Hi all! I recently got a new PC and its running great (most of the time :schwitz but something that has been annoying me now for a few days is that sometimes, the PC would randomly freeze and I can't do anything. I haven't overclocked the CPU or GPU, just at the speeds they were at the out of the box. There were a few times a few nights ago whenever I'd restart and click to log in my profile, windows would play the start up sound and then at the end of it, the sound would just lock and then the PC would restart. The next morning, that stopped happening but I still don't know what caused it but apart from that, I had it a few times when I'd be loading up iRacing, the same thing would happen when its loading a track.

I had a look at the temperatures of the CPU and GPU in the AMD OverDrive utility and both of their idles average around 40C-45C so I wouldn't say they're exactly overheating (maximum operating temperature for CPU is 63C). The CPU fan is idling at around 3600RPM. I just ran the benchmark now as well and it came out at 8302 (but to be honest, I don't really know what it means).So can anyone shed on light on this? This is my build:

CPU: AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition (C3 / 125W)
GPU: XFX 1GB ATI RadeonHD 5850 XXX
MB: Gigabyte GA790XTA-UD4 (AM3)
RAM: 4GB Corsair Dominator
PSU: Corsair TX650W
OS: Windows XP SP3 (32-bit)

Quote :

windows would play the start up sound and then at the end of it, the sound would just lock and then the PC would restart.

tried turning off the "reboot after bsod" option?

Ok, I've just tried iRacing again and the PC beeping very loud . The benchmark is now showing 7080 too

Have you checked your temps? CCC + CPUZ Or the likes? Overheating can cause those problems.

What speed is your RAM running at? Is it 1066 or 1333 or what? I suggest you run memtest86+ and see if any errors show up.

i was thinking ram too. my phenom is idling 10°C lower than your too.

Ok, iRacing is working now but the framerate has dropped a huge amount. I was getting around 120-130FPS at Lime Rock with the Skip Barber, now its dropped to 60 and below . I've uninstalled the graphics drivers and installed them again but still, no difference.

My RAM is running at 1066Mhz (actual chips standard is 1600Mhz so I'm underclocking the ram). I'm not sure how it can be ram related since the system is detecting all the ram thats there but I guess I could try that memtest tool. I'm reinstalling windows now so I'm hoping a fresh install might fix things.

Quote from Leprekaun :

Ok, I've just tried iRacing again and the PC beeping very loud .

Gigabyte and Asus boards beep when the CPU is overheating (set by the threshold in the BIOS), or if the fan speed drops below 1200RPM. I'm still more inclined to say it's that than the memory.

Quote from Leprekaun :

My RAM is running at 1066Mhz (actual chips standard is 1600Mhz so I'm underclocking the ram). I'm not sure how it can be ram related since the system is detecting all the ram thats there but I guess I could try that memtest tool. I'm reinstalling windows now so I'm hoping a fresh install might fix things.

RAM is the most common cause of blue screens/system freezes/system restarts. It doesn't matter that all the RAM is detected, what matters are the timings of the RAM. If they are too low and the speed is too high, the system will crash.

Quote from Leprekaun :

The CPU fan is idling at around 3600RPM.)

Nobody saw this? IDLING AT 3600RPM??? Mine has max 3000. It must be load as hell. I would say that fan is trying to cool down something...
And best way to see temperature is PC Wizard. It's the only program I found that shows same temp as BIOS.

Try downloading SpeedFan and see if your CPU temps are near the limit.
There also may be an option in the BIOS to display a PC health check before loading Windows (it shows temps, fan RPM's etc), my pc has this activated, but yours might not.

Quote from Leprekaun :

I had a look at the temperatures of the CPU and GPU in the AMD OverDrive utility and both of their idles average around 40C-45C so I wouldn't say they're exactly overheating (maximum operating temperature for CPU is 63C). The CPU fan is idling at around 3600RPM. I just ran the benchmark now as well and it came out at 8302 (but to be honest, I don't really know what it means).So can anyone shed on light on this?

That's still an odd idle temp and fan speed, my 955 (125W) idles at around 38 degrees with stock cooling at 3.2GHz and under load it can be from 43 (LFS) to 52 (GTAIV) degrees C and the fans idle speed is around 3000 rpm or 5000 at full load, It's running LFS now at 43 C/3300rpm, though I've got it limited to 65% of its speed since the extra speed doesn't qualify the extra heat for ~200 fps more since I'm already getting a stable 130 anyway

My Athlon 620 is about 40C absolute max, playing GTA4 for a while will only get it to about 40, I've yet to see one that makes it go higher.
Even my HDD gets hotter :P

Quote from matijapkc :

Nobody saw this? IDLING AT 3600RPM??? Mine has max 3000.

that's the kind of fan i ripped out of my athlon xp computer when i realized it idled below the bios fan speed threshold. the fan i have in there right now is idling at 5500rpm and can go higher than 8000rpm.

sure it's loud, but when you're pushing this much air, its reasonable.

Idle fan speeds and CPU temps don't say much about the cooling efficiency, you need to check what are the temps like under heavy load. SpeedFan is pretty good tool as it can log CPU temp and display it in a graph, so you can go playing and check the results afterwards. You are experiencing a loss of performance after some time, which might indicate that your CPU is throttling down to reduce the excessive heat generation.

I think my fears have been confirmed . I let Memtest do two test sessions and there were no errors, all passed fine. I downloaded Prime95 but I didn't know how to use it so I've reverted back to OCCT and it froze again. I've opened the case and pointed a regular fan at it to see if it could be temperature related but it still froze again.. As soon as it starts testing after it monitors for a minute, it freezes. I've also noticed that it can't detect the original processor speed, it just lists it as an unknown but it does list the current speed which is 3415Mhz so it must be the processor. I ran FurMark last night and it was able to test the GPU fine so the only factor that seems to be the problem now is the CPU. I wanted to ask about something though, in the BIOS when I was adjusting the voltage for the RAM and the CAS latencies to Corsair's specification, it listed certain voltages in red and the text on the right said something like "Warning: using these voltages may cause damage to the chipset/memory/CPU or shorten their life" so is running 1.8v as opposed to the original 1.5v damage my motherboard?

when i put my AM3 phenom into an AM2+ motherboard, the bios didn't recognise the chip. it still worked but just didn't know what chip it was. i updated the bios (F9D) for the gigabyte and all is well.
did you buy the pc prebuilt or did you build it yourself? i ask this because opening the case may void any warrenty.

Nope, someone built it for me (I bought the parts individually and did the build locally I mean). I was asking on a couple forums (tomshardware.com and xbitlabs.com) and some lads were saying that the MB should have no problem running the CPU model (and its an AM3 board too). There is only one logical thing to do now really and thats to call Scan and ask for a replacement. I just hope they don't say that I can't get it replaced because of the AMD OverDrive bit.

opening the case will void any warrenty that scan have given you. you might have to take it up with the manufacturers. this could mean that you send your pc to scan and they send it back with the bill for the courier (both ways).
if it was a friend who put the parts together, get someone else to re-build the system(to be sure to be sure ). human error is a bitch.

Boosting the memory voltage should not damage anything as long as you keep it within specs given by the Corsair. However tampering with CPU or even chipset voltage is not really recommended unless you overclock. The symptoms you have described so far suggest damaged motherboard, because an overheating CPU should not crash your PC, definitely not within a minute. Maybe the AMD OverDrive thingie screwed up some settings in BIOS, so reseting it is worth a try (either by the CMOS clear switch or by pulling out the battery for a while)

the gigabyte has duel bios feature so he always has a "good" version.

I don't think the dual BIOS would help here if there are some BIOS settings messed up. AFAIK it's only effective when a BIOS flashing fails.

Quote from MadCatX :

AFAIK it's only effective when a BIOS flashing fails.

that was my understanding too, because if you flash it and it screws up, you're shipping the bios chip to it's manufacturer for reflashing.

To be honest if it was me I'd take off the CPU and put it back on just to make sure that the fan is on properly etc.. Not sure if you are 100% on doing that but if you are its worth a try.

Also do you have 1 stick of ram or 2?