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In serious need of some help with my PC...

El Xando

"Dam whippersnapper"
Hey,
My PC crashes, a lot, and I have no clue why.
With my old PC configuration, an X48 motherboard, Core 2 Duo 3GHz processor, 4GB RAM, 4850 GPU, when I played full screen games the computer would occasionally freeze and the 2 displays connected to the 4850 turned to solid colours (whilst the screen connecting to a 4350, my secondary graphics card, was fine). Now I have a load of new stuff, a P67 motherboard, i7 2600k CPU, 8GB RAM, 6950 GPU, and I still can't seem to get my PC to not crash in some way. I get blue screens, with loads of varying errors including Memory Management, and loads of other, or my screens just freeze and windows continues working fine in the background (I was running a server and people could still connect at one point, another time I was recording my 360 and it continues during the duration it was frozen). Yesterday we swapped out the RAM for another set, and got a new PSU, but this still hasn't helped. Since then however, I've only experienced the screens freezing, not a blue screen (yet).
Any suggestion as to what to try? I've pretty much ran out of ideas...
Thanks.
 

Trigun

That guy, who Records Music.
Have you run memtest86+ and prime95 for stability testing?(if you are overclocking, but memtest also to see if your ram is bad)

Random BSOD sounds like it could be from overclocking too much(not familiar with Core2 duo stock clocks), but it could also be a hardware failure.


What PSU did you buy?
 

El Xando

"Dam whippersnapper"
Have you run memtest86+ and prime95 for stability testing?(if you are overclocking, but memtest also to see if your ram is bad)

Random BSOD sounds like it could be from overclocking too much(not familiar with Core2 duo stock clocks), but it could also be a hardware failure.


What PSU did you buy?

I'm not overclocking at all and have not done.
Haven't had the BSOD since the RAM was replaced, but that hasn't been very long.
The power supply I had in before was 800W, can't remember the rest of the details, and the one in now is this: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/components/powersupplies/NOV-PSB750.html
 

El Xando

"Dam whippersnapper"
How are your GPU temps.

Are you using DVI or are you using VGA? If it's VGA the screen going wonky may be due to the crappy cables.

Just ran a GPU stress text for about 8 minutes, started at 61 degrees and went to 85 by about 4 minutes then stayed around that mark. Now, with both my capture card recording from my 360 and sound recorder recording, the temperature is a mere 57 degrees.

I'm running 2 screens, a 22" connected via DVI, and a 17" connected via DVI-VGA.

I just installed the ATI 11.1a hotfix drivers, and hasn't crashed yet... The reason I'm recording my 360 at the moment is that is what caused it to freeze since the new RAM and PSU. It froze after a mere 2 minutes last time, but at the time of writing this has gone on for 19 minutes - so seemed like the new ATI drivers could have fixed the problem.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated though, as I can't be 100% sure.
 

El Xando

"Dam whippersnapper"
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3 Motherboard (1155 chipset)
i7 2600k Sandy Bridge CPU
GSkill 8GB 1600MHz RAM (2x4GB, running at 1333MHz)
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB SSD
XFX 6950 GPU
Novatech PowerStation Black Edition 750W Silent ATX2 Modular Power Supply
 

angelsniper45

New Member
It shouldn't be your hardware if it's brand new. Check the task manager and kill some processes that you don't need. It could be something that's hogging memory. I had a similar problem, and I had to many programs running at one time. So I've learned to keep it minimal, and only keep what I need open.
 

Trigun

That guy, who Records Music.
Well from the man. Website on the PSU it only has 18A on the 3 12V Rails for your video card.
Which seems a tad low. And.
Shouldn't you be getting much better temps on a 6950 than 61 at Idle?? I mean my 4/5 year old 8800GTS idles that high and it's a hot running card. I thought the latest AMD cards were supposed to have great temps?

If you have no plans to Crossfire cards then it's probably better that you should've gone with a power supply like this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006 Which has 60A on a single 12V rail.


Also , What timings are your RAM DIMM's actually running at? Have you tested it with Memtest86+ yet? If not you should on each stick.
Sometimes RAM are known not to run at their stock speeds/timings when installed in some configurations. You should definitely make sure that they are running at manufacture rated speeds. Underclocking RAM with lower timings /= Better performance. But for now you should just see if they are running at the stock timings and then set the speed to the rated speed in your BIOS

It shouldn't be your hardware if it's brand new. Check the task manager and kill some processes that you don't need. It could be something that's hogging memory. I had a similar problem, and I had to many programs running at one time. So I've learned to keep it minimal, and only keep what I need open.

With hardware like that, it's incredibly unlikely that something is hogging all of his RAM.
Depending on his OS of course.
 

x3sphere

Administrator
Staff member
Enforcer Team
Game Info Editor
61 C idle does seem on the high side unless you are running multiple monitors, since the drivers won't downclock as low in that case.

My 6970 idles at 49 C. With another monitor connected it idles at 61 C though.
 

Trigun

That guy, who Records Music.
Well I think he did say that he has 2 monitors.

I guess it makes sense since having the extra monitor means the GPU has to work to render that as well as the 1st.

I don't have first hand experience with Dual monitors (other than connecting to my old SDTV via S-video when I had an 8600GT, and it was just a mirror of the Main monitor.) so I wouldn't really know
 

Seth

MD Party Room
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3 Motherboard (1155 chipset)
i7 2600k Sandy Bridge CPU
GSkill 8GB 1600MHz RAM (2x4GB, running at 1333MHz)
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB SSD
XFX 6950 GPU
Novatech PowerStation Black Edition 750W Silent ATX2 Modular Power Supply

Just asking but did you try a fresh install of the OS? Have you done the basic Virus/spyware scan and such? Basic things like these can be the source.

It might also be your capture card, I used quite a bit of them and the software for some of them is downright crap. Does it run fine outside of the 360?
 

El Xando

"Dam whippersnapper"
It shouldn't be your hardware if it's brand new. Check the task manager and kill some processes that you don't need. It could be something that's hogging memory. I had a similar problem, and I had to many programs running at one time. So I've learned to keep it minimal, and only keep what I need open.

My dad doesn't think it's the hardware and I'm inclined to agree with him... I just have no idea what software could be causing this, I'm only using the same software I've been using for ages.

Here's the process list at the moment:

processes1.png

processes2.png

Well from the man. Website on the PSU it only has 18A on the 3 12V Rails for your video card.
Which seems a tad low. And.
Shouldn't you be getting much better temps on a 6950 than 61 at Idle?? I mean my 4/5 year old 8800GTS idles that high and it's a hot running card. I thought the latest AMD cards were supposed to have great temps?

If you have no plans to Crossfire cards then it's probably better that you should've gone with a power supply like this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006 Which has 60A on a single 12V rail.


Also , What timings are your RAM DIMM's actually running at? Have you tested it with Memtest86+ yet? If not you should on each stick.
Sometimes RAM are known not to run at their stock speeds/timings when installed in some configurations. You should definitely make sure that they are running at manufacture rated speeds. Underclocking RAM with lower timings /= Better performance. But for now you should just see if they are running at the stock timings and then set the speed to the rated speed in your BIOS



With hardware like that, it's incredibly unlikely that something is hogging all of his RAM.
Depending on his OS of course.

Everything is running on the default settings. RAM is at 1333MHz, with 9-9-9-24 timings. I'm pretty sure there's not something wrong with the actual RAM hardware.

61 C idle does seem on the high side unless you are running multiple monitors, since the drivers won't downclock as low in that case.

My 6970 idles at 49 C. With another monitor connected it idles at 61 C though.

61 isn't idle, that's just what it was at when I started the Furmark test. At the moment with all the processes running above, it's 54, with 2 screens.

Just asking but did you try a fresh install of the OS? Have you done the basic Virus/spyware scan and such? Basic things like these can be the source.

It might also be your capture card, I used quite a bit of them and the software for some of them is downright crap. Does it run fine outside of the 360?

I fresh installed the OS when I put all this new hardware in, but it's currently got on it all the stuff I use. I may do another full OS install if it crashes again (as I'm hoping that ATI 11.1a drivers fixed the problem) so that I can be sure it's not hardware based.

Also, my capture card has been out of my PC and it has still crashed, and the Blackmagic has pretty good drivers so I don't believe they would cause my PC to crash.
 

Adiuvo

Active Member
AVG has been very buggy lately with it's releases and isn't nearly as good as it once was. Try out MSE.
 

angelsniper45

New Member
AVG has been very buggy lately with it's releases and isn't nearly as good as it once was. Try out MSE.

X2 on the MSE. I had norton before, and the latest release seemed worse than getting a trojan on the laptop. Uninstall it completely and then see if mse helps.
 

Trigun

That guy, who Records Music.
Ah, reminds me of I had at one point installed AVG on my brother's computer and it was causing loads of problems for some reason. Crashes and BSOD you name it.
Removing it fixed the issue.
 

El Xando

"Dam whippersnapper"
Cheers for all the suggestions, but it seemed ATI 11.1a drivers fixed it :D
However, I will be completely reinstalling Windows soon as this current install has been the one crashing loads, and I'll be sure to try MSE over AVG :0
Thanks!
 

Trigun

That guy, who Records Music.
If you control your browsing, I wouldn't use AV Software at all. It's all a big pile of gimmicks and shit that doesn't actually work at all. I've used every major AV software out there the past 7 years and none of it other than FREE software and MalwareBytes Anti-malwar are actually worth anything at all. And mostly just are wastes of resources.

And if your question is "how do you know if you are get infected or download a virus?" Well , 1. You won't download a virus if you don't download Keygens, or attachments from Emails sent by spam mail and file sharing programs stupidly. 2. using free programs,or MWBAM or Spy bot you scan once in a while and remove not only what the programs remove but look for residual leftovers and registry entries.
 
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