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8748 Posts
Details of problem:
The main problem is my computer either freezing, resetting or getting BSOD.
When it freezes, which is by far the most common, the computer just suddenly becomes unresponsive. Whatever was being displayed at the moment continues to display. Sometimes a short split second sound of whatever was being played at the moment repeats over and over. Other times the sound just cuts out. The computer never recovers from this state; I have to push the button on the case.
When it resets, the computer is working fine one second and the next it is booting up as if it was off and I just hit the power button. This is pretty rare. I'd say freezing is five to ten times more common.
I haven't gotten a BSOD in quite a while. The last one I got (and the only one for which I have a .dmp file) blamed it on my webcam. My computer still freezes even with the webcam unplugged. And I've used the webcam for years without such problems. My webcam was recently having unusually bad performance issues but restoring its settings to default and reinstalling its drivers have made it perform perfectly now (barring USB port problems described later).
As far as I know, I'm always either playing SC2 and streaming or I'm watching streams when my PC freezes. I have no idea what behavior triggers the freeze. I can be streaming for hours, doing the same tasks over and over, and the PC randomly freezes. Likewise I can be browsing the web and watching streams for hours and it freezes. It can also freeze after a very short time. The only common denominator seems to be having Opera open with a page using Flash. I'm not 100% sure though.
My other problem, which of course I don't know if it's related, is a whole bunch of trouble with USB ports. As far as I understand, my motherboard has two types, by Etron and by Intel, both of which are updated and are nonetheless problematic. Some ports simply won't work at all. I'll plug something in and Windows won't recognize it at all. Or Windows will claim to recognize it but it won't actually work. Some will sort of work, like my USB microphone will pick up sound but the sound will be heavily distorted. Sometimes my computer hangs when windows is shutting down and I've found that unplugging my USB devices allows windows to shut down. Sometimes I boot up my computer and my mouse isn't working at all.
I've also bought a PCI-E USB controller card and it had similar problems. Some ports worked while others didn't. It eventually didn't work at all so I removed it from my PC. I would think it's a faulty piece of hardware except for all the problems I've been having before I got it. Of course maybe it is faulty and it's just a coincidence.
Solutions and measures conducted:
Not much. I've reformatted and updated drivers, firmware and BIOS. That's about the extent of my computer expertise. I've run the tests mentioned in this forum and encountered no problems. GPU max temp 79 after 30min FurMark. CPU max temps 44 52 50 53 after 30min Prime95. memtest86 I ran only one pass and encountered no problems but I'll run it again tonight for more passes.
Recent changes to hardware/software
I recently got a new CPU cooler, case fan and a new GPU. I had to take apart my computer to install the new CPU cooler and I'm not experienced with building PC's but I tried to be careful and I'm pretty sure I put everything back together properly. I'm pretty sure my computer freezing was not an issue before I got the new GPU. I got it because of performance issues.
I improved my cooling to overclock my CPU. I have no experience with overclocking but I read a lot of info and made really conservative changes. And even though temperatures were never even close to being a problem and I'd been increasing voltage as presumably necessary, I could never achieve stability. I ended up restoring my BIOS settings back to default and giving up on the OC until I could fix these problems.
System specs
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z68X-UD3H-B3 (Socket 1155)
Intel Core i5 2500K @ 3.30GHz Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 668MHz (9-9-9-24) [I can't see what it is exactly. CPU fan blocking them]
2048MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 (Gigabyte)
932GB Seagate ST31000524AS ATA Device (SATA)
56GB Corsair Force GT ATA Device (SSD)
COOLER MASTER Silent Pro 1000W
SB Audigy
USB devices: Logitech C910 webcam, Blue Snowball microphone, Filco Majestouch keyboard, Razer Abyssus mouse.
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United Kingdom20285 Posts
This looks like a tricky one, you maybe have multiple issues. Firstly, what GPU drivers do you have right now? (xxx.xx)
Aside from that, i'd check control panel, power settings etc, disable anything to do with USB power saving if you have not already. You could try using the Maximum Performance power profile too, to stop the CPU from dropping clock speed
Try disabling hardware acceleration in flash player and your web browser and check to see if that changes anything, too, especially if you think you get more problems with browser and/or flash player open
You might be able to attribute the freezing/locks to the GPU drivers (nvidia had a TON of problems recently with them) and the USB issues to something else, hopefully it's simple
You could try installing windows on your hard drive or another hard drive as well as the SSD, and booting from the new installation, checking things out there, because lots of crazy or small problems can be down to just a windows install that got messed up somehow, but it's a bitch to do, to install new windows and all of the drivers and stuff. You've got a lot of problems all at once there that may or may not be linked together which makes stuff tricky
What CPU cooling did you get? When this is fixed (somebody will figure this out i'm sure  ) i could help you OC a bit if you want, i have the same GPU and can give pointers for the CPU. The graphics card won't actually run that hot btw, Furmark will run it straight into 100 or 113% power limit (depending on if you increase it to 113% or not) because it's a synthetic test, while most games and benchmarks average between like 70-80% at full GPU load, so they're a lot cooler. Furmark will push card so hard that it throttles away from max clock speeds, but since it's running to your maximum power limit, it basically shows the hottest the card can >EVER< get, under any load, overclocked or not (you can't OC these things very far.. but you can tune them a bit) so it's really a cool card
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Do you have the ability to swap out your mobo or PSU? My hardware spider sense tells me it's probably one of the two above components.
Since USB draws on your power, it would make sense that this might cause your PC to flip out, And the specific symptoms you are describing first and foremost point to a PSU issue.
Try to ignore my flippant delivery. My last job was supporting development hardware at a games studio. What you're describing I've run into a few times and in almost all cases was the PSU. In fact, nowadays I'd say 50% of the problems I run into with hardware faults are due to a flaky PSU.
Of course, what you're describing can rarely be ascribed to a mis-seated component, so try reseating memory and cabling first. Just don't get too hopeful. 
Either way, best of luck.
Addendum - everything Cryo says above is valid. My rather primitive diagnosis is based around the fact I just have to fix shit quickly.
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8748 Posts
On August 26 2013 07:55 Cyro wrote:
This looks like a tricky one, you maybe have multiple issues. Firstly, what GPU drivers do you have right now? (xxx.xx)
326.80
I actually just updated to that today even though it came out on August 20. I haven't had a problem yet so we'll see if this update helps at all.
On August 26 2013 07:55 Cyro wrote:
Aside from that, i'd check control panel, power settings etc, disable anything to do with USB power saving if you have not already. You could try using the Maximum Performance power profile too, to stop the CPU from dropping clock speed
Try disabling hardware acceleration in flash player and your web browser and check to see if that changes anything, too, especially if you think you get more problems with browser and/or flash player open
Ok, changed to high performance and disabled USB selective suspending. Disabled hardware acceleration in flash player and enabled "use software rendering" for browser.
On August 26 2013 07:55 Cyro wrote:
You could try installing windows on your hard drive or another hard drive as well as the SSD, and booting from the new installation, checking things out there, because lots of crazy or small problems can be down to just a windows install that got messed up somehow, but it's a bitch to do, to install new windows and all of the drivers and stuff. You've got a lot of problems all at once there that may or may not be linked together which makes stuff tricky
Yeah if I need to try to isolate the issues and test specific things by having a fresh windows install, I'll do it.
On August 26 2013 07:55 Cyro wrote:What CPU cooling did you get? When this is fixed (somebody will figure this out i'm sure ) i could help you OC a bit if you want, i have the same GPU and can give pointers for the CPU. The graphics card won't actually run that hot btw, Furmark will run it straight into 100 or 113% power limit (depending on if you increase it to 113% or not) because it's a synthetic test, while most games and benchmarks average between like 70-80% at full GPU load, so they're a lot cooler. Furmark will push card so hard that it throttles away from max clock speeds, but since it's running to your maximum power limit, it basically shows the hottest the card can >EVER< get, under any load, overclocked or not (you can't OC these things very far.. but you can tune them a bit) so it's really a cool card
I got a Noctua 6. Thanks for the offer. I know I ought to be able to get at least a conservative OC pretty easily from the i5 2500k. And that sounds pretty promising for the GPU too. When this all gets stabilized, let's do it!
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8748 Posts
On August 26 2013 08:25 NSGrendel wrote:Do you have the ability to swap out your mobo or PSU? My hardware spider sense tells me it's probably one of the two above components. Since USB draws on your power, it would make sense that this might cause your PC to flip out, And the specific symptoms you are describing first and foremost point to a PSU issue. Try to ignore my flippant delivery. My last job was supporting development hardware at a games studio. What you're describing I've run into a few times and in almost all cases was the PSU. In fact, nowadays I'd say 50% of the problems I run into with hardware faults are due to a flaky PSU. Of course, what you're describing can rarely be ascribed to a mis-seated component, so try reseating memory and cabling first. Just don't get too hopeful. Either way, best of luck. Addendum - everything Cryo says above is valid. My rather primitive diagnosis is based around the fact I just have to fix shit quickly.
Unfortunately I don't have a spare mobo or PSU. I can't really spend money easily either. I'd rather have a pretty good idea that a certain part is to blame before I buy something new.
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1. Let's dive deeper into your symptoms first.
As far as I know, I'm always either playing SC2 and streaming or I'm watching streams when my PC freezes. I have no idea what behavior triggers the freeze. I can be streaming for hours, doing the same tasks over and over, and the PC randomly freezes. Likewise I can be browsing the web and watching streams for hours and it freezes. It can also freeze after a very short time. The only common denominator seems to be having Opera open with a page using Flash. I'm not 100% sure though.
So far, what I'm reading is an idle hard-lock. Can you confirm that your system is unresponsive and requires a hard restart? I.e. have you given it 15-30s to recover? Drivers after 314.22 have been known to have problems, so if your system recovers after some time, I would point to GPU drivers first and foremost.
Secondly, please make sure you are installing the new drivers using the 'clean install' option (you need to choose custom).
1b. Your issues with your USB ports point to an external issue, considering your new PCI-e USB card also eventually ran into problems as well. I could buy 1 out of 3 (onboard, Intel, add-on), but not all three going bad. Is your system protected by a UPS? I've never lost a single USB port, but I've always kept my PC behind a UPS.
2. I'm not really buying this as a PSU problem at all. Can you confirm you have the Silent Pro Gold 1000W, or if it's one of the modular units (Silent Pro M)?
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page364.htm
Looking at the JonnyGuru reviews, they scored 8.5 or higher, and your system is drawing such a small fraction of its total capacity, that again, I am just not buying this as a PSU issue.
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Deleted - I'll let the professionals handle it.
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8748 Posts
On August 26 2013 09:35 mav451 wrote:1. Let's dive deeper into your symptoms first. Show nested quote +As far as I know, I'm always either playing SC2 and streaming or I'm watching streams when my PC freezes. I have no idea what behavior triggers the freeze. I can be streaming for hours, doing the same tasks over and over, and the PC randomly freezes. Likewise I can be browsing the web and watching streams for hours and it freezes. It can also freeze after a very short time. The only common denominator seems to be having Opera open with a page using Flash. I'm not 100% sure though.
So far, what I'm reading is an idle hard-lock. Can you confirm that your system is unresponsive and requires a hard restart? I.e. have you given it 15-30s to recover? Drivers after 314.22 have been known to have problems, so if your system recovers after some time, I would point to GPU drivers first and foremost.
I have given it time to recovery several times and it never has. But I haven't given it time to recover every time. I have had SC2 lock up for under 30 seconds and it did recover but that has happened only once. My music continued to play so I knew it was different and decided to wait that one out.
On August 26 2013 09:35 mav451 wrote:
Secondly, please make sure you are installing the new drivers using the 'clean install' option (you need to choose custom).
I'm not sure that I've been doing this (it's possible I have - I hardly ever click through installations really quick) but I'll be sure to do it now.
On August 26 2013 09:35 mav451 wrote:
1b. Your issues with your USB ports point to an external issue, considering your new PCI-e USB card also eventually ran into problems as well. I could buy 1 out of 3 (onboard, Intel, add-on), but not all three going bad. Is your system protected by a UPS? I've never lost a single USB port, but I've always kept my PC behind a UPS.
No it's just connected to a surge suppressor power strip. I guess I should probably have a UPS in any case? I didn't even know they existed.
On August 26 2013 09:35 mav451 wrote:
2. I'm not really buying this as a PSU problem at all. Can you confirm you have the Silent Pro Gold 1000W, or if it's one of the modular units (Silent Pro M)?
It's not the Gold. It is actually the Silent Pro M.
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Make sure you have all drives plugged into the Intel ports, these are the white or black SATA ports and USB 2.0 ports. Disable the Marvell SATA ports and Etron USB ports in the BIOS.
Random lock ups (meaning it could happen on idle or load) were a common problem during the initial months of the Sandybridge release, related to PLL and power saving features. Disabling C1E, C3, C6, EIST and CPU PLL Overvoltage solved it for some people so you may want to try that.
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United States7481 Posts
Do you remember which graphics drivers you've used in the past? Specifically, did you ever try 320.49 for a significant amount of time or did you jump straight from 320.08 (comes with video card) to the 326 branch?
Have you looked at event viewer to try to find errors at the time of the lockup?
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On August 26 2013 23:58 Antoine wrote:
Have you looked at event viewer to try to find errors at the time of the lockup?
This is something i usually do when i encounter a system with freezes and bsods. It can help out a ton, had a system once that had an old anti virus file laying around that tried to contact it's server, and everytime it did the computer froze. But yeah, go look in the event viewer, find the time for the freezes and see if you have any errors or critical errors. If it is a driver failing it should show up in eventvwr
As for the USB i am a bit puzzled but a wild theory - USB ports and a bunch of other slow stuff is handled by the southbridge, the northbridge handles PCI-e gpus but does it handle PCI-e expansion cards that don´t require as much aka a USB hub? Since this is the only correlation that i can think of, that the SB has gone wonky.
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Intel moved away from Northbridge and Southbridge a while ago.
PCI-E lanes is handled by the processor while the Z68 chipset handles USB 2.0 and Etron (in this case) handles USB 3.0. It is very unlikely that three things went wrong. Everything is tied to the base clock so if the base clock isn't 100MHz than there may be issues.
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United Kingdom20285 Posts
I've seen several people hit auto OC even by accident and be taken to 103mhz baseclock or something like that
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Purely out of curiosity, has the problem been solved?
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EPT
