New Build keeps freezing.

[poley]

Hi, i built my PC on christmas eve and since then it has been freezing a lot. I ran memtest and that came back fine, but when i tried to run Intel burn test, it froze 5 seconds after starting it. I then tried with only one stick of ram in and it only worked for one of them, so i assumed it was a faulty stick of ram but then it continued to freeze with the ram i thought was good. It mainly freezes mainly when im watching a video or playing game, or just general multi tasking. Im all out of ideas really appreciate any help. Thank you



PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor (Purchased For £113.00)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (Purchased For £23.99)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (Purchased For £70.76)
Memory: Avexir MPOWER Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For £53.90)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (Purchased For £66.00)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For £42.99)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card (Purchased For £239.00)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For £85.00)
Case Fan: Arctic Cooling Arctic F12 PWM CO 74.0 CFM 120mm Fan (Purchased For £4.23)
Case Fan: Arctic Cooling Arctic F12 PWM CO 74.0 CFM 120mm Fan (Purchased For £4.23)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For £67.94)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For £14.06)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - OEM (64-bit) (Purchased For £69.32)
Other: 22 inch LCD TV ( 2nd Monitor ) (Purchased)
Other: BenQ GL2450HM 24 inch LED (£109.99)
Other: TeckNet® High Precision Gaming Mouse with 2,000 DPI (Purchased For £9.97)
Other: Logitech K200 Keyboard (Purchased For £10.99)
Other: Powerline + cables (Purchased For £25.00)
Total: £1010.37
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-28 15:59 GMT+0000)

 

[stinger608]

Use the free edition of Macrium Reflect, make the image, unplug your SSD, and put the image in the 1tb Seagate drive and try that. It might possibly be the SSD that is the issue.

Here is the link to Macrium Reflect: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Keep us posted.

 

[denis280]

Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (Purchased For £66.00) Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For £42.99)

when the ssd was install.did the seagate was unplugged.and also do you get error or bsod

 

[Steltek]

What BIOS revision is currently installed on your motherboard? According to the Gigabyte website, your motherboard requires at least BIOS revision F7 to support the FX-8320 CPU.

Also, do you have any temperature monitoring software installed? If so, I presume you've checked and you aren't overheating at either the CPU or GPU? If you don't have software installed, try downloading and installing SpeedFan or HWMonitor.

In your BIOS setup, are the SATA ports set up for AHCI and not legacy IDE?

You may want to reset the CMOS memory and re-enter your BIOS setup values to ensure it just isn't a BIOS glitch.

 

[alangrift]

What do you have the settings on? Like max performance if so it'll cause problems like this.

 

[poley]

What BIOS revision is currently installed on your motherboard? According to the Gigabyte website, your motherboard requires at least BIOS revision F7 to support the FX-8320 CPU.

Also, do you have any temperature monitoring software installed? If so, I presume you've checked and you aren't overheating at either the CPU or GPU? If you don't have software installed, try downloading and installing SpeedFan or HWMonitor.

In your BIOS setup, are the SATA ports set up for AHCI and not legacy IDE?

You may want to reset the CMOS memory and re-enter your BIOS setup values to ensure it just isn't a BIOS glitch.

My bios version is FC. I have HWMonitor and using OCCT my CPU doesn't go above 50 degrees, and my gpu about 85 degrees but that is with it push further than it ever will be. I have also tried resetting CMOS by taking the battery out and putting it back in, still no luck

 

[poley]

What do you have the settings on? Like max performance if so it'll cause problems like this.

Do you mean in game? If so then I have it's highest but it should easily handle that it doesn't lag at all. At freezes when not in game too

 

[poley]

when the ssd was install.did the seagate was unplugged.and also do you get error or bsod

No error or bsod, just hard freezes until I hold power button to turn off

 

[jolancer]

don't ask me why or how some versions of memtest differ, i never bothered to look. all i know though is that when i tried memtest that came with the live ubuntu distro, it froze or rebooted in a short period of time. however running it from a different source in my case SystemRescueCD, it ran through all stages fine. I had no pc issues thats why i tried a different source cause i knew it shouldn't have done that on my system..

re-run memtest. make sure your running it live and not from within windows. if your not sure if your source is good you could also just use.. http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage ..all you have to do is select memtest from the live boot screen

test one stick of ram at a time.. if it finds and error, re-run the test on the same stick but use the 2nd bank of dimm slots, not the slot you would of used for the second ram stick. and repeat for the second ram stick. heck you could test all 4 slots if wanted.

no your pc would not freeze without defect no matter how high settings you use.

your parts selection would make it seem like your not a noob... is this actually one of your first builds? or is it safe to assume it was properly assembled?

 

[poley]

don't ask me why or how some versions of memtest differ, i never bothered to look. all i know though is that when i tried memtest that came with the live ubuntu distro, it froze or rebooted in a short period of time. however running it from a different source in my case SystemRescueCD, it ran through all stages fine. I had no pc issues thats why i tried a different source cause i knew it shouldn't have done that on my system..

re-run memtest. make sure your running it live and not from within windows. if your not sure if your source is good you could also just use.. http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage ..all you have to do is select memtest from the live boot screen

test one stick of ram at a time.. if it finds and error, re-run the test on the same stick but use the 2nd bank of dimm slots, not the slot you would of used for the second ram stick. and repeat for the second ram stick. heck you could test all 4 slots if wanted.

no your pc would not freeze without defect no matter how high settings you use.

your parts selection would make it seem like your not a noob... is this actually one of your first builds? or is it safe to assume it was properly assembled?

This is my first build for myself, I have built a hacking tosh for my girlfriend but that is it. Although it is one of my first I am very knowledgable on parts and have been helping many people pick parts for theirs. The build went smoothly, only took an afternoon, and the cable management is very good, i can only assume everything was assembled correctly, but i am no expert so it could well be wrong. I've sort of ruled out airflow or temp.

I have managed to run memtest off the disk In two different versios. One with the old fashioned blue screen look at the one with the black screen. The black screen is the one that freezes, it runs fine when it's set to one core in the CPU settings but when I change it to do it for all cores it freezes up. The blue one doesn't freeze when doing a the core but it takes forever. I left it for 14 hours and it only just done 2 passes.

 

[jolancer]

I thought when you mentioned BIOS version FC, that meant you checked it.. however upon closer inspection FC doesn't exist so typo? are you running F7 or above?

memtest goes through several stages to make one complete pass... sorry i havn't ran or used any modern computer as of late otherwise i would know what you mean... but are you saying it took 14hr's to go through 2stages for you? or 2full passes?... 1 full pass is good enough per ram stick for you to rule out the ram in your particular case, since you say it freezes even just on desktop multiple times since xmas, thats a short time. memtest does take a long time tho to make a full pass

 

[poley]

I thought when you mentioned BIOS version FC, that meant you checked it.. however upon closer inspection FC doesn't exist so typo? are you running F7 or above?

memtest goes through several stages to make one complete pass... sorry i havn't ran or used any modern computer as of late otherwise i would know what you mean... but are you saying it took 14hr's to go through 2stages for you? or 2full passes?... 1 full pass is good enough per ram stick for you to rule out the ram in your particular case, since you say it freezes even just on desktop multiple times since xmas, thats a short time. memtest does take a long time tho to make a full pass

Not a typo is says FC on my version -> http://imgur.com/zWyapOX

Memtest went through two full passes

 

[poley]

Do motherboards need supported ram or should any ram work on any board?

 

[jolancer]

..I see i was looking at the wrong board revision, FC is correct.

I dunno about ram compatability these days...

sorry im also not familiar with modern stability tools.
but back in the day ATI always use to have a tool free on there site for stress testing and temp monitoring there cards... give it a good burn and see how high the gpu temp gets.

if that didn't lock it up, do same with cpu. I'd be curious to know what others recommend for this cause IDK what thy use these days. I use to use prime95 and run multiple instances for each core of the CPU.

I don't believe a HDD could completely lockup a system like that without still having mouse cursor use or something as long as pagefiles were not in use. but SSD's i dont know, would be curious to know what others with SSD experience say

If any stress tests you do end up locking up your system... you have to do it more than once.. and if it's not really consistant and still random. try pluggin your computer into s different wall outlet and test it again

 

[poley]

I dunno about ram compatability these days...

sorry im also not familiar with modern stability tools.
but back in the day ATI always use to have a tool free on there site for stress testing and temp monitoring there cards... give it a good burn and see how high the gpu temp gets.

if that didn't lock it up, do same with cpu. I'd be curious to know what others recommend for this cause IDK what thy use these days. I use to use prime95 and run multiple instances for each core of the CPU.

I don't believe a HDD could completely lockup a system like that without still having mouse cursor use or something as long as pagefiles were not in use. but SSD's i dont know, would be curious to know what others with SSD experience say

If any stress tests you do end up locking up your system... you have to do it more than once.. and if it's not really consistant and still random. try pluggin your computer into s different wall outlet and test it again

I have run many burn tests and some like intel burn test will crash with both sticks in and only one but not with other but the of still freezes with only that in. OCCT occasional crashes but it doesn't seem to crash at same place it more like the computer crashes as the The usage is higher not the fact the test is running

 

[denis280]

Do motherboards need supported ram or should any ram work on any board?

by gigabyte memory support list.those are not supported.
****************.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memory/memory_ga-970a-ud3.pdf

 

[poley]

by gigabyte memory support list.those are not supported.
****************.gigabyte.us/FileList/Memory/memory_ga-970a-ud3.pdf

How strict are the support guidelines for memory that isnt listed?

 

[Steltek]

How strict are the support guidelines for memory that isnt listed?

The memory compatibility list only represents specific modules which have been tested by the manufacturer and are known to be compatible with the motherboard. It doesn't mean modules not listed won't work - it just means that the manufacturer won't guarantee the motherboard to work with any modules not on that list. In other words, it is a legal document to provide them with legal coverage against lawsuits.

Looking at the Avexir website, the MPower series was created specifically to work with MSI's MPower motherboard. You might email their tech department for information that you can use to try to manually set the timings for your motherboard.

 

[jolancer]

IOCCT occasional crashes but it doesn't seem to crash at same place it more like the computer crashes as the The usage is higher not the fact the test is running

I don't know what you mean?(im not familiar with OCCT an dunno wat it does) as the usage gets higher not because of the test? do you mean you are doing other things on the computer as you are stress testing it?... might I add, in order for stress testing to help diagnose anything, you have to run one specific test at a time. Stress testing your CPU should use up all your cores so it should apear that your computer is so unresponsive its almost unusable but not "locked up" frozen.

I don't know if improper ram timings could actually cause your issue, my experience in the past was if my timings were improper it would simply fail to boot, reseting bios and changing them back would fix the prob.

If you still suspect timings to be a possible cause, i always found one of the biggest impact on stability/performance conserning timing was the 2T,1T clock cycle timing option or whatever it was called. change it to 2T for testing.

personally tho i wouldn't mess with the ram untill other tests came back inconclusive... also if i recall correctly, the default timings for even performance ram would be looser than advertized for compatability sake, and would need to be manually set.. not sure if thats because of the ram or the BIOS dictating it, i never bothered to find out.

your not overclocking are you?

 

[Traxan]

I just looked at the memory compatibility list for that motherboard and your memory is not on it. Swap it out for something that is. Here is the list:

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3907#memory support list

 

[denis280]

rma those and get compatible one

 

[Mushkins]

Gonna agree with the rest after reading through the thread. Your RAM is some custom stuff made specifically for MSI motherboards, and is not on the list of compatible RAM for your motherboard. Memtest is pretty consistently giving you errors. You're getting freezing and crashing. My absolute first guess would be that RAM is not playing nice with your board, replace it with something that's definitely supported.

 

[poley]

rma those and get compatible one

Trying to RMA them but they are only offering replacement and not refund