Question PC Keeps Freezing/Restarting

[WillMatthews]

I'm building a PC for a friend. I've frankensteined parts from the tower he brought me, my old computer, and Free Geek. Here's the specs (from a snap from Speccy):


OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz

RAM: 4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR @ 533MHx (7-7-7-20)

MoBo: EVGA 132-YW-E179-FTW (Socket 775)

Graphics: ATI Microsoft Basic Display Adapter

Storage: WD 1TB HDD

Samsung 64GB SSD PM800

Case: Cooler Master HAF XB EVO


This thing's been giving me trouble from day one. The tower he brought me had 16 HDDs in a RAID, and one of the drives was bust. It didn't have a slot for a GPU, so I swapped in my old MoBo. His PSU didn't have the right connectors for my MoBo, so he bought a new PSU. The battery on the MoBo needed to be replaced. A tab on the stock Intel heatsink broke and it wasn't seated properly, so I had to replace that.


Now I've got it POSTing properly and I've installed Windows 10, but 80% of the time the computer will restart itself anywhere from a minute to ten minutes into operation. The other 20% of the time the computer will completely freeze. I don't get any messages during boot or from Windows about the computer having been shut down improperly. I can see the restart warnings in the event viewer. I've been watching the CPU temp in Speccy, and it never goes above 58 degrees. To be clear, I had no freezing/restart problems since I replaced the heatsink, and was able to install Windows with no interruptions.


Speccy doesn't seem to recognize the Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 I've got slotted in. I've managed to download the driver, and once I seemed to get it installed (the resolution adjusted itself to something higher that 640x480), but it restarted itself during the tail end of the install and went back to 640x480.


What are my next steps to figuring out what's causing the restarts? I'll edit this post to provide any additional clarification I can as needed.

 

[Ralston18]

What was the original PSU and what is the new PSU?

Make, model, wattage, age, condition...?

Any problems in Safe Mode?

 

[WillMatthews]

The new PSU is a Thermaltake SMART 600W, bought brand new.

The old PSU isn’t around anymore for me to check.

It took me a while to get home and get into safe mode. I just had a hyperbolic near-death experience with a giant pillow spider, so I’m outside cooling my nerves. I had safe mode running for about seven minutes with no interruptions.

A friend of mine suggested I find the install disc for my MoBo t see if there are any hardware specific drivers. That disc is long gone, but that’ll be my next attempt.

 

[WillMatthews]

I’ve almost solved it. My MoBo wasn’t compatible with WIndows 10. One install of Windows 7 later, there aren’t any more random freezes or restarts - just consistent freezes whenever I try to install the GPU drivers.

This MoBo doesn't have any onboard graphics and I don’t have a spare GPU to swap in; is there some way for me to verify that I’ve got a faulty GPU? My plan would be to pick something up at Free Geek tomorrow to replace it if so