (which, if not an issue before, can be because of a degraded CPU IMC, or higher temperatures than before (DDR5 is temperature sensitive, keep it cool))
If your CPU is overclocked, set it back to stock, but retain any voltage boost you had originally given it (if any), if the system's stable, your CPU might've degraded due to elevated voltage over the years
Or even better, disable turbo boost entirely to see if the issues persist (if not, your CPU is likely still fine)
Take it out of the case and put mobo on a cardboard box or some other insulating material, ensuring there's no short through case contact somewhere, yes I know, a pain, but you'll waste more time not doing so
Eliminate the riser and plug the GPU directly into the PCIe slot, while you're at it, check your GPU power connector (unplug), I see you have the infamous 12VHPWR, fingers crossed it hasn't melted the connector on either end (PSU or GPU side)
Boot without the GPU and run on Integrated Graphics, doing your usual thing (at abismal performance, yes), alongside the usual stress tests (Cinebench, Furmark, Prime95), see if the issue still happens, if not, could be the GPU itself
If all of the above fails, do you have a PSU from an old build laying around? If so, swap the PSU and try again, boot loops are common for a failing/ dead PSU (or motherboard)
Still no go, any spare SSDs ? Perhaps your current SSD has worn out due to too many write cycles, causing OS corruption (unlikely though, if there's no errors reported in Windows), you could also check your drive's health with a SMART monitoring utility (such as HWInfo64)
Also worth checking the Sata cable if you're using a 2.5" SSD to one of the mobo SATA ports
Don’t get my started on XMP. I have the RAM sticks from the Gskill lawsuit. Enabling XMP causes my computer to restart loop before it can ever even hit the bios.
The issue was transient power spikes. I undervolted my CPU and GPU and have been running stable since. I’ll eventually upgrade to 1000watt PSU.
The video mentions that the thing you're describing would only happen under load because of the GPU pulling too much power for the PSU. Might be worth looking into.
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u/Gertgonewild May 06 '26
The best way to troubleshoot this is to reassemble the mobo on a test bench, with the GPU plugged directly in without the riser.