[blukatz92]

Yeah, I've seen those, they're crazy. I can't see how they can efficiently transfer heat and air for cooling, but I guess they work well enough. Whatever floats people's boats I guess.

[blukatz92]

I apologize for the double post, but the edit button was gone :-/

Soooo.... sad days. It would seem that whatever is having issues in my computer has gone slightly more south. I just experienced a system freeze OUTSIDE of a game. There was no game running, just my web browser (which had only a youtube video playing) and a couple documents. I did have a program running called RPG Maker VX, which is basically a simple video game design program, but it's barely resource heavy, and only when playtesting. This has gone from a slight annoyance to a slight concern, because now there's a risk at actually losing important data (schoolwork and the such). I tend to save frequently, but that's not exactly a perfect solution here. I doubt anyone here would know, but I'll ask for the sake of trying- Does anyone here happen to know of any places I could take my PC to get checked? Any businesses, preferably something that is in or near Fresno, CA?

[ElfBane]

If you take it to a PC repair place, you'll probably lose access to your PC for days, if not weeks. PC repair places will do the same thing you've already been doing,,, stress tests. I have a couple of questions... I've read all the posts but I may have missed something.

1. Has anything actually been changed? I would start with the video card.
2. Is the RAM that's installed from a kit? Sometimes RAM may be the same model but not the same edition. That can cause subtle problems.

I know some of the other techs here have ruled out hardware because of the stress tests... but it's beginning to look to me like there must be an incompatibility somewhere. So I think we should actually start changing things out. As mentioned above, I would try video card and RAM.

This post has been edited by ElfBane: 24 April 2012 - 01:43 AM

[coastie65]

Sometimes it can be a matter of shutting down security apps and the firewall ( make sure you are disconnected from the Internet when doing this; although a lot of games games these days require you to be connected. ).

[waldojim]

Of all the things I forgot to mention - did you check the hard drive itself? Download a copy of the hard drive utilities CD from their manufacturer, and tell it to run an extended test.

[blukatz92]

@ElfBane- Yes, I originally had an Nvidia 9600GT, and I replaced it with a Radeon 6850. Both cards produce the same results, regardless of what graphic settings I set the games to. I had the Nvidia card in my old Gateway from years ago and when I built the new computer, I had planned on reusing it to save costs, with plans to eventually upgrade. About a couple weeks later the first freeze occurred and so I purchased the Radeon, sooner than I would have liked, but I was hoping that would fix it. Obviously, it didn't. :-/ The RAM was purchased as a kit, yes. I bought a set of two G. Skill Ripjaw X Series (2x4GB). I can pretty much rule out issues with the GPU, because my old Nvidia card still works in other PCs, yet it has the same issues in my new build. (I haven't had the chance to test my Radeon in another build, mostly because I don't know anyone who has a desktop big enough for it)

@Coastie65- I will try that. I'm using AVG and Windows Firewall, so nothing too fancy, but it's always possible one of those programs doesn't like something.

@waldojim- I actually recently replaced the HDD because all I had was an IDE. I now have a Barracuda as my main drive and I use the old Western Digital as a backup. I have run Seatools diagnostic on the new drive and the Western Digital Data Diagnostic to test the integrity of each drive, and both come up clean.

[ElfBane]

Ok, try these:

1. Shut down as much as possible of what runs at Startup.
2. Do what 'coastie65' says... an over aggressive AV could be it.
3. And try to find a pair of RAM modules to troubleshoot with, because crashes to desktop and random BSODs are usually (not always) caused by 'something' trying to write into protected memory. Maybe something just "isn't right" with the RAM.
4. If none of the above help, then maybe, just maybe, the MB is having intermittant problems reading/writing from the MB caches when under a heavy load.

This post has been edited by ElfBane: 24 April 2012 - 10:40 AM

[blukatz92]

Okay, so tried running only bare essentials on startup, temporarily uninstalled AVG (during this time I unplugged my ethernet connection; no internet = no viruses), found someone with a pair of DDR3's that didn't make any difference. I've got only a couple weeks of school left, I think as soon as my summer break starts I'm going to RMA my board. I've tested every hardware component I could many times over, and I've reinstalled everything fresh on a new partition with no success. That rules out software and testable hardware. I had my PSU tested a couple days ago and there were no problems, so the only thing left is the motherboard. There's not really any way to test each part of the mobo, so that's the only thing that I can't be sure if working properly, while I have been able to successfully test everything else.

[LiveBrianD]

I guess that has to be it then. Once, I got a machine from someone that would crash when I tried to boot into an OS. I ruled out the PSU, GPU, audio card, network card (audio and network were both PCI cards here, the GPU was AGP), RAM, HDD, ODD... Once I bought a new motherboard, it was fine.