keeps freezing after about 5mins

James Manns · 22 Dec 2009 at 22:31

well im thinking of doing my first build as my xps 625 is just annoying :mad:

,
so i was maybe thinking of a am3 setup(have to see how much i get over crimbo)
i was thinking of getting is, new

su,board,chip,ram,case and basically a new build except i might use my two 4670's in the mean time

what do you think is the most likely problem with it though?

theron · 22 Dec 2009 at 22:41

honestly i don't think its the cmos battery, although thats the cheapest thing to replace for like £4 or so = i recommend changing it first anyway.

if its the psu or mb its probably 50/50 from what you describe i don't think its anything to do with your overclocking attempt

sorry to ask this silly question but are yo sure u gave the pc enough time without the battery installed to notice if it would freeze or not?

James Manns · 22 Dec 2009 at 22:52

ill try it now without the battery and see what happens,
i think my psu is a bit wierd anyway, i bought a dual set of blue cathodes a while ago from a well known auction site and when i plugged them in it was fine, but if i turned them off on the switch provided and then turned them back on, the pc would shut down but without actually powering down?

theron · 22 Dec 2009 at 22:57

well thats also related to the -5v standby power rail.

if they are still installed you should unplug them.

James Manns · 22 Dec 2009 at 23:07

no there not plugged in, i took them off when they were acting strangely.
the freezing has only been recent

James Manns · 22 Dec 2009 at 23:45

still freezing with the battery in

theron · 22 Dec 2009 at 23:46

well then its gona be a long term trouble shooting session, keep using it without battery for a few hours until ur 10000% sure that removing the battery has fixed you problem, then swap the related components one by one and see where that leaves you.

i had something like this about a year ago where i was using my pc and it just completely froze for no reason at all, even just idle on the desktop with no user inputs. i managed to find out that it only happened when the gfx drivers were installed, but i swapped and stress tested every component available and still had the problem so i sent it all back and started all over again with completely different components.

James Manns · 22 Dec 2009 at 23:53

taking the battery out doesnt help though,
and this is very much the same as your problem,
(its proberbly better im starting a new build, im finding out why people say its another dell from hell :mad:

)
ill leave it for a minute or two go to it and its frozen, would you try and send it back if it was you?

theron · 22 Dec 2009 at 23:57

i thought u said removing the battery did stop it?

if its under warranty or what ever i would send it back immediately (edit: for a full refund if possible), i don't think this is ur fault and i wouldn't recommend telling them about the OC either

James Manns · 23 Dec 2009 at 00:01

no taking the battery out does nothing,
mm yeah i don't think the warranty covers that

i only did it for about 5mins anyway and i only took it up to about 0.5ghz more than stock,
also one of the temperature gauges was saying something like -128 which is obserd, and obv is faulty or something, F#@*%£G dell :mad:

theron · 23 Dec 2009 at 00:14

ok, i read this:

James Manns said:
ok now it doesnt seem to be doing it because i have the battery out,
if i put it back in will the problem happen again?

and it made me think something was up with the 5v rail and bios.

then i read this:

James Manns said:
no taking the battery out does nothing,
mm yeah i don't think the warranty covers that
i only did it for about 5mins anyway and i only took it up to about 0.5ghz more than stock,
also one of the temperature gauges was saying something like -128 which is obserd, and obv is faulty or something, F#@*%£G dell

and it seems like u cooked the cpu.

ive not owned one myself, but reading about people overclocking them to get +0.5GHz required huge voltages that needed water cooling to reach

an example: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-247667_11_0.html

did u increase the voltages?

James Manns · 23 Dec 2009 at 12:02

with the battery in or out its still freezing either way,
i dont think i have cooked the cpu as i only did it for about 5mins and the temps only went up to about 42 and i didnt put any huge amounts of power threw it.

theron · 23 Dec 2009 at 12:39

ok, here is OCCT: http://www.ocbase.com/download.php?fileext=exe

use it to test your ram and cpu. if it passes the automatic test, then the cpu SHOULD be ok, use a longer test if you want, or prime95 if you prefer.

James Manns · 23 Dec 2009 at 12:47

ok ill use occt ive already got that.

James Manns · 23 Dec 2009 at 13:02

ok so i did a test for 10 minutes and it completed without errors, max temp=53 min=37
thats with a stock heatsink without a fan directly on it.
should i do one for longer? or is that ok.

theron · 23 Dec 2009 at 13:05

leave it on automatic yeah, just to be sure it passes the one hour test.

James Manns · 23 Dec 2009 at 13:09

ok ive just started it, ill see what happens-if it passes what does that mean(like what could it be?) vise versa what would make it fail?

James Manns · 23 Dec 2009 at 13:27

ok well it got to about 20 mins threw and the sreen went black?

James Manns · 23 Dec 2009 at 13:57

ive rebooted and its fine but theres obviously something wrong to make the screen go off.

theron · 23 Dec 2009 at 14:03

sounds like a fail, bit difficult to tell what caused it if there is no error message. apart from the black screen what else did u notice?

do u have memtest? might be an idea to run that in dos, if it passes then its not the memory.