How do I figure out what's causing my computer to crash?

[imail724]

I have been having an issue for a while where my computer would completely freeze up and the monitor would go black, but the computer would still be running, leaving me with no option but to hold in the power button. Back in august I bought a graphics card and started having a similar issue except the screen wouldn't go black it would just remain on whatever screen I was on, completely unresponsive. Yesterday I took the graphics card out and went back to on-board graphics and low and behold, screen blacks-out again. I have run memtest and hdtest in the past and both have passed. Is this a motherboard issue?

OS - Windows 7 x64
CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
Video Card - MSI R7770-PMD1GD5 Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready
MotherBoard - GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-USB3 AM3+ AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD
Power Supply - CORSAIR Enthusiast Series 550W
RAM - 8 gb G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM

Does anyone have any experience with this motherboard? I see it is now discontinued on newegg and only has 86 reviews.

Edit: I just found out I don't have the latest BIOS installed, could that cause issues such as this or is that irrelevant?

 

[imail724]

Very rarely do I get bluescreens. I think the last time I got one I took 2 2gb sticks of ram out and the problem went away.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

At least you get error codes with bluescreens. So that doesn't help.

 

[imail724]

Ok, so I finally got that PSU from the friend I mentioned, but looking at it I see it is only 450w, while the one currently installed is 550. Will this be an issue given my specs?

Edit: I think this is the one, specifically http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371045

 

[Deleted member 217926]

The VP 450 is sufficient for your system.

 

[imail724]

Cool, gonna hook it up now. Will report back if issues continue. Thank you for all your help!

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

No reason not to test the power supply, but I still guess mobo. Could always test with heavyload like I suggested before. But yeah, problems like that always kinda suck because it can be difficult to track down intermittent or flaky problems rather than just non-working parts.

 

[imail724]

Guess its worth popping back in here to say I've had the new PSU installed for probably close to 3 months now and have not had any issues since. So it seems the PSU was the issue (although with my luck it will freeze right after posting this). Thanks to everyone in this thread for their help in figuring this issue out.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Great man! Glad it's working for you. Once we ruled out everything else it pretty much had to be the PSU. Glad we could help