Some time around Christmas I bought some components from OC to build a system. It was based on a system I had already built for my sons which was put together with the help of OcUK staff, so I was pretty confident that the items I chose were good quality and would be a pretty good system.
This is what I bought on 18-12-2010;
The only difference between this system and the other system that I built for my sons is that they had a different brand GTX 460 (I think it was an OcUK brand) and they had a SSD too.
Anyway I put it together with no problems and it is installed with Windows 7 Professional.
I'm not sure exactly when I first noticed the problem. It wasn't straight away but it was certainly after a couple of days.
Anyway what happens is that I have my PC on when I get up to when I go to bed. I switch it off when I go out, but sometimes I would leave it on if I was only going to be out for a short period of time (say an hour or so). Sometimes I would turn my PC on first thing in the morning, but not actually go to work on it until about 30 minutes after I had switched it on.
What would happen is that it would freeze and be totally unresponsive. The only way to solve this would be to power down, then boot up again. I'd get the message that windows didn't close down correctly but I received no other error messages or indication that anything was wrong. What I did notice was that when the screen froze I knew what time it happened because the clock display on the right of the toolbar would be stuck at the time it happened (eg the screen would show that it was 10.35 when the real time was say 10.47).
I have left my PC on for more than 24hours at a time when I was doing a lot of downloads as part of a Christmas present and during that time there was no freeze whatsoever, so it suggest to me that it may have been something when the PC is idle, so I disabled as many power saving features as I could find. Still no luck.
I have tried to solve this by process of elimination and because I have faith in the parts I have used I assumed it was a Windows or system error. I believed that there may have been a background scan that may have caused some conflict (why or how I don't know). To this end I put a stop to System Mechanic running automatic background scans and checks so that I do it manually now. This didn't work.
I posted my problem on Tomshardware forum with some success here and I thought I had it beat just by having the screensaver kick in. The last suggestion was to update my Mobo BIOS, but it came with the latest version available.
However on Friday I left my PC for a while and when I came back to it the screensaver was running. So far so good. I moved my mouse slightly and was about to start using my PC when it froze.
I've spoken to Simon on the counter at OcUk because my gut feeling is that it is a grphics card issue and he suggested stress testing (as well as posting up my problem on here), but I'm unsure how to go about it. To do it properly I'd assume that I need to stress test Memory(?), CPU (?), GPU(?) and Mobo(?).
I'll be happy to answer any questions and provide any info in order to get this sorted.
Thanks in advance.
This is what I bought on 18-12-2010;
- Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR 3 Mobo
- Intel Core i3 540 3.06Ghz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA 1156)
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939/AM2/AM3/775/1156/1366)
- 2 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600Mhz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) *8GB total
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 OC 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
- Coarsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650TXUK)
- 4 x Sharkoon 120mm Silent Eagle SE Modular
The only difference between this system and the other system that I built for my sons is that they had a different brand GTX 460 (I think it was an OcUK brand) and they had a SSD too.
Anyway I put it together with no problems and it is installed with Windows 7 Professional.
I'm not sure exactly when I first noticed the problem. It wasn't straight away but it was certainly after a couple of days.
Anyway what happens is that I have my PC on when I get up to when I go to bed. I switch it off when I go out, but sometimes I would leave it on if I was only going to be out for a short period of time (say an hour or so). Sometimes I would turn my PC on first thing in the morning, but not actually go to work on it until about 30 minutes after I had switched it on.
What would happen is that it would freeze and be totally unresponsive. The only way to solve this would be to power down, then boot up again. I'd get the message that windows didn't close down correctly but I received no other error messages or indication that anything was wrong. What I did notice was that when the screen froze I knew what time it happened because the clock display on the right of the toolbar would be stuck at the time it happened (eg the screen would show that it was 10.35 when the real time was say 10.47).
I have left my PC on for more than 24hours at a time when I was doing a lot of downloads as part of a Christmas present and during that time there was no freeze whatsoever, so it suggest to me that it may have been something when the PC is idle, so I disabled as many power saving features as I could find. Still no luck.
I have tried to solve this by process of elimination and because I have faith in the parts I have used I assumed it was a Windows or system error. I believed that there may have been a background scan that may have caused some conflict (why or how I don't know). To this end I put a stop to System Mechanic running automatic background scans and checks so that I do it manually now. This didn't work.
I posted my problem on Tomshardware forum with some success here and I thought I had it beat just by having the screensaver kick in. The last suggestion was to update my Mobo BIOS, but it came with the latest version available.
However on Friday I left my PC for a while and when I came back to it the screensaver was running. So far so good. I moved my mouse slightly and was about to start using my PC when it froze.
I've spoken to Simon on the counter at OcUk because my gut feeling is that it is a grphics card issue and he suggested stress testing (as well as posting up my problem on here), but I'm unsure how to go about it. To do it properly I'd assume that I need to stress test Memory(?), CPU (?), GPU(?) and Mobo(?).
I'll be happy to answer any questions and provide any info in order to get this sorted.
Thanks in advance.
rolleyes: @ myself).
Is this correct? I was planning on starting it just before I go to bed and then checking it/stopping it after 12 hours. Is this sufficient or should I go for the full 24hours?
).
