I put together a new PC in mid-December.
Intel 13600, MSI Z690 Tomahawk DDR4 with 32Gigs RAM, new Deepcool 1000W PSU, running Windows 11.
Graphics are a RTX2060 and a 1030 from my previous build.
This was working rock solid until a couple of weeks ago, when it started rebooting at random every couple of days, and it was guaranteed to do a full reset when resuming from sleep/hibernate, etc. In between these events, it was fine, and even handled running Prime95 (for the CPU) and Furmark (for the GPU) at the same time for hours on end.
Yesterday, it stopped even booting into Windows. It was getting to the spinny thing showing that windows was loading, but then ended up in an endless cycle of rebooting and offering automatic repair, which never worked. Occasionally, the following box appears
ctfmon.exe - Success
Unknown hard error
Not particularly helpful. I fully reset the BIOS, with no change. Even removed CMOS battery overnight. Temperatures on the CPU are fine, and it has decent airflow.
This has gradually worsened to the point that after a minute even in the BIOS, the PC resets itself. Obviously, I can't even get to the point of reinstalling Windows fresh, or even starting a portable Linux install. It managed to run a Linux install off a hard drive out of a spare laptop for 5 minutes, but that crashed as well, although this stays running for 5-10 minutes, whereas the BIOS lasts 30 seconds tops.
IMPORTANT POINT: There was one issue when putting the PC together. Stupidly, I dropped a screw into the CPU socket, bending 5-10 of the tiny little pins. After much swearing and peering through microscopes, I got them all aligned reasonably, and everything worked perfectly for a couple of months until now. My thoughts are that this would be is the primary culprit.
I've removed everything that can be removed, swapped the RAM around, and nothing makes any difference. Reseated the CPU and looked at the pins underneath - everything seems lined up nicely.
Given the screwup with the motherboard pins, I'm thinking I should just bite the bullet, and replace the motherboard, and be done with it.
Before I start browsing for new motherboards, have I missed anything obvious?