Computer freezing [SOLVED]

[deveraux]

I recently (~2 days) assembled this new PC with the following specs:

Intel i7 920
(3x2GB) Apacer DDR3 RAM
Intel SmackOver DX58 mobo
nVidia 8800GTS 512MB
WD 640GB drive
Seagate 1TB drive
Generic DVD-RW drive
[Edit] OCZ gameXstream 600W

Windows Vista 64-bit Ultimate

I have had some issues while setting up but they were relatively minor, such as when restarting after an update, the system does not seem to be able to boot normally. I just get a blank screen for a long time. This also sometimes occurs after the Vista loading screen. Usually after about 3-4 tries, it will be fine.

The main problem however, is that while playing WoW, the entire system locks up after varying periods (longest being up to roughly 5-6 hours, shortest being about 15 minutes). Some of the freezes can only be solved by hard rebooting/power down, while other times, it will 'hang' and then restart itself after about 10-20 seconds of inactivity.

I have not been able to find any minidump or error logs inside the admin tools -> event viewer because I think the crash takes everything with it and thus Windows does not get a chance to log the error.

Because it is a new system, I haven't had a chance to full test everything yet. Memtest86 has been on it for about 3 hours, and prime95 for about 2 hours and both did not report any issues.

My gfx drivers are the latest, and all other chipset/sound drivers are from the CD that came with the mobo. Any idea what could be causing these freezes?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Forgot to add the PSU.

Edit2:
Turns out the problem was the BIOS. The latest BIOS on the Intel website specifically mentions sytem hang ups and that the auto setting for RAM undervolts it to 1.50V instead of 1.54V. Thank you everyone for your input in helping me track down the problem!

 

[mpilchfamily]

With that much RAm the system may need a slight bump in the RAM voltage.

 

[deveraux]

Thanks for the reply, any suggestions how much I should bump it up to? I was not aware you have to alter RAM voltages based on the amount installed.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: deveraux
I was not aware you have to alter RAM voltages based on the amount installed.

Maybe you do have to with more modules, but the number of GB installed shouldn't affect the voltage. Regardless, if you have high speed memory, you will probably need to up it. I think around 1.65 is safe for DDR3 but you'd better look up your specific memory.

 

[deveraux]

Default voltage is 1.54, my system wouldn't post if I went up one tick to 1.58. Any ideas? My friend suggested that because the memory controller is on-die, it might be very sensitive to RAM voltage changes.

 

[oynaz]

I think you are looking in the wrong direction. I think that the video card should be high on your list of possible culprits. I give it a 70% chance of being defective.

 

[deveraux]

Video card was "salvaged" so to speak from my previous PC which has worked without any problems thus far (had it for 6 months+ now? can't remember exactly -- about a month when G92 was released). Having said that, I will try monitoring the GPU core temp more closely while I have WoW running.

As a side question:

Does anyone know or can link me a page that describes what DIMM DQ REF and DIMM CA REF means? I found it in the BIOS under the RAM settings and I can alter these parameters without causing my system to fail POST. Based on the side description, I believe it has to do with the voltages to the RAM. I was hoping to pump a slightly higher voltage through these parameters but as I do not know what they mean exactly, I don't want to arbitarily set them too high without at least trying to find it.

I tried googling the terms but I did not come up anything directly related to it. I am not that experienced in memory manipulation however, so I might have missed things. Thanks.

 

[GaryJohnson]

The other thing to try might be taking out some of the RAM to see if the issue persists.

 

[daveybrat]

Yeah, try running your system with only 1 2GB stick of ram. Also remember that it could simply be a flaky motherboard and immature bios for it. Have you flashed your bios to the latest?

 

[techmanc]

Are the any reported problems running WoW on a Vista 64bit? Do you have similar problems with playing any other games?

 

[deveraux]

Originally posted by: daveybrat
Yeah, try running your system with only 1 2GB stick of ram. Also remember that it could simply be a flaky motherboard and immature bios for it. Have you flashed your bios to the latest?

This, turned out to be the problem. The latest BIOS update I downloaded mentioned that it "fixes" system hang ups and also that when RAM is set to auto, it was mistakenly undervolting it to 1.50V instead of 1.54V.

Since updating the BIOS, I have not yet experienced a similar freeze but I haven't played much since its the weekday and I'm back at work. Nevertheless, its a marked improvement that I can leave WoW running for 3+ hours straight without any freezes.

I will update the OP to reflect the "fix" in case anyone else encounters a similar problem.

 

[deveraux]

Originally posted by: techmanc
Are the any reported problems running WoW on a Vista 64bit? Do you have similar problems with playing any other games?

While I was scouring the net to try to fix my problem, I came across various threads with people that experienced crashes, but these were almost exclusively nvidia driver issues that seemed to have been fixed since about 2 driver iterations ago.

The only other small issue I face is that sometimes, while loading WoW from Freecap (I use a proxy service to access WoW due to latency issues), it sometimes encounters a memory error and does not load. I just have to try it a few times and once it loads, it runs perfectly fine.