- Apr 19, 2013
- 5
- 0
- 10,510
I am pretty disappointed that I haven't solved this problem because I feel like I've come up with a lot of good ideas by myself.
The story is about two weeks ago I got a new motherboard, RAM, CPU and case. Shortly after I realized I made a mistake because my power supply wouldn't give enough power to the now higher-end components. I'd get on average 1 crash a night, and it would always freeze the display, give a small burst of sound and I could turn it on again happily.
A little more than 48 hours ago I installed a new power supply, the _modular_ High Current Gamer at 620 watts. It was the first time I've installed a power supply by myself (I had a friend help me with the m/b and cpu and watched him hook the psu into it) and up until now its been working perfectly; I've recently gotten stuck into Bioshock Infinite and not a single problem.
However earlier today I was watching youtube videos when I noticed the display kept freezing. I immediately googled it and they suggested the graphics card was acting up and I restarted my computer. This was also about 3 hours after my first crash with Bioshock (this only crashed the program). But after that was my slow descent into a rabbit hole of crashes.
Since then, with growing frequency, my computer crashes; at this point it crashes about every 15 minutes. But it crashes in a different way each time. The most frequent type of crash is where the screen goes black, the computer turns off and immediately starts turning on again. Apart from it suggested I start in Safe Mode, windows 7 doesn't give an error message recognizing it just crashed.
But sometimes I get a crash similar to the one I had before, sometimes I get a BSoD with the message "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL", and sometimes the computer doesn't start up automatically after it crashes.
I have tried:
+ Reseating the ram
+ Reseating the power cables connecting the gpu
+ Securing (without removing) the power cables connecting to the cpu and motherboard
+ Securing (without removing) the PCI-E cables connecting to the modular power supply
+ Reinstalling video card drivers
+ System restoring to before I installed a DirectX for bioshock infinite (interestingly enough this stopped the crashes for about an hour, although I did re-install DirectX immediately. However the point where I first installed DirectX was a little under 24 hours before the crashes started so I doubt this is the problem)
+ Monitoring temperature using CoreTemp (scores around 45, max 46; the tj Max is 70)
+ Moving cables that were somewhat in the way of the PSU fan
I am almost positive that I haven't installed any software in the last 24 hours before the crashes started, but I did plug in an external hard drive and cancelled the driver that used.
So as you can see, I'm sort of ramming my head into the wall. I'm guessing that since the crashes are somewhat random, it would make sense that it would have to do with faulty RAM. But the RAM is dual channel, so I assume I'd need to replace both if I replaced either.
It would be very much appreciated if someone could help me out here.
- Dylan
EDIT: The RAM is secondhand with 6 months use, I bought it from a stranger on gumtree, so its very possible its the RAM's fault, I just want to single it out before I shell out another $70 or whatever on RAM because I'm not sure I'll get a refund. I'm going to sleep as I'm very tired, I'll be on in 9-10 hours hopefully.
The story is about two weeks ago I got a new motherboard, RAM, CPU and case. Shortly after I realized I made a mistake because my power supply wouldn't give enough power to the now higher-end components. I'd get on average 1 crash a night, and it would always freeze the display, give a small burst of sound and I could turn it on again happily.
A little more than 48 hours ago I installed a new power supply, the _modular_ High Current Gamer at 620 watts. It was the first time I've installed a power supply by myself (I had a friend help me with the m/b and cpu and watched him hook the psu into it) and up until now its been working perfectly; I've recently gotten stuck into Bioshock Infinite and not a single problem.
However earlier today I was watching youtube videos when I noticed the display kept freezing. I immediately googled it and they suggested the graphics card was acting up and I restarted my computer. This was also about 3 hours after my first crash with Bioshock (this only crashed the program). But after that was my slow descent into a rabbit hole of crashes.
Since then, with growing frequency, my computer crashes; at this point it crashes about every 15 minutes. But it crashes in a different way each time. The most frequent type of crash is where the screen goes black, the computer turns off and immediately starts turning on again. Apart from it suggested I start in Safe Mode, windows 7 doesn't give an error message recognizing it just crashed.
But sometimes I get a crash similar to the one I had before, sometimes I get a BSoD with the message "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL", and sometimes the computer doesn't start up automatically after it crashes.
I have tried:
+ Reseating the ram
+ Reseating the power cables connecting the gpu
+ Securing (without removing) the power cables connecting to the cpu and motherboard
+ Securing (without removing) the PCI-E cables connecting to the modular power supply
+ Reinstalling video card drivers
+ System restoring to before I installed a DirectX for bioshock infinite (interestingly enough this stopped the crashes for about an hour, although I did re-install DirectX immediately. However the point where I first installed DirectX was a little under 24 hours before the crashes started so I doubt this is the problem)
+ Monitoring temperature using CoreTemp (scores around 45, max 46; the tj Max is 70)
+ Moving cables that were somewhat in the way of the PSU fan
I am almost positive that I haven't installed any software in the last 24 hours before the crashes started, but I did plug in an external hard drive and cancelled the driver that used.
So as you can see, I'm sort of ramming my head into the wall. I'm guessing that since the crashes are somewhat random, it would make sense that it would have to do with faulty RAM. But the RAM is dual channel, so I assume I'd need to replace both if I replaced either.
It would be very much appreciated if someone could help me out here.
- Dylan
EDIT: The RAM is secondhand with 6 months use, I bought it from a stranger on gumtree, so its very possible its the RAM's fault, I just want to single it out before I shell out another $70 or whatever on RAM because I'm not sure I'll get a refund. I'm going to sleep as I'm very tired, I'll be on in 9-10 hours hopefully.
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