New system, built, freezing up prob.

MengusDew

New Member
This is my system:
Cool master HAf 932 Case with all factory fans(4) running(man this thing is F@*#ing huge)
Corsair HX850W PSU
Asus M4A78T-E MOBO
AMD Phenom 2 X4 955 B.E. CPU
CPU BUS under "AI Tweaker" set at 215MGhz for 3.44Ghz CPU in "Windows SYS Rating"
All other MOBO settings at deafult under "Auto"
Zalman CNPS 9900LED CPU cooler(installed w/ top-of-the-line thermal compound)
Mushkin Blackline 2x2GB 1600 ddr3 #996657 X2(for 8gb total) RAM
WD Velociraptor 300gb HDD
Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
MOBO has inset VGA Radeon 3300 HD card, but will be getting 2 X HD 5750 in crossfire soon
Running everything in 1080p on a Asus 24" HDMI monitor
Have installed no games yet

My problem is:
I've built this system and ran it for about 4 days now, and have encountered about 10 freeze ups during OS loading and a few other instances. I had to reset my system, via holding down power button. This occurred a couple of times under complete factory BIOS settings also, but not as much. I'm getting CPU Benchmark scores on Cinebench around 13890 on X4 @3440 MGhz ( not sure if these are settings or just social info).

All drivers are completely up-to-date, and I have no extra software installed other than AVG latest Internet Security, and Sandra latest. The CPU stays at 38-39 C on Average, and around 45-49 C during Benching. But it's freezing up a lot. Way more than my old P.O.S. computer, although , it functions way faster. It's Just that random shit locks up, mostly during any Benchmarking and sometimes during OS loading. I'm Assuming it's because of on-board VGA can't handle this(assumption is prob way off, but have little experience in determining these factors) Can someone please offer me an explanation?
 
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If you have overclocked your CPU then you need to raise your voltages on your NB as well and maybe your ram too. The freezes are casued by a voltage problem
 
Having the bus speed at 215 overclocks other things too. I'm better it's the memory thats giving you the freezeups. Drop the memory to the next lower setting and it should be fine...meaning since you have DDR3-1600 drop the ram to 1333 setting.
 
If you have overclocked your CPU then you need to raise your voltages on your NB as well and maybe your ram too. The freezes are casued by a voltage problem

I have increased the BUS on the CPU but not the voltage on the CPU or NB. I wanted to do this but since the BOIS just lists both of these voltages as Auto until I type in the amount I want them at, I have no idea what to put them at. I don't wanna tear anything up. Any suggestion on what to safely set these at?

As far as the ram goes, I have 1600 RAM. When I change the CPU BUS, BOIS automatically raises the RAM frequency above that. Is this something that I should fix also?
 
DO this first and see if your problems stop. Take out the CMOS battery to clear your bios settings. If all is well then you need to manually set some timing and voltages on the ram.
 
I don't wanna tear anything up. Any suggestion on what to safely set these at?

Reset your bios by taking the battery out and leaving it unplugged for 5 minutes, what it sets it to is what I use as default.
Then I start my overclock this way its 100% safe and you know where to start. I did this method with my Q6600 to ensure I was safe.
 
I have increased the BUS on the CPU but not the voltage on the CPU or NB. I wanted to do this but since the BOIS just lists both of these voltages as Auto until I type in the amount I want them at, I have no idea what to put them at. I don't wanna tear anything up. Any suggestion on what to safely set these at?

As far as the ram goes, I have 1600 RAM. When I change the CPU BUS, BOIS automatically raises the RAM frequency above that. Is this something that I should fix also?

Why are you using the Bus to overclock when you have a BE cpu??? Put all settings back to normal and use the multiplier to overclock. You should be able to get most likely 3.4-3.5ghz on stock voltage, which is as simple as taking the multiplier to 17 or 17.5. Bump CPU voltage to like 1.425 should get 3.6ghz stable no problem, but every setup is different. Use whatever minimum voltage that is stable on a given overclock.
 
Alright I've fixed the freezing up problem and a few other insignificant ones I was having. I updated my BOIS to the most recent, which happened to be real recent. I then put all the settings back to defualt (which is AUTO), with the exception of my DRAM Frequency, I changed it from 1333 to 1600.

Now in BIOS under A.I. Tweaker these are all the options listed:
CPU Ratio
DRAM Frequency
CPU/NB Frequency
HT Link
CPU Voltage
CPU/NB Voltage
CPU VDDA Voltage
DRAM Voltage
HT Voltage
NB Voltage
NB 1.8v Voltage
SB Voltage
CPU Spread Spectrum
PCIE Spread Spectrum

Which of these is the multiplier?
 
Yeah I just figured this stuff out by reading around, I've got my Multiplier set and my voltage set, running at 3.51 now with no hangs up.

When I restarted my PC to get to BIOS Windows brought up some Boot manger screen and I hit enter then loaded it up. Now I wanna got back to BIOS to raise the NB Voltage and mess with the RAM, but now I don't get my usual MOBO screen when booting up it just immediately loads up Windows 7. I know this has got something to do with Windows boot manager, but I can't figure out how to fix it where I can get back to BIOS.
 
When you get the mobo screen hit the delete key (it's above the arrows in a cluster of 6 keys, below the ''insert'' key). If that doesn't work, try the F2 key. Those are the typical 2 keys that enter the bios.
 
Ok this has gotten ridiculous now. My system freezes up all the time now. I've got the latest BIOS, all BIOS settings are at default. It'll freeze up, not most of the time but sometimes, when windows is loading. It freezes every time I try to load fallout 3 (the only game I have right now), even though yesterday I played the game for a few hours no problem. I'll be surfing the web and it freezes up. Most of the time, but not always, when it does freeze up either green or red lines appear all over the screen....it's gotten worse. I think some hardware is damaged or faulty. Is there some sort of software that can give me a diagnostic on my hardware and tell me if any particular hardware is unstable?

Updated question: Could running win 7 64bit on my on-board VGC have something to do with this? I think my VGC may only support 32bit.
 
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Ok this thing is really pissing me off now. I got home from work after the system had been in sleep. Nothing but crashes when I tried to run anything or boot the system. I messed around with it, took out each individual ram card and ran the system, hoping that it was just a RAM card gone corrupt. Took one out, boted the sysem, it crashed, took another one out,crashed. After down to one it finally stopped crashing. Put one second card in, no probs. put another in crashes. So I put in all cards except that one, it crashes. I avoided that particular slot for RAM and put 3 cards in, it's running fine. Did a memtest no probs. Then put last card back into prob. slot, no probs. Ran memtest agian no probs. It's almost as if this computer runs great when it's been powered up and running for a while, but when it's been down and cooled it wants to act like a bitch. Ran several different Temp test on several programs, and EVERYTHING statys in the low 30. Finally did a full system test with BurnInTest. No errors, sailed through the whole thing with no issues. No crashes sense. Runs fallout 3 GOTYE fine for now. I have a feeling when I put it in sleep , then wake it back up crashes will start again. I just cannot figure it out.
 
I think you have something enabled in bios for sleep. Some bios have this like the x58 boards. See if you can disable it. Also if your running vista, it has knowns issues with sleep.

but either the sleep is causing it or you have a ram slot dieing.
 
Also reinstall windows to see if you have corrupt windows as well. To rule out the OS for the issues. I had GFX drivers freezing my computer before and reinstalling them fixed it so maybe you corrupted a system file.
 
Well so far not one crash and everything is running as smooth as ever. I didn't even do anything other than remove different RAM cards and put them back, I updated my BIOS, set it to all default, then put the RAM back up to 1600mhz from the factory 1333. While I was do all that it was locking up every couple of minutes but after the last reboot and burn in test it's been perfect and I have been running Fallout 3 with no probs. It automatically goes into sleep after 30 mins. And when I wake it, not the slightest hang up. I don't have a clue what was wrong, but if I'm lucky It'll stay how it is. If it does start up again though, I will reinstall Windows (7 64 bit for system builders).
 
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It's been crashing again. Not near as often, mostly when I try to run full-screen on low-quality streaming videos, and occasionally when just idling.

I think I've narrowed that cause to 1 of 2 possible reasons:
1) possible incompatibility of the ram and MOBO
2) possible incompatibility of the VGC and OS

I know that I am running Win 7 64bit, but my onboard VGC will only allow for 32bit. This could be my issue.

Also the reason that leads me to think it could possibly be the RAM/MOBO is during booting once, the BOIS was all set to default(RAM set to 1333mhz even though it's 1600mhz RAM), yet it said something about overclocking failed and asked me to setup BIOS. I again asked it to set everything to default and it rebooted and quickly flashed something about checking VRAM before it went on to OS.

Now I'm not sure if this even a plausible diagnosis of the RAM compatibility, but I've done mem test and burn in ram test and they pass just fine.

Anyone got any suggestions? My main concern is with it possibly further damaging something resulting from the issue before I fix it.
 
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