Win 7 Ultimate custom PC randomly freezing

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bravozero

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
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10,510
Hi folks,

I'm at a bit of a loss. I built my PC back in late 2012, spec listed below. Ever since I've started using it, every once in a while I would get a random system freeze/lockup where no input from the keyboard or mouse would respond, and the screen freezes while playing the audio at that split second, in a loop.

Nothing in particular that I know of causes the issue, I've had it happen while playing various games, browsing the internet, playing video and/or music, or just letting it sit idle. My first thought was heat but I have enough fans running while doing power-intensive gaming or video that it stays fairly cool. I'm also thinking RAM, or perhaps a rogue driver acting up randomly. No idea.

I even upgraded my video card and storage drive to the current ones listed, and did a clean wipe and reinstall of Win 7 Ultimate. Even with the old components it still had this issue. I tried running the Memtest with no errors as well.

Any ideas? Thanks.

-CoolerMaster Scout case
-ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 mobo
-Intel Core i7 2600k
-Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600, 16GB (4x4GB)
-Corsair TX650 power supply
-Mushkin Enhanced Cronos 60GB SSD (boot/OS and major vital programs)
-Seagate 500GB and 2TB SATA drives (programs, music, etc.)
-EVGA GTX670 FTW 4GB
-CoolerMaster Vortex CPU cooler
-ASUS DVD-RW drive
-Logitech G510 keyboard
-Logitech MX518 mouse
 
Solution
capt_taco


That's what I'm looking at. Four sticks at a time can be finicky for whatever reason, and more often require you to do the settings manually.

Easy way to verify whether or not that's the problem is to try running with just two sticks for a while and see if the problem goes away. It won't hurt your performance; 8GB is more than enough for gaming and everyday use. If that solves it, you can put all 16GB back in and tinker with the settings until you get it stable. Or just leave it; it's up to you.


edit: often times, that also will NOT show up on memtest86+, since it's instability rather than a defect in the hardware. Especially if you test one stick at a time, which would...
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Jun 24, 2014
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Sounds like a RAM or HDD issue. Run Seatools for windows on both drives. Run the short dst and long generic. Run memtest86 on the RAM for 7 passes on each module individually, not together. See if anything gets picked up. A very small memory leak or module failure or a few bad sectors on the drive could easily cause your issues.
 
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capt_taco

capt_taco

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Aug 5, 2009
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That's what I'm looking at. Four sticks at a time can be finicky for whatever reason, and more often require you to do the settings manually.

Easy way to verify whether or not that's the problem is to try running with just two sticks for a while and see if the problem goes away. It won't hurt your performance; 8GB is more than enough for gaming and everyday use. If that solves it, you can put all 16GB back in and tinker with the settings until you get it stable. Or just leave it; it's up to you.


edit: often times, that also will NOT show up on memtest86+, since it's instability rather than a defect in the hardware. Especially if you test one stick at a time, which would temporarily relieve the problem.
 
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Solution
Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Jun 24, 2014
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VERY good catch. I didn't think about it.

Especially on an ASRock Z68 board. That might be a good thing to look at. I know for a fact that the ASRock Z68 boards had issues with memory configurations. Not just when all the slots were populated but other issues too. I seem to recall quite a few threads about them not liking particular brands and speeds as well.
 
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bravozero

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
8
0
10,510
Just an update... I'm now in the process of doing an overhaul on several components, hopefully that might fix the issue. I'll be buying a new SSD for the OS and boot, replacing the "green" drive since it's slow as heck, I'm looking into which RAM is truly compatible with the mobo, and updating the BIOS. As well as doing a full wipe and reinstall of Win7 Ultimate.

Since I posted this the other day, I've had 4 or 5 freezes, so they're becoming more frequent. They used to be once a week at most, if not once every two weeks. Can't be heat related, I always have the door fans running when gaming since they blow air directly onto the video card and CPU.

Any possibilty of programs I'm running? I do have the ASrock Xtreme tuner program running at boot to control my fans in Windows, and EVGA Precision X (although I don't think it runs unless I open the program). Or is it better to not have any of those "utility" programs at all?
 
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bravozero

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
8
0
10,510
Hmm... interesting find just now.

I just updated the BIOS and uninstalled the ASrock xtreme tuner program since I found out how to set the fan speed and target CPU temps in the BIOS, so hopefully it will actually work properly. I have it set to 45 C with a CPU fan speed of 3, so hopefully once it reaches above 45C the fan will automatically speed up. We'll see.

Anyway... when I initially set up the BIOS a while back, I had tweaked the settings to accommodate the RAM frequencies (9-9-9-24). I dunno if the update reset the RAM speeds, but it was sitting at 1333, which isn't correct. The Vengeance is rated at 1600, so I changed it to the proper speed. Shut it off and removed RAM from slots 2 and 4, so running at 8GB right now. We'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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I don't like any of the software tuning applications for overclocking anything except GPUs. More often than not they cause issues. If you want to overclock the CPU or RAM, and the overclock on RAM is almost a waste of time in most cases, do it in the BIOS. If you don't know how, it's always a good time to learn. A lot of people coming here with issues discover it has to do with their OC utility like Overdrive or xtreme.
 
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bravozero

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
8
0
10,510


Gotcha, who knows maybe it's another case of it being so. Hopefully not, but we'll see. Funny how programs like that actually do more harm than good.
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Jun 24, 2014
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There's a very simple reason why. To play things on the safe side, and keep overclocks more towards the stable side, those utilities tend to overdo it on the voltages and also limit the multipliers. Too little voltage for any given multiplier, whether it's a GPU or CPU, tends to be unstable and cause errors. Too much voltage tends to create excessive heat and can sometimes make things unstable as well, but only if extremely out of hand. There's more, obviously, to it but the gist is that if you can use a utility to manually adjust a stable overclock, there is no reason you can't do so using a modern UEFI BIOS, and learn something along the way as you become more familiar with the processes involved.

There are basic simple manual overclocks you can do and also more advanced highly tuned overclocks. Both have advantages and few, if any, disadvantages versus using an automatic or EZ type utility.
 
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bravozero

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
8
0
10,510
Hey guys, just a little update.

So far since my last update, everything seems to be fine. I'll give it a few more days and some more extensive gaming to see if it will freeze on me again. If not, I'll say it was either the Xtreme Tuner program, the fact that it didn't like all four RAM slots occupied, or something was wrong with one of the two RAM sticks I removed. We'll see.
 
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