Pc locking up at random times

[Substance]

A few months back I had a lot of trouble with my pc refusing to boot most of the time and getting bsod's the times when it did boot, I couldn't install windows without it locking up on me.

I tried everything I know and couldn't figure it out, I replaced the cpu, ram, mobo and gpu and still got the same errors, I took it to a repair shop as a last resort, they had it for 3 days and phoned me back saying they couldn't figure it out so I could pick it up and there would be no charge (very honest of them)

The crazy thing was that all the components worked on their own in other pc's but as a group they just didn't get on, So I sold the components on ebay and bought mostly new parts,

I set it all up and it has been running great for a couple of months but after that I started getting the odd lock up when doing random things, there are no similar circumstances I can find, It can happen in the middle of a demanding game, or football manager, it can happen when viewing youtube videos or just browsing these forums, I can't figure it out.

The pc just comes completely unresponsive and my headphones produce a static sound for a couple of seconds then that stops and I need to reset to be able to use it again, sometimes it works first time but I have had to reset the cmos to get it to boot other times

The only components I kept from my old pc are the optical drives, 2 sata2 HDD's and 2 dvd-rws and my PSU, a corsair hx520 which was tested in other pc's and works fine under stress tests,

My temps are great, my GPU is a 2gb 6950 with the twin frozr 3 and runs at 45'c isle and around 60-70 in games, My cpu is a AMD Phenom 2 x4 955 cooled by a corsair h60 and runs at 35'c idle and 40-50 under stress,

The pc passes overnight stress tests with ease and has no overclocks apart from the standard clock MSI put on the GPU

Sorry for the wall of text, I have tried everything I can including pretty much buying a whole new pc,

Any help would be appreciated,

Thanks

 

[Substance]

Full system spec please

Mobo - MSI 870a-g54
CPU - AMD Phenom 2 x4 955
RAM - 8GB Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
GPU - MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 2048MB
PSU - Corsair HX520w
Sound Card - Creative x-fi titanuim edition
Hard drives - 1tb samsung spinpoint f1 - Old maxtor 400gb drive for storage

tough one that :/

PSU, a hard drive, motherboard... No event reported by windows? No blue screens?

You have another PSU to try? Any computer in the house having the same problem?

Unplugging opticals, and hard drives. Running HD benchmarks...

Windows doesn't report anything, there is no BSOD, the screen just pauses and sticks on whatever I was doing and the headphones sound like static for a second or 2

The only other computer we have is my girlfriends macbook and that's fine, I am pretty sure the PSU is fine, it was tested by the PC repair shop when I took my old PC in,

I will try running some HD benchmarks now and see if I get anything

*edit* My windows hard drive with all the programs and games on it didn't crash when I ran it, the other only has images and movies on it,

Here are the results

 

[Substance]

I even replaced the case thinking it might be temps getting too high in areas that weren't monitored and got 3 new gentle typhoon fans to keep air flow consistent, My temps are really low now so I doubt it's that that was causing it in the first place

But yeah, all that is still there from my old build is HDDs, DVD-rw's and the PSU, the PSU was tested in the store with a device that checked all the rails and they were all incredibly stable over a 60 minute period

I'm usually clued up when it comes to diagnostics but this has me stumped

 

[Substance]

I have changed them between builds, I used all new ones that came with my motherboard for this build, I haven't changed them since though, you think it could be that?

 

[Substance]

What else is there left Problems with hard drives / optical can lock a computer like that.

Many other things can as well. If you've updated the BIOS, swapped components, checked the PSU... What motherboard is it?

My motherboard is the MSI 870a-G54, seen Here

I would say its the PSU. I have had this before and even after testing the PSU under stress independently I still found it to be the culprit. Get yourself a bigger and better PSU as it is one of the most important parts of your PC.

The corsair HX520 should be easily enough for this build and is well known as being a damn reliable PSU

Mobo - MSI 870a-g54
CPU - AMD Phenom 2 x4 955
RAM - 8GB Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
GPU - MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 2048MB
PSU - Corsair HX520w
Sound Card - Creative x-fi titanuim edition
Hard drives - 1tb samsung spinpoint f1 - Old maxtor 400gb drive for storage



I did not pick up which OS you are running, but the soundcard sort of leapt out as a possible culprit. Either drivers, compatibility or conflicts.

Try running without the soundcard, use the onboard for a while and see if that locks up. I've not had too much luck with creative recently.

andy

I've been running onboard for the last couple of months, I only re added the x-fi last week, and I was having the problems before then too

 

[Substance]

Looking at the comments on that youtube video it just seems like one annoyed guy mouthing off a lot and everyone else defending the mobo, I'm not concerned about the reliability of the motherboard as I picked it based on a couple of recommendations,

If it does turn out to be that though MSI are decent with RMAs

Here are the pics of ram timings and voltages etc

Thanks again for the help

 

[Substance]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, keep em coming

The ram is 4x2gb sticks in a 4 slot motherboard so there is no way I can try different slots,

I don't have another PSU to test in the machine, and don't want to buy another before being sure that is the fault as they aren't the cheapest things

I am connected to the mains via a decent UPS and power seems to be fine for everything else in the house, it's a new build so the mains should be in good condition.

I will try running with the dvd drives unplugged for a few days and see if that helps.

And as for the realtek drivers I did have them installed but have removed them completely, and have disabled the onboard in bios