I think I failed in building my PC

Dreadenthax

Dreadenthax

Dreadenthax

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Joined
30 Nov 2014
Posts
9
Hello

I spent quite a bit of money for upgrading my old PC. I thought you might help me out a bit though. I still have problems with my system. There are often times when it will just slow down dramatically, any music or sounds playing would make weird noises like if they were slowing down and then system freezes with a characteristic sound loop.

This happens even after a fresh format. I think it must be a hardware problem then... This is my system:

PSU: SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 650W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z97P-D3
Processor: Intel Core i7-4790 3.60GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail
RAM: 20 GB (TeamGroup Elite Black 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD316G1600HC11DC01)) and 4 GB of some no-name RAM
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Please help :(
 
Yup.

Use branded, matching ram.

You could run memtest also..

What kind of hard drive do you have? if it's an SSD, list the make/model. (some may need firmware updates etc)

An SSD will make that system fly!
 
SSD wouldn't solve the lockups, which is a higher priority to resolve.

I'd bin the no-name ram. With 16GB you have plenty for most common things people do with such a machine, and it may cause the whole 20GB to run at lower speeds/timings (at best) or be stretched beyond it's ability and cause your issues... (worst)
 
What resolution are you using?
Is this during gaming?
What are your temperatures like?
Are you using the stock cooler.
 
Even if that 4gb stick isnt the problem, you should still take it out and never put it back in. Unless you do some strange stuff, then 16gb of ram is already more than twice what you need, and if its doing anything, its holding back your reasonable quality ram.
 
defo pull the ram.

will almost certainly not be the same timings/frequencies as the rest. and there are very few scenarios when having that 16-20GB will be better than just the 16gb. literally unless you are running some modeling or computational stuff that could do with putting everything in the ram and it just can't fit. 16GB is by far enough for any game unless you have 700 mods haha.

other than that. is your windows install relatively recent? i.e since you replaced the old hardware?
 
Get rid of that 4Gb no name ram. for all the reasons stated above. Odd ram configurations always prove to be problematic at some point.
 
A long time ago, when i had a different life, i bought an OcUK Overclocked Bundle & GPU.

It was brilliant, after many happy years (3 of them), i needed more Ram to be able to play newer games. I asked for 4GB of Ram that would match what i'd bought (to make 8GB). What i was sent seemed to work, at first that is, then i had nothing but problems that slowly but surely became an absolute nightmare. Restarts, crashes, freezes and lockups and finally worst of all, it wouldn't pass POST.

The Ram was incompatible. Same speed and timing but not compatible.

Remove the extra Ram, do a clean re-install of the OS and the drivers etc.

Give it at least a week of hard usage. I bet £1 that it works better than you expected.
 
What is your complete system?

You know, from the case, down to the HDD's, operating system, 32bit or 64bit, any sound cards. CPU cooler? TIM?
Did you just plug in an old hard drive, or did you do a fresh install? Did you use some old Sata 1 hard drive with windows XP from your old computer?
Sorry for being blunt, but such sillyness would be expected along with adding 4gb of random no brand memory to 16gb of branded memory for whatever reason you did such.

The random 4gb of ram sounds like the most easy way to stop your computer working.

But so could a poor CPU cooler, poor TIM application, a bad overclock attemt, and running Windows XP in a machine with 16gb or memory and 4gb of memory in the GPU with an additional random 4gb stick of memory for the lolz. Or a regular HDD with bad sectors.

You have a fine system there otherwise, but ease our minds with a full spec list and remove the odd stick of ram ;)
 
Sorry for taking so much time to respond..

My full system and average temperatures:

Case:
Aerocool Strike-X
PSU:
SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 650W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black
Motherboard: ~27 C
GIGABYTE GA-Z97P-D3
Processor: ~30 C
Intel Core i7-4790 3.60GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail
Processor Cooling:
Deepcool Lucifer
RAM:
TeamGroup Elite Black 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD316G1600HC11DC01)
2x 2GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM "GoodRAM"
GPU: ~32 C
MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
SSD:
Crucial CT240M500 ~30 C
Crucial CT256MX100 ~30 C
HDD:
Hitachi HDS7211616PLA380 ~32 C
Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 ~33 C
Seagate ST1000DM003-1CH162 ~25 C
DVD drive:
LG GH24NSB0

System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

The "GoodRAM" RAM is definitely ok because I was running on it before for a few years. I ran the memory test and there were no problems detected. I hope I still keep it inside...I am not sure If they are compatible...
When my PC is idle, 3GB of ram is already used. That would make just 13 GB left for anything else to run. When I open a random project It goes up to 10GB instantly.

I completely disabled virtual memory in my system to keep my disks away from being busy with it. I want to focus on using RAM only.

I also ran error checks on all of my disks and there were no problems detected, nothing.

My screen resolution is 1600x900. This is pretty much the best I can get with a color-accurate monitor.

I am using this PC for heavier graphic work. I am a digital artist and work on projects often bigger than 4000x4000 pixels, always more than 10 layers thick. I am using mainly Photoshop. I also make 3D models (Usually Sci-Fi vehicles so it always involves many details and complex shapes.)

I use my SSD's for installed applications, system files and my work. Basically stuff I always use.
On HDD's I usually store old work, archives, backups and things I rarely need. Basically stuff I rarely use.

I also hope I didn't make a mistake listening to my friend and buying a "Super power, cutting edge technology processor, perfect for photoshop!!" Intel Core i7 processor that was supposed to make my work fast and smooth...
 
Keep the random 4GB out of the PC, I wouldn't want a mismatch of RAM that bad in any system, 16GB is more than enough.

Having 10GB of RAM used isn't a bad thing, what else would you do with RAM otherwise, especially when loading large Photoshop images and projects.

The i7 is great for your work.

In your position, I would remove the 4GB of RAM, remove all drives besides the SSD you want to install the OS on and do a fresh install, then re-attach the drives & see how it plays. When installing Windows it will put files onto other attached drives, not sure why entirely but can cause issues if it can't access those files at any time.
 
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