Old system upgrade causing random lock ups

[MisterCynic]

I recently upgraded the graphics card of my about 5 year old system to a radeon HD 7870 and have been getting random freezing/lock ups (mouse and display freezes, audio stutters for a couple seconds then stops, ctrl/alt/del is unresponsive) that force a hard reset.

I've tried running driver sweeper and reinstalling the drivers to no avail. Tried using the old graphics card again and it's giving the same issue. Run memtest for 10 hours with no problems discovered. Cleaned registry, updated BIOS and other system drivers and still no improvement. Swapped out the PSU for a brand new one and still the same issue. I've noticed when opening a web browser, specifically Chrome, it tends to lock up shortly after, though not always. Uninstalled chrome and it ran for days without issue, but eventually locked up again with apparently no trigger. I wanted to make sure I've tried all other possibilities before replacing everything I haven't already so I'm asking here. System specs are as follows:

Asus m2n-e motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+
DDR2 4GB (2 x 2GB) memory
Radeon HD 7870 (previously Geforce 9800 GT)
Corsair TX750 (previously Ultra LSP750)
Windows 7 64bit home premium

 

[firo40]

Being such an old motherboard and processor chances are your motherboard is going to die. Try an intel build when you have to reconfigure another pc. I have had alot of issues with am2 and am2+ motherboards especially in 2013. A graphics card like that dosnt deserve to be bottlenecked by an AMD processor, i would recommend an I5 3570 and atleast get 8gb of 1600mhz ddr3.