What could be causing my rig to HANG?

[spacetoilet]

Hi,
I have twice now woke up to find my PC in a 'hard hang' which is, you sometimes cannot even reboot by holding down the power button.
I was number crunching with my GPU (milkyway@home) ATi Radeon 5850
each time this happened.
I play allot of games on high settings and it never gives me any greif, I have all the latest drivers installed. I have good airflow too.
Anyone know how I can trouble shoot this? PSU? GPU? MOBO?
oh, and a quick look on a PSU tester shows all rails are fine (admittedly this is not under full load like crunching numbers)
Memtest I ran for 5 hours and no errors.:\

MY rig is:
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 mobo
XFX radeon 5850
4 gig G-skill DDR 1600 (XMP)
i7 860 cpu (stock speed 2.8ghz)
Corsair H-50 water cpu cooler (2 fans push/pull)
Antec 650 watt PSU
Antec 900 case and fans
1tb Sata drive
W7 SP1 ultimate / Hacintosh Snow Leopard 10.6

 

[deimos3428]

Number-crunching will push your CPU/GPU harder than games; could it be a less-than-100% stable overclock? Dial back the settings to confirm.

 

[dpodblood]

I would guess an overclocking, or overheating issue. Have you cleaned out your components with compressed air recently?

 

[JRW]

In your post you show "i7 860 cpu (stock speed 2.8ghz)" so im guessing your NOT overclocking anything?

How are your temps doing under load? I like to use Core Temp which shows readings for each core http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

 

[spacetoilet]

Nothing is overclocked plus do I really need to check on cpu temps when I'm using a GPU number crunching client?

 

[RavenSEAL]

Nothing is overclocked plus do I really need to check on cpu temps when I'm using a GPU number crunching client?

ehh...yes

 

[dpodblood]

Nothing is overclocked plus do I really need to check on cpu temps when I'm using a GPU number crunching client?

Yes. Your system could overheat even when idling if it isn't getting proper ventilation. Could even happen if your heatsink isn't mounted properly.

 

[spacetoilet]

Well ok, here is the boinc client running (sorry for the crap pic quality)
This (if you can see from the CCC) puts gpu pretty much under full load.
I never O.C but I use the overdrive feature just to ramp up the FAN, as for some reason AMD let it run at 86c, the default never ramps fan up much.
I have cpuz there too.

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/9924/captureuxt.jpg

 

[badb0y]

I am not sure what is causing this but thin usually only happens if I try to OC my card too far.

 

[MustangSVT]

hmm are you sure you can't reset it by holding power button?

even during the worst hangs/crashes, I am always able to shut it down by holding power button. (maybe for about 5 seconds).

anyway, is this something that hasn't happened before? has anything changed?

 

[spacetoilet]

Nothing new on this rig since I built it a year ago. I mean I have had the usual BFBC2 wig outs but last few months has been solid.
But for the game to just up and reboot the system seems like hardware to me. Just not sure what it is. I mean the PSU I have is supposedly more than sufficient for my hardware, and I have always found Antec to be solid.
My temps seem great with the h-50 and the antec 900 case fans, I have decent cable management etc....

 

[Grinja]

But for the game to just up and reboot the system seems like hardware to me.

I had this issue when I updated to cat 11.2. Sometimes reboot other times hard hang and I would need to switch PC off first. I was pretty sure my PC was dying (CPU is overclocked for last 4 years) Problem was it wouldn't happen when I ran stress test like Prime.

A rollback to the previous driver and everything is 100% though. I think my issues was not using driver sweeper.

Anyway point I'm trying to make is that it could be drivers ...

 

[Termie]

I had this issue when I updated to cat 11.2. Sometimes reboot other times hard hang and I would need to switch PC off first. I was pretty sure my PC was dying (CPU is overclocked for last 4 years) Problem was it wouldn't happen when I ran stress test like Prime.

A rollback to the previous driver and everything is 100% though. I think my issues was not using driver sweeper.

Anyway point I'm trying to make is that it could be drivers ...

Yup, could be the drivers. Try 10.6, that's what I'm on right now.

I don't know how the drivers react to number-crunching, but it may expose an instability in them.

 

[JRW]

I'd just like to throw in that on my other PC still in use (dual core AMD X2 4800+ rig) I had bad luck with Antec PSU's, They were fine the first 6-8 months but then started to fail causing random immediate shutdowns and reboots (no hardlocks so I'm not saying this is the OPs issue).

I went through 2 Antec 550W earthwatts models (2nd one was a replacement under warranty) I then switched to a BFG 650W and havent had any issues, its been nearly 2 years since and the BFG is still holding up fine.

I went with a Corsair 750W psu in my current i7 / gtx480 setup based on recommendations and reviews, so far everything has been rock stable for over a year now (cpu has been oc'd since day 1).