Both Gamersnexus and Jayz did one about that problem. In fact, Jayz was countering the statements made by gamersnexus saying that it was effectively alright to install the radiator either way. With taking into account aio lifespan. As it happens, i changed the position of my radiator after watching the nexus video, since i had occasional gurgling.

This, I would suggest, is a non-issue. Assuming the radiator is placed after the pump in the loop, then placed above the pump will be dealing with pressure on the outward pipe - placed below it would be dealing with pressure on the return pipe. The height difference between the pump and radiator may be an issue, but any sensibly designed AIO should have a pump capable of handling the worst-case situation given the pipe length.

Getting back to the OP's issue, no mention has been made of temperature monitoring software - and this should be the first place to start. Use something like CoreTemp for CPU temperatures - the direct download for the 64-bit version may be a better choice, since the full installer used to (and still may) include 3rd party software. For GPU temperatures, consider MSI Afterburner. Both can track maximum temperatures and ideally, you should not exceed mid-70s. Anything higher, and your cooling may need more investigating (you mention frequent hardware changes, so presumably you have been properly cleaning and re-applying thermal grease on your CPU as well as taking reasonable anti-static precautions?).

Another area to check is Windows' event logs. Hardware-related errors may be reported here.

The symptoms you describe do seem similar to what would happen during thermal throttling, but if you can rule this out, the next most likely cause would be a connection issue - if you assembled your PC yourself, did you use the correct motherboard standoffs - or might an extra one be causing random shorts? Might you have dropped a screw or other metal object behind your motherboard?

Next would be power supply issues (have you noticed any irregularities in power affecting other household appliances?). Related to this though - don't have any components too close to your power supply (I had a very frustrating time with an SSD which I was reformatting which dropped to 20% of its normal performance - I was checking partition alignment, format parameters, driver setup and then found out the problem was that I had left the SSD on top of the PSU - moving it away restored performance to normal).

Asus supplied an osd type of app i could easily access anywhere displaying temperatures and such. When my system is running as desired, the cpu temp value rarely exceeded temperatures above 60 degrees. Especially with the near freezing outside temperatures we currently have in the Netherlands. (and the outrageous electricity and gas bills)
Gpu temps are measured through the nvidia osd. With the supplied aio for the gpu temperatures also stay between 60 and 70 degrees C.
And yes, reasonable anti-static measures are taken care off. At least, touching the metal casing before starting, take a a zen moment, use the right clothing and of course the antistatic bracelet connected to a metal surface. ^^

i'm not familiar with using windows event logs.

i did use the correct standoffs, and yes there is a missing screw somewhere, but that hides at the bottom somewhere around the psu area

I believe i have done nothing wrong, installed the components in the right places.

At this time, mainly because of my gut feeling and some other replies, i'm already running another motherboard. The fear was that, the combination of 10600k and a 3080 waterforce was a bit much for this humble b 460 motherboard. Last night i found a pretty good deal for a z590 board, almost at the same price as the b 460 cost me and that one arrived this morning and its running already. << off topic but i'm currently home because of a dental treatment, 4 wisdom tooths are gone, forever <<

I've been using pc's for almost 30 years at this time and never experienced problems in such a manner. Swapping out components and building myself is actually more about 15 years now. Ever since the introduction of those easy to install psu's. Problems like this are not really something i came across a lot... and judging from the reactions online it is not very common either

It is now a MSI MEG Z590 ACE GOLD

Definitely feel for you, these problems are horrible to pin down.

My guess (50% random, 40% educated guess, 10% experience) was a badly seated component or a faulty cable. Second guess would be faulty RAM.

Now that you've replaced the motherboard though, I'm not sure. Did it help?

Yes, it helped. There is no sign of any trouble. Though i have to say, i managed to scare the problem away 3 times, with this motherboard swap as 4th time, well no actually, when i swapped the board there was no problem either.


Still it is a nice board, carries some extra functionality, to name something, before i was not able to stream certain shows and play the majority of games, on 2 screens that is. So i either had to tune either what i wanted to game to what i wanted to watch. Now everything just runs fine. Also, some extra memory protection which before could not activate. Though of course i don't have the full 590 functionality with this cpu not supporting pcie 4.

Then I'd prioritize Heat. Remember heat is not a CPU exclusive topic:
GPU, PSU, HDD require proper heat sinks & fans

I read:
-You have multiple disk drives (with 2 system fans): I hope those have enough separation each
-Cold weather: I hope somehow that reflects to your PC
-Was also suggested thermal throttle: I agree, and its a total PITA to figure it out
-You got a new MB: So you already took action. Let's see how it goes then

Just a side note: Your PSU juice seems tight to me
Use some online calculator, like this one from newegg:
newegg.com/tools/power-supply-calculator/

Only considering your i5 + ATX MB + RTX 3080 + 1x16GB DDR4 (I am guessing that) + 2 SSD + 1 HDD
= 700-799Watts. Leaving only 50W to spare to the rest...

Consider this (quoted)
"added components such as PCI cards, external devices, cooling fans, and more may consume additional power."
Then I suggest you perform a better calculation

Regards

Excellent! All those possibilities are well covered then :)

Hah, well to be honest, i just needed an excuse to buy some new tech. If the problem resurfaces, i'm immediately off to the store to grab a new cpu. Who needs money anyway, right? Or a house... a family...

But in all seriousness, i am glad about responses i had. It is easy to miss something. For example, I completely forgot about the possibility of a clean windows installation. Back in the days, when something went wrong in of this magnitude, it would have been step 1. Now, i did not even give it a thought until one of the comments. Also, drivers. The previous motherboard was one year behind on updates. Even a probably crucial windows 11 compatibility update. There was a time...

Exactly. I had memories with AstralWanderer post. Back in the day when the first terabytes HDDs appeared (were considerably expensive), a friend placed it temporarily over the PSU while finishing the assembly & software installation. That was enough to its death. Man! those days (and the earliest) were cruel times: Not much room to mistakes

With the same friend, we lived experiences related to a screws/metal connections with the MB causing erratic behavior, et cetera

Posts sometimes may sound exagerated at first view, but most of the times are personal experiences that worth to be considered. At the end of the day, people is trying to help. The internet is so incredible!
I personally like the pc building/repair/overclock/tweak stuff because always there is something new to learn/discover Sometimes subtle, others very explicit, basic, complex... you name it

By the way, thanks for trusting and posting your PC specs. Take care, including that wonderful PC of yours :)

Assuming the new motherboard has been working OK, the problem could have been with the CPU power regulation on the previous board. The reason to mention this is that such a problem might have been diagnosed with software like Open Hardware Monitor or
SpeedFan - which may be worth highlighting for anyone else with similar issues.
Looks like I was lucky to only have a temporary slowdown then. But that sure did have me scratching my head for a while. :)

However I have had pretty good use out of my SSDs - 8 arranged in a RAID-0 array since 2011 and only one failed so far (so now a 7-SSD RAID-0).