System instability with a variety of errors

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19 Nov 2010
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13
I'm looking for some troubleshooting help. I've had this computer built for a long time (since September 2010) and just recently my computer has become unstable and is suffering from resets and crashes fairly often. It feels like a hardware problem to me but I've not changed any hardware since last year when I upgraded my graphics card and powersupply. I've already taken these steps to try and diagnose:

Run speedfan and prime95 to load up the cpu to check temperatures.

Run GPU-Z and furmark to load up the gpu and check temperatures.

Run memtest.

I have not managed to create a crash using any of these stress-tests.

My graphics card is an nvidia GTX970 which was only bought Jun 2015 and my PSU is a Corsair RM 1000W 80+ Gold which was also bought in Jun 2015.
My CPU is a Core I7 950 @ 4.00Ghz (same overclock settings since I bought it as a bundle in September 2010). Running windows 7 pro.

Ways that the system crashes are:
Hard restarts (probably the most common)
Cannot write to memory address error.
Freeze
DX error followed by reset.

Twice now after a restart it has hung on the bios post screen after listing my hard drives whilst saying "detecting IDE drives". (I have no IDE devices installed).

I'm not sure what to try next so any suggestions would be gratefully received.
 
hi i had been having similar issues with my own pc.
i had a 980ti and had it stress tested for 5+hours and still
after a few days my pc also started to randomly reboot, freeze,
and the card was not getting over 40deg
in the end i did a fresh win 10 install, but even after this my issues where still there,
in the end i booted up with my on board graphics card to win10 then i reinstalled my old 970gtx updated drivers and i have not had a single issue since,
Now i am not sure if it is your g card but if you have a spare one i suggest
putting that in first before doing system restores and trying a host of other things first.
if it persists after that then perhaps look at your power supply
the main thing for me was getting artifacts on my monitor on boot up even running through the bios load screen.
i dont know if you have experienced that or not.?
but for me i was not initially getting the artifacts on the gcard it was just randomly freezing for a good few weeks.
seems after more time of using it the issues on my g card has just become worse.
i even suspected drivers but i had used driver removal software run in safe mode, gone through all of these processes and still it was making no difference.
as soon as i swapped the card the drivers went in first time i had no issues with driver errors?
hope this may help a little.
and gluck getting it fixed :)
 
I down clocked to 3.2ghz and that worked okay for several months but I've just started to get the same errors. Maybe just what you get with a system that's been running a 33% overclock for 6 years?

I notice that the modern stuff is still around the 4ghz mark, am I really going to notice a great deal of improvement if I pick up a new motherboard and CPU?
 
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