Random Crashes, HELP please!!!

[johnjk]

Hey all,

Been reading Tom's and Anandtech for 2-3 years now and have 2 custom built systems under my belt now. I built a new computer last November and have had trouble with it ever since. Basically the problem is random, unexplainable crashes. Have tried running numerous diagnosis with no luck. CPU and GPU were overclocked, lowered them to prevent crashes but it doesn't seem to have helped.

To explain it simply, when playing a game, watching tv, surfing the net, or after leaving it alone for 10 minutes it will randomly crash. The crash occurs 2-3 times per day. The crash is characterized by freezing of all programs. The HD LED light that indicates use is always solid with no flashes. Approximately 30sec to 1 min later the computer reboots itself.

Nothing I have done seems to help. Please advise.

Comp specs:
-AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego 2.4GHz Socket 939 Processor Model ADA4000BNBOX
ASUS A8R-MVP Socket 939 ATI Radeon XPRESS 200 CrossFire ATX AMD CrossFire Motherboard
-SAPPHIRE 100106-RD Radeon X850XT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card
-Apevia (Apsire) 500W Power Supply
-CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWINX1024-3200C2PT
-Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

 

[nobly]

If you have software voltage monitoring, you might want to check that to see if your voltages are in spec as well.

The software monitoring isn't great, but it can tell you something if something's going down the tubes.

 

[johnjk]

PC Probe shows Vcore at 1.41
+3.3 at 3.31
+5 at +5.11
+12 at +12.30

Speed Fan Shows different Values but since the mobo isn't fully supported what those voltages are I can't say. Here they are:

1.41 - obviously vcore
3.31
6.85
12.42
4.01
4.05
5.05
3.26
4.08

 

[bigspin]

Same prob hapn in ma old PC.I try these thing...

1. Reset to normal mem timing values if you set it manually
2. Try to upgrade your VGA driver(My prob solved after that)

 

[johnjk]

Have reseted memory timings. With extremely tight timings, crash may have been slightly more frequent. Have run it a standard mem timing for 6 months w/ crashes.

By VGA Driver do you mean ATI's driver for graphics card??? If so, that has the most current version and always has had it.

 

[bigspin]

Have reseted memory timings. With extremely tight timings, crash may have been slightly more frequent. Have run it a standard mem timing for 6 months w/ crashes.

Hmmm.. it mean something wrong with your ram. you can plug your ram chip to other system and chk da results.

Update to latest BIOS

Reinstall mobo chipset driver(Try latest one)

 

[nobly]

Since it seems that your RAM may be questionable, run memtest86 like mpilchfamily suggested earlier. Also put everything at stock speeds.

 

[Mondoman]

memtest86+ is a must.
After that, run PRIME95, one copy per core, in "stress-test" mode.

BTW, what model Aspire PS do you have?

 

[johnjk]

How long should i run memtest and prime95?

 

[johnjk]

Ok,.. so here is what I have done.

I downloaded newest bios driver. The driver was apparently updated to corrzct some stability issues. This update set the memory back to default.

Ran MemTest96+ all night for 7 passes and it had zero errors. So far no crashes today.

May be ram or bios. Will tinker with ram and find out. Thanks for your help. It was obvious and easy.

 

[bigspin]

Dude always update your bios.I told you this is the bios prob.Bcoz if your ram is the crash maker system not even boot.Any way gd luck..