Replaced everything, comp still freezes

[Traxan]

Regulars here have seen more than a few threads from me, so this should be no surprise. But I am out of options...

A few months ago I decided to migrate from a P55 machine to a Z68 because I had an SSD and wanted the full benefit of SATA 3. In the process, my system has become a nightmare. It regularly freezes, and I mean completely. The whole thing is locked up. It happens when I'm using it but it often happens if I leave the computer on overnight. I wake up to a frozen PC. I hit the reset button and it powers off, then comes back on about 5 seconds later. Other times, the PC just shuts down completely, and again, about 5 seconds later, it restarts.

In that time I have replaced the video card about 3x, the motherboard, the CPU, cooler, the power supply and the case. It STILL freezes. I blamed my 5870, so a friend gave me a GTX560 Ti. Froze AGAIN.

The only thing that has not been replaced is the memory, but I've run Memtest repeatedly and it never found a problem.

I can't afford to keep swapping parts. THis is insane. What would be the suspect here?

The only culprit left is the SSD, an OCZ Agility 3. I have the latest firmware. Either that or there is a bum memory DIMM but I've run Memtest a bunch of times now and no failure.

The current hardware lineup is:

Core i7-2600K
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H
16GB of Corsair memory
Corsair Professional Series HX850W Power supply
3 different video cards: ATI 5770, 5870 and now an Nvidia GTX560 Ti.
Windows 7 64-bit
OCZ Agility 3 SSD
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (the on-board audio for mobos never sounds as good)

 

[janas19]

Isn't it blatantly obvious? Your SSD or controller.

Knowing the issues surrounding the OCZ SSDs and BSODs, and yet you've replaced every part of your computer except your SSD....

This makes no sense to me.

 

[raf051888]

When you migrated to the SSD did you do a clean install? Did you completely remove the ATI / AMD Video Drivers when you switched video cards?

 

[Murloc]

RMA your SSD or get it exchanged from the shop with something else.
If it still freezes, get that friend to give you some rams to try.

 

[denis280]

Isn't it blatantly obvious? Your SSD or controller.

Knowing the issues surrounding the OCZ SSDs and BSODs, and yet you've replaced every part of your computer except your SSD....

This makes no sense to me.

Yeah! I Agree with janas19

 

[Traxan]

It finally dawned on me after posting. I dug around for a disk copying utility to copy the SSD to my old boot drive, a Seagate Momentus XT. The copy took hours and I didn't want to disrupt the C: drive so I shut down all apps and let it run overnight. I awoke to a frozen computer, but at least it finished.

Unfortunately, the copy was not successful. Can anyone recommend a good drive copy utility? If not, it's reinstall time AGAIN.

But yeah, I did come to realize it was the SSD. Shoulda done that $500 ago.

Oh and I did do a clean install for both the P55->Z68 migration. By that point I owned the SSD.

 

[Puppies04]

Fresh install time. Make sure you have the latest SSD firmware and mobo bios and start from scratch. If the problem still occurs RMA/replace the SSD.

 

[Traxan]

Well I put WIndows 7 on the old Momentus XT, the SSD was unplugged. Went through a complete reinstall. As I was installing Rainmeter, it froze again.

So I got suspicious. Maybe it wasn't the SSD, it was Rainmeter. So I restarted the computer using the SSD as the boot but turned off Rainmeter. Still locked.

So I guess the RAM is all that's left. I've run Memtest 4.0a multiple times with no errors.

The mobo, video cards and SSD all have the latest firmwares, btw.

 

[dbcooper1]

Make and boot from a linux live CD and see how it responds; that should isolate your SSD from a RAM problem.

 

[daveybrat]

I've had some compatibility issues between corsair and gigabyte motherboards before. I would take 3 of the 4GB sticks out and run the system with just a single 4GB stick. If it still locks up, try to find some GSkill or other brand of ram to try.

Sounds like ram to me.

 

[Traxan]

It was a double-whammy of both the SSD and memory going bad. I went back to the Momentus XT and Windows 7 kept getting corrupted when I'd install it. So I popped some Patriot memory in there and it's been flawless since.

Of course, going from an SSD to a regular HD is like going from broadband to dialup, but hey...

Frustrating as hell, and I feel kind of stupid to have replaced things like the PSU and case but never thought to go for the memory or SSD. Part of it was due to Memtest not having any problems. But anyway... over and done.

 

[strullis]

Heh, this sounds pretty much exactly like my problem: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2228086 with very similar setups too.

FWIW, I tried reinstalling without the SSD on a slower HDD and stil got the freezes and/or random poweroff/on's..and I've also changed everything except RAM (well, and CPU) (which all of them passed many hours of memtest), so now I'm doing one stick at a time, let's pray thats the issue.