Random BSODs with new hardware

[Saff3r]

Ordered and installed the following components for my PC:

"Krypton Z77 660i" Intel Core i5 3570K 3.40GHz @ 4.40GHz DDR3 Ivybridge Overclocked Bundle
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7850 OC Windforce 2X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SATA 2.5" 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (CSSD-F120GB3A-B)

I installed Windows 8 Pro, and proceeded to get random "Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart", usually when performing a task such as installing software or drivers. It does not blue screen when sitting idle.
The Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver install would blue screen every time.
I also noticed that my Netgear WNA3100 USB wireless adapter would need to be unplugged and plugged back in again to work after a reboot.
Other than the above setup, I only have a SATA Blu Ray drive installed.

I've since gone back to Windows 7 and I am now getting the same issue, (BSODs now)

I did manage to get far enough to run Skyrim, and noticed triangle artifacts flickering in the sky. I'm hazarding a guess here that I may have an issue with the GPU in addition to the random crashes, or maybe they are related?

Basically, my question is; any suggestions on the best place to start troubleshooting? I am fairly competent with PC builds but this one has me stumped due to the randomness of the crashes.

Oh, another thing I should mention is the bundle I got came overlocked. setting the bios back to default settings makes no difference to the instability.

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[Audigex]

First up, try checking all your cables are seated properly. A loose cable can mean a component doesn't have power and causes crashes. Just unplug each cable and plug it back in. Then look at temperatures - what are your CPU+GPU+Motherboard temps like generally, and just before a crash? If they're high, your cooler may not be seated properly. That said, heat generally just causes throttling of the CPU rather than a full on crash.

Can you swap some hardware around?

It's a bit of a pain, but in some cases it can tell you exactly which component is the problem while in others it helps exclude those which aren't.

Removing the GPU is probably the easiest, as you can use the CPU's onboard graphics to test it out.

Do you have another hard drive? If it's crashing while installing drivers I'd be suspecting the SSD. Try swapping it out for another SSD/old HDD if you have one around. Install a clean copy of windows on it and away you go. If you can't swap the hard drive, re-install windows anyway, just in case it's a driver/software issue.

You don't mention RAM, so I'm going to assume you've got 2 sticks. If you do, try removing one and trying the other in all 4 of your RAM slots. If you still have problems, swap to the other stick and repeat.

At this point you'll either have noticed the problem solve itself, or you'll have excluded GPU/SSD/RAM: leaving you with CPU/Motherboard/PSU as the most likely culprits. PSU is the only other thing you can relatively easily swap, so see if you have a friend or family member or just another PC with a decent PSU in it. A local PC store may be happy to let you use one of theirs (in store) for a moment.

After that, you're likely down to motherboard/CPU which is the trickiest bit to test as you have to find someone with a compatible CPU/Motherboard and swap them around to see which is the problem part, which means disassembling both PCs.

 

[Saff3r]

Audigex, thanks very much for your reply and suggestions.

I am naturally not a logical thinker and the way you have structured the approach for troubleshooting is appreciated!

I will work through the suggested steps tonight.

 

[Saff3r]

So I reseated all the components, checked cables juggled the RAM around the slots, no luck, continued BSODs.
I then used MemTest86 to check my RAM and sure enough - ERRORS! On both sticks. I got suspicious though, as the test would fail in the exact place, even when testing sticks individually (I have two sticks dual channel).
Resetting the CMOS on the Mobo has fixed the issues and the MemTest errors have gone. The minute I load the Overclocked profile from Overclockers.co.uk that came with the board, I'm back to memory errors and BSODs. So I think its fair to assume that the issue lies somewhere within the BIOS settings, or could this still potentially be a flaky board/mem/CPU?