Is it the motherboard?

A few months ago, I started having issues with Windows Update failing to install updates. I would try several times and it would continually fail and give generic error codes. Then in the past month or so I started experiencing an issue where games in fullscreen mode would often crash if I spent more than a minute or two alt-tabbed. I tried updating all drivers and making sure that the games were running at the same refresh rate as the PC and the rest of the computer, it kept happening.


Also about a month ago, around when games started crashing when alt-tabbed, VIsual Studio also refused to update and gave a very odd error message. It kept saying that it had insufficient privelages to execute Powershell scripts. I was running on an Administrator account and I checked that my Powershell security settings were at the lowest possible level, but it didn't help. Ultimately, I just assumed that it was Windows that was causing this to fail as well, but now I'm not so sure. Finally, last week games started crashing while I was playing them as well. So I bit the bullet and decided to finally start running tests to figure out what it could be.


I checked event viewer and there was nothing obvious, just stuff about Windows Update regularly failing. I figured I probably needed to just reinstall Windows. But to be sure I ran every basic test in OCCT before doing so and nothing came up, so I started to reinstall Windows from the same flash drive that I used to install it when I first built this PC ~21 months ago. It failed at random points during the installation several times, but eventually I was finally able to get it to complete and hit 100%. I attributed this to just the flash drive being a bit finicky, which it is.


Now, booting into WIndows, I was annoyed to find that the motherboard's on-board WiFi wasn't working, so I had to hook up a flash drive to give it internet, and the resolution was like 1000x760, when the monitor is 4k, and it wouldn't let me change the resolution in the settings for some reason. I figured it was probably just the drivers that needed to be updated so got to work doing that. I tried to install the Intel support software and Nvidia app to update drivers, but both failed during the install process. For example, when I try to install the Nvidia app I immediately get the error message "Package error. 7-Zip: CRC error". This seemed very odd to me and so I thought at this point that it must be a hardware issue that OCCT did not catch. The GPU also doesn't even show up in task manager right now, just the Intel integrated graphics, even though the display is plugged into the GPU port. It also thinks it's on battery power? It's plugged into a UPS, but it still shouldn't think that.


I rebooted and ran 4 passes of every test of memtest86 and found nothing. I ran crystaldiskinfo and a full surface test of the C: drive with minitool partition wizard and found nothing. Crystaldisk said 98% disk health.


The only things left that I can think of are the motherboard and the CPU, and I can't imagine that CPU issues would manifest like this where things are failing to install repeatedly. I should mention that the PC is sometimes blue screening now as well, with "Kernal-power" error messages in the event viewer from these. I do have a 13th gen Intel CPU so I'm wary of the issues with those that others have had.


I've had some people IRL suggest that I should try to install Linux or some other OS and see if I still have issues, as maybe it's the Windows version I installed from that's broken, but I really just can't imagine that would cause all of this.


Does anyone have any advice or suggestions? My motherboard is still under warranty from MSI, so that is an option, but I'm wary of how annoying a process it will be to dismantle my PC, wait for them to repair or replace it, and then reassemble it.


Could it be Windows? Is there anything else I should try? Is there some better way to test the CPU or motherboard?


Here are my specs so that you have all the information:


CPU: Intel Core i9-13900k (stock settings)

GPU: Gigabyte GAMING OC GeForce RTX 4090 (stock settings)

Storage: Crucial T700 W/Heatsink 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X4 NVME (This is the C: drive)

Storage: Western Digital Gold 18 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive (Not the C: drive so shouldn't matter)

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory (Not using XMP)

Motherboard: MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX LGA1700

PSU: Corsair RM1000x (2021) 1000 W

I doubt these matter but here just in case:

Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler

Corsair 5000D AIRFLOW ATX Mid Tower Case

CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD UPS

 

Unfortunately, I don't have any ability to swap out parts or test anything, outside of swapping out the SSD for an HDD and installing Windows on that. I don't have any other DDR5 memory or a PSU powerful enough to handle this CPU/GPU. I could remove one of the sticks of RAM (there are only 2) and test on that instead, but keep in mind that I have had this system for nearly 2 years now and have had issues only in the last few months that have been getting progressively worse.

Of note as well, I just updated the BIOS and chipset driver (the BIOS had been last updated 9 months ago) and tried installing graphics drivers again, this time directly from the NVIDIA website, and I got the same 7-zip error. My GPU isn't even showing up in task manager, like it isn't recognized at all.

I might install Ubuntu or something and see if everything works on that, because I'm also getting error 0xc0000005 from Windows Update when I try to upgrade to Windows 11 24H2 from the older version of Win 11 I'm running. It really feels to me like it has to be the motherboard with the combination of all these issues, but I'm not a hardware expert. If I have issues on a different HDD running Ubuntu then I think it would have to be a hardware issue at that point. I haven't ruled out the CPU either, because I know the 13th gen has issues, but it's ran on stock settings since I bought it, it's never had overheating issues (it's been below 50 degrees Celsius since reinstalling Windows), and it was able to handle maxed out tests with OCCT before reinstalling Windows.