PC freezing issues

Basically, my PC froze right while I was browsing in Chrome. Moved the mouse and everything just locked up. It wouldn't respond at all, so I had to force a shutdown. Once I rebooted (Windows 10), the mouse was gone. After several restarts, it either hung during boot like something was broken—leaving me without a mouse again—or I’d get hit with a blue screen saying there was a Windows ERROR during startup... after messing around and getting my blood pressure up, the system finally booted. I used it normally for a bit (browsing, music, a few rounds of Company of Heroes 2) and it seemed fine. I got a new case a month ago and haven't had any freezing issues until yesterday. My GPU is solid since it passed inspection, I already tested the RAM, and the HDDs seem okay (at least according to two different disk check programs). Could this be a mouse issue or something related to it, given how it messed with the Windows boot process?

To start things off, you might want to run a quick check on your temperatures using HWMonitor, because there’s a decent chance something
is running a bit too hot; usually, when overheating is the culprit, the whole system just freezes up before throwing a BSOD at you..

So this happened this morning:

My kid says he turned the PC on and then just kept hitting the power button, leaving it stuck in a loop. When I checked, the thing was technically "on" since the LEDs were lit, but it was totally unresponsive. Tried to wake it up, nothing. Shut it down and tried again, still dead. I ended up pulling all the hard drives except the system drive, and suddenly the PC booted up just fine. Then I started plugging them back in one by one, and now everything's back in and the system is running perfectly again... drives involved: 2 SSDs, 2 HDDs, and 1 external HDD.

HWMonitor

Checking the stats.
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HWMonitor showing Z170A GAMING M5 (MS-7977) (0x000005C4 - 0x0D21C509)

LPCIO
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LPCIO Vendor: Nuvoton
LPCIO Model: Nuvoton NCT6793 Voltage
LPCIO Vendor ID 0x5CA3
LPCIO Chip ID 0xD1
LPCIO Revision ID 0x21
Config Mode I/O address 0x4E
Config Mode LDN 0xB
Config Mode registers.
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
30 01 Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
60 0A 20 0A 30 00 00 Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Register space: LPC, base address = 0x0A20

Hardware monitors.
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HWMonitor Nuvoton NCT6793 Voltage
Vcore is sitting at 0.82 Volts.
Voltage 1 1.01 Volts [Hexadecimal data] (VIN1)
Voltage 2 is sitting at 3.42 Volts [Hexadecimal data] (AVCC).
Voltage 3 is sitting at 3.31 Volts [Hexadecimal data] (3VCC).
Voltage 4: 1.01 Volts [0x7E] (VIN4)
Voltage 5 is sitting at 0.15 Volts [0x13] (VIN5).
Voltage 6: 0.97 Volts [0x79] (VIN6)
Voltage 7 is sitting at 1.12 Volts [Hexadecimal data] (VIN7)
Voltage 8 is sitting at 0.82 Volts [0x66] (VIN8).
Voltage 9 is sitting at 0.60 Volts [0x4B] (VIN9).
Voltage 10 1.01 Volts [0x7E] (VIN10)
Voltage 11 1.01 Volts [Hexadecimal data] (VIN11)
Voltage 12 0.97 Volts [0x79] (VIN12)
Voltage 13 1.00 Volts [0x7D] (VIN13)
Voltage 14 0.00 Volts [0x0] (VIN14)
Temp at 0 is sitting at 100°F.
Temp 3 is sitting at 84°F [0x1D] (TMPIN3).
Temp 5 is sitting at a crazy 127°C (260°F). That's straight up melting.
Temp 6 is sitting at 100°F.
Fan 0 is hitting 633 RPM.
Hardware registers.
Register space: LPC, base address = 0x0A20
Bank 0
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
20 64 7E D6 CF 7E 13 78 26 Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
40 03 3F 17 FF DF 00 3F FF 2D FF FF 10 08 55 00 A3
Hexadecimal data
60 29 F0 Hexadecimal data 01 00 Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
90 0A 00 00 00 00 FD FD FD 0A 95 EF 80 FF 40 46 C4
A0 0E Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
C0 Hexadecimal data
D0 05 05 05 05 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 FD FD FD FD
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Bank 1
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Bank 4.
80 64 7E D6 CF 7E 13 78 D6 00 7F 8B 00 7D 4B C0 00
Hexadecimal data
Bank 5.
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Bank 6.
Hexadecimal data
Hexadecimal data
Bank 7.
Hexadecimal data
90 Hexadecimal data

HWMonitor ACPI
Temperature 0 28 degC (82 degF) [0xBC2] (TZ00)
Temperature 1 30 degC (85 degF) [0xBD6] (TZ01)

Hardware monitor AMD ADL
Power 0 8.36 W (GPU)
Temperature 0 51 degC (123 degF) [0x33] (GPU)
Fan 0 0 RPM [0x0] (GPU)
Clock Speed 0 498.47 MHz [0x1F2] (Graphics)
Clock Speed 1 300.00 MHz [0x1F2] (Memory)

Processors
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Number of sockets 1
Number of threads 8

APICs
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Socket 0
-- Core 0
-- Thread 0 0
-- Thread 1 1
-- Core 1
-- Thread 0 2
-- Thread 1 3
-- Core 2
-- Thread 0 4
-- Thread 1 5
-- Core 3
-- Thread 0 6
-- Thread 1 7

Timers
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ACPI timer 3.580 MHz
Perf timer 3.914 MHz
Sys timer 1.000 KHz

Processors Information
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Socket 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 4 (max 4)
Number of threads 8 (max 8)
Name Intel Core i7-6700K
Codename Skylake
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM) Intel Core i7-6700 CPU @ 4.00GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 1151 LGA (0x1)
CPUID 6.E.3
Extended CPUID 6.5E
Core Stepping R0
Technology 14 nm
TDP Limit 95.0 Watts
Tjmax 100.0 °C
Core Speed 799.4 MHz
Multiplier x Bus Speed 8.0 x 99.9 MHz
Stock frequency 4000 MHz
Max frequency 4200 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EM64T, VT-x, AES, AVX, AVX2, FMA3, TSX
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 4 x 256 KBytes, 4-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L3 cache 8 MBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size
Max CPUID level 00000016h
Max CPUID ext. level 80000008h
Cache descriptor Level 1, D, 32 KB, 2 thread(s)
Cache descriptor Level 1, I, 32 KB, 2 thread(s)
Cache descriptor Level 2, U, 256 KB, 2 thread(s)
Cache descriptor Level 3, U, 8 MB, 16 thread(s)
FID/VID Control yes

Turbo Mode supported, enabled
Max non-turbo ratio 40x
Max turbo ratio 42x
Max efficiency ratio 8x
Speedshift Autonomous
O/C bins unlimited
Ratio 1 core 42x
Ratio 2 cores 40x
Ratio 3 cores 40x
Ratio 4 cores 40x
IA Voltage Mode PCU adaptive
IA Voltage Offset 0 mV
GT Voltage Mode PCU adaptive
GT Voltage Offset 0 mV
LLC/Ring Voltage Mode PCU adaptive
LLC/Ring Voltage Offset 0 mV
Agent Voltage Mode PCU adaptive
Agent Voltage Offset 0 mV
TDP Level 95.0 W @ 40x

Temperature 0 29 degC (84 degF) (Package)
Temperature 1 25 degC (77 degF) (Core #0)
Temperature 2 26 degC (78 degF) (Core #1)
Temperature 3 25 degC (77 degF) (Core #2)
Temperature 4 24 degC (75 degF) (Core #3)
Voltage 0 0.80 Volts (VID)
Voltage 1 +0.00 Volts (IA Offset)
Voltage 2 +0.00 Volts (GT Offset)
Voltage 3 +0.00 Volts (LLC/Ring Offset)
Voltage 4 +0.00 Volts (System Agent Offset)
Power 00 7.04 W (Package)
Power 01 2.37 W (IA Cores)
Power 02 n.a. (GT)
Power 03 4.67 W (Uncore)
Power 04 0.92 W (DRAM)
Clock Speed 0 799.42 MHz (Core #0)
Clock Speed 1 799.42 MHz (Core #1)
Clock Speed 2 3897.15 MHz (Core #2)
Clock Speed 3 799.42 MHz (Core #3)
Core 0 max ratio 42.0 (effective 42.0)
Core 1 max ratio 42.0 (effective 42.0)
Core 2 max ratio 42.0 (effective 42.0)
Core 3 max ratio 42.0 (effective 42.0)

I'd suggest swapping out the power supply—it sounds like the PSU is acting up, which is likely what's causing all this trouble.

A boot loop can be triggered by a single faulty component or even something external plugged into the system—it actually happened to me once because of a faulty keyboard. Of course, the power supply could be the culprit, but from what I gather, everything seems to run fine when you have that one specific hard drive unplugged, right?

Pulled the HDD out and it worked fine. I was just playing GW2 for 10 minutes before it froze on me again. Did a hard restart, Windows booted up but the mouse wouldn't move. Rebooted once more and finally got the mouse back... so now I'm typing this. Read somewhere that some people had this happen because of their mouse... also, some guy had the exact same Corsair PSU and GPU as me and dealt with the same crap. They tested his power supply and card at a repair shop and both were fine. He swapped the RX480 for an Nvidia card and everything worked perfectly... conclusion is that the RX480 and that PSU just don't get along for some reason. Ordered a voltage tester, maybe that'll show me something.

Why not just try a clean OS reinstall? The idea that the GPU and the power supply are somehow incompatible is a bit of a stretch. It’s either a software glitch or one specific component is failing if we're looking at hardware issues.

What do the Windows ERROR logs say?

State what power supply you're using and how old it is.
What graphics card do you have?
Is your PC sitting near an open window? High humidity causes oxidation on contacts.

Anyway, after over a year, the issue seems fixed. No more freezing. I took the rig to a repair shop where they spent 4 weeks on it (2 weeks testing + 2 weeks waiting on a faulty part). Turns out my Intel Core i7-6700 was defective—apparently, there were tons of complaints about those early batches being buggy. Got a replacement, and now the PC is running like a dream.