Possible reasons for crashing?

Mothership · 6 Jan 2010 at 11:25

Hi all, a friend pointed me to this site, so I hope you guys can help! I bought a new assembled system, and it keeps crashing on Windows 7, both 32 and 64 bit. I checked inside the case, and while all wires are connected and everything seems fine, one thing bothers me: It's a core i7 860 processor on a P55 pro mobo, and I remember reading the i7 need 3 sticks of ram. This PC has that, but having 3 sticks or ram means there's one open slot. Shouldn't slots be filled per two, ie either 2 or 4 sticks? Could this be the reason for the constant crashing? The PC just freezes completely, no BSOD or anything. I can get some work done for an hour or so before I have to hit the reset button on the PC.

asoxedri · 6 Jan 2010 at 11:36

have you got latest bios update?

give full specifications please.

Showboat · 6 Jan 2010 at 11:47

i7 uses triple channel ram, hence the 3 sticks, you dont need 3 but it runs best with 3 so all channels are being optimsed.

Take out 2 sticks and try with one stick and rotate which slot it's in.

Did you build it youself? is the heatsink / fan attached properly?

See sticky for build help, might help you diagnose where the error lies.

OLDPHART · 6 Jan 2010 at 16:27

Try one stick at a time run memtest in case you have a faulty one, make sure you have the right timings and voltage for your memory.

Mothership · 7 Jan 2010 at 18:25

Thanks for the tips guys, I've done some memory tests and ended up booting up hardware tests for the HDD and CPU as well. No luck there, so did a couple more fresh installs, and it turns out ATI Catalyst was to blame (at least until the next crash which will rule out that possibility).