PC having freezing issues when gaming/slight heavy usage

[Skillrage]

Alright, so I'm kinda at the end of my rope on what to do exactly to find out what exactly is wrong. I thought I had the problem fixed, however it still persists, which actually confused me more.

From the beginning I'll start.
When my PC started to go under a little bit of heavy load such as watching YouTube for 20+ minutes while doing other light tasks, or 3d gaming for about 5-10 minutes it would freeze. Not a BSOD or normal crash, but the screen froze with no response from keyboard or mouse or anything. It still was running and all fans and lights were on, but the screen froze and it took no input which forced me to hard reset.

I thought it may be the GPU, RAM, or something in the BIOS.
Well those are broad issues so I tried everything from memory testing to using memtest and prime95. When I ran the torture test it almost immediately freezes. However my ram is fine on any other occasion.

I uninstalled my AMD CCC software and installed MSI afterburner to use the force constant voltage and to disable ULPS on my GPU, and that seemed to fix it, really did. But then I tried running dead rising 3 for about 2 hours and no problems. Then it happened again. So I tried running prime95 again and it still crashed instantly.

Like I said I'm at the end of my rope wondering what could be causing it. Any help would be appreciated.

My hardware is
AMD 8 core 9590 CPU
AMD R9 290 GPU
G-skill ripjaws X 8 GB 2133mhz RAM
MoBo GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3 AMD 990 ATX
PSU is 600w standard 80 plus certified.


My only final thought on it could be the PSU, which I'm hoping it's not but if I don't have the tools to test it anyways (multimeter, etc.) and it seems to be fine in its 12v rails not going over 5% either way.

 

[Vice93]

When I ran the torture test it almost immediately freezes.

So I tried running prime95 again and it still crashed instantly.

So what makes you think it's not a problem with the CPU?

Have you checked the temperatures when you're playing?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Skillrage,

Given the fact you have tested your RAM, my guess would be that your PSU is causing all of this. Unfortunately, the easiest way to see whether this is the case is to just borrow a PSU from someone and install it on your system.

Some other things you can try:
- Measure the temps as Vice93 already suggested.
- Try running your system with only one RAM stick at a time(even though you have already tested the RAM).

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[Skillrage]

I'll try that, though the reason I think it isn't the CPU or any temperature problem is because I run afterburner for GPU tempt and also coretemp and HWmonitor and they've never gone above or near their max range. My CPU has a safe zone to about 80C° but the highest it goes, even after two or three hours of gaming is 54-60c°
And it's usually only on the highest intensity games. GTA V recently released and after a few minutes it decides
To freeze on me.

 

[Skillrage]

Just to update, the glitch happened again. I was running Far Cry 4 with no flaws, died and then it froze. Rebooted and no glitch again until the next day. I rebooted and it happened again very soon, before I was even running anything intensive. Could that actually be temp related after all? It boggles me because I've had it running hot and it doesn't happen. It just seems to choose when to freeze on me. I tested using up all but a fraction of my ram and it didn't freeze. I've tested running multiple videos and games and it just heats up. But then run an intensive game and it will likely freeze within an hour. Or it may not.

 

[Vice93]

Have you tried running prime95?

If not try that please.

edit: sorry guess I didn't read to too well... I just woke up m'kay?

So if I understand this correctly, when you didn't use all your RAM, it never froze? But using it all it did?

I just noticed that you're running 2133mhz ram on a 1866mhz supported MoBo, not that this should matter as it wouldn't start if there were problems. But there might be something here, I'm not skilled enough to say for sure though.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Do you mean that you have tested your computer with only one stick of RAM? If this is the case, then I guess it could be a faulty RAM stick. You can try running your system with the other RAM stick only, and see whether the issue will persists. This way you will be sure whether one of them is causing this.

D_Know_WD

 

[Skillrage]

Sorry to clarify I've run many tests on my ram, and I've used programs to test 7gb of it at a time, so both sticks were being utilized and the freeze didn't happen. I ran it with only one stick and though I couldn't run certain games with only 4gb I tried prime95 again and it still freezes.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Have you checked Resource Monitor during the freezes? If not, you can do so. See whether something has really high usage and what is causing it eventually. In case this is the HDD usage, you can check it for errors: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/check-your-hard-disk-for-errors

D_Know_WD

 

[Vice93]

Are you overclocking your CPU?