Really weird intermittent system freezing/lock up, any help much appreciated :)

[WhiteSnake91]

I have no virus whatsoever and ram and hdd have checked out ok, I even bought a new very well regarded higher end seasonic psu but to no avail, every once in awhile, randomly, my system will totally freeze/lock up and I'll have to hold the power button, usually at the most inconvenient time too like when chatting or playing a game with friends. I'm thinking maybe after ~5 years my z77 mobo could slowly be dying? I see no busted or leaking capacitors on it or anything though.

Currently have an i7 2600k, 8gb ddr3 1333 9-9-9-24 timings, amd rx 480 8gb gpu, win 7 on a samsung 840 ssd, a few large capacity 7200rpm hdds for games....even though the cpu is old, I've never even had to overclock it, plays anything I want smooth for me

With decent z77 mobos costing so much all these years later, it's gotten me thinking about honestly picking up a cheap "good enough" fx6300 and cheap am3+ mobo and saying screw it and just using that eventually, as I've gotten older I find myself gaming less and less, and when I do it's not the latest and greatest demanding stuff, usually casual co op with friends, I have a ps4 console for new stuff if ever needed too....pc is mostly for media consumption and occasional gaming/streaming....I used to have a Phenom x6 as my primary pc and in real world usage I didn't see much difference vs the older i5 3570k I used to use, so I'm sure the fx6300 could keep up....


truth be told, I would have gone Ryzen 6 core/12 thread (r5 1600 iirc?) earlier this year, but I've become very frugal in my older years and didn't feel like spending money on ryzen, somewhat expensive decent mobo, then expensive fast ddr4 that ryzen needs to not be crippled when I already have 16gb ddr3 lol....

basically, if everything else is ok, like me having no virus and hdd and ram health ok, is it for sure the mobo slowly dying?I mean, I could try a fresh win10 64bit install and see if it still freezes up, it's just such a random intermittent issue I'm not even sure what triggers it for sure.

 

[WhiteSnake91]

An update, my pc froze again yesterday. I fell asleep with my pc on, and woke up to my razer keyboard's lights off, my main monitor showing static like those old tube tv's do, and my 2nd monitor frozen totally on the site I was on. Had to hold down the power button and then it restarted on its own....was fine for the rest of the day till later that night, I went to get munchies and came back to my keyboard's lights on, but both monitors black saying no signal....sigh 🙁

I updated the drivers to 17.11.1, the newest available I believe for my rx 480, and am waiting to see if it does it again. I've fried my brain reading online what could cause this....maybe my motherboard is dying after having it like 5 years, idk. Or maybe gpu is messed up, or maybe 17.7 (I think that's what I was on before) was just a bad amd driver.

As I've gotten older I don't game as much as I used to, and when I do it's certainly not anything demanding....I was saddened when I went looking for cheap budget gpu online though to see the couple year old gtx 750ti still going for like 80 bucks used >_> I was hoping to maybe get a budget gpu to see if my pc still freezes up which wouldn't cost more than 30-40 bucks but maybe I was being too wishful....

There any legit places online that sell cheap kinda older gpu? I'd be fine with something on the hd 7770 level-ish just to test to see if my pc still freezes or not....but I REALLY don't wanna spend a penny over 40 bucks for a cheap older gpu....