Computer freezes quite frequently

[Gundam]

My computer has been freezing pretty randomly recently. Anywhere from 2 minutes to 3 hours. I have just bought a bunch of upgrades, so any one of them can be the culprit. Before I installed these things, I would have a freeze every few weeks. Now it occurs many times a day. Here is what I recently purchased:

AX-7 Heatsink w/80mm fan
Gainward Ti4200 128mb vid card
Liteon 40x CDRW
2 80mm fans
2 cold cathode neon tubes

Motherboard monitor says my case temp is around 29C, while the CPU temp is 52-57C usually

 

[Trashman]

what are the specs of Power Supply you using.

 

[Gundam]

Its a 400 watt Antec PS that came with my case.

 

[Trashman]

i'm not an amd guy, but cpu temps seem a bit high, no? that is an aftermarket fan you have, you'd think cooling would be better.

 

[Gundam]

Well from what i gather, MSI mobos tend to give out very high temp readings (around 10C high then they should be)

 

[amdskip]

What are the rest of the specs on your system and is it overclocked?

What operating system?

 

[Gundam]

Xp, not overclocked, 512mb of pc2100 ram, 2 hard drives, 1 dvd drive, 2 exhaust fans, 2 intake fans.

 

[Trashman]

Hard to pin point with system freezes......what are you thoughts as being a software issue, ---took out the random....just meaning drivers--
My first thought was PS, with added hardware, and what you listed just above....400W should be ok there.
But then you say lock-up occurs within 2 min....you'd think that would eliminate heat from the equation...other than being a software/driver issue....I'd say, if you can, try another PS.

 

[Gundam]

I doubt its the PS because it was fine before i added the vid card and stuff. I've switched out the vid card to see if that might be the problem. Since I noticed that sometimes the screen would be all messed up looking, and would require me to change the res.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I know this will sound odd ...
Perhaps your RAM is acting up.

see iff it crashes with a higher CAS latency, or a lowwer memmory clock (if you can adjust it to 100 ... just to see what happens, it may help)

I was having some problems with my system crashing after an upgrade, and even though i was only swapping drives around, my RAM started to cause crashing after that point. After i lowwered it from 166 to 133 (i have a kt333 board) It stopped crashing (the ram is SUPPOSED to be PC3000 (ocz systems) but it was really just OC'd generic pc2100. I was stupid and bought it right when the epox kt333 board came out.

 

[WyteWatt]

Gundam you may never get the problem fix because no one seems to know what the problem is. I have a hard lockup or freezing problems too. Espically in games where the sound repeats when it has a hard lockup or freezes. I have it freeze in 3dmark2001 SE to before after 5 to 6 hours. I wanted to test it for 24 hours but it did not make it without freezing which is just sad. I know my temps are not a problem. How do i know that? Lets see i opened my case and put a fan on my video card and processor just to make sure. Still did nothing. Guess how i sorta fixed my problem so far? I have no more santa cruz sound card in my computer and guess what its been running for 22 hours now without one lockup or freeze in 3dmark2001 SE build 330 sense i started it 10:30 am yesterday and kept it running by looping it infinite.
Here is my thread on my issue which i like did everything i could just to try to fix my problem. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=839911 I know its not my power supply because why would it run that long without my sound card now. Plus with it running for those 22 hours they had no case sides off and no house fan blowing on it like before. So i know its not a heat issue now. Its not just a few people having this problem either. People with the ATI 8500 are having freezing and hard lockup problems, people with intel systems, people with different mobo chipsets other than via, people with abit mobos, people with asus mobos, people with epox mobos, not just one brand of mobo at all. You would not believe how many people are having issues. I sure hope this issue is not on the ATI 9700 too or then they need to figure out whats causing this problem. So far i think i found out whats causing mine my sound card or video card conflicting i guess. The hard part is how do i fix that? Live without sound forever hehe? Put my soundblaster 16 isa sound card back in ? I remember my voodoo 3 2000 pci video card doing just fine. My athlon xp 1800+ is working just fine so that can't be the issue inless thats the thing that getting along with my sound card but i never heard of that happening.

 

[Gundam]

Ok I think I have found the problem. I swapped in an old TNT2U in, and it has been running flawlessly for nearly 10 hours. Looks like my Ti4200 was to blame.