I built this computer about four years ago. I built it on a low budget and hope to upgrade it steadily. I think I've reached the peak and will no longer upgrade anything further.
Here's what happened awhile ago. After I purchased an SSD, I installed and it stuck it in the SATA3 port because it's 6GB/s. I installed it on the Marvell port and it worked fine. However, the other HDD I've salvaged from my older computers were installed on the blue port, the SATA2s. After installing windows 7 64-bit ultimate on the SSD, it started to crap up, OCCASIONALLY*
Hard drives are disconnecting. My SSD rarely disconnects but it does happen. My two hard drives disconnects sometimes IF I go idle after boot up. Sometimes, it boots up perfectly. Didn't know why, looked all over the net, no avail.
Because it sometimes boot-up normally, I'm okay with it. I left it meh and get on with my life. Then after awhile, a year later, I decided to upgrade my graphic card from the MSI Cyclone 460 GTX to the MSI N770 Gaming 2GB. All hell broke loose. Before I updated my computer, I flashed my bios from F5 to F6 (most latest stable). I also prepared the latest driver installation from Nvidia, R331 Game Ready.
So I went and took out my old card and installed the new card in. Installed the latest driver. Then, everytime I boot up, my keyboard lags. I keep hearing my Hard Drives disconnecting (Powering down) like before. But omfg, it's frequently now. After 10 minutes of boot-up horror, my computer randomly shut downs. For no reasons.
Got my cousin over to troubleshoot, he helped me organized my crappy wiring placement in my computer. Moved the SSD plug away from the SATA3s and into the SATA2s. (Motherboard never got a Marvell driver and the website was confusing as hell) Turned the computer on, still happening.
We did a system recovery, to the day before my installation. It was stable except all my games on steam and origins are missing and the old stable Nvidia driver (314.22 I think), computer didn't shut down randomly this time. So we both assumed it was the Nvidia driver instability. I used the CD driver that was included in the new graphic card. It installed the 320.18 driver, (known to be stable) and it worked fine again. No shutdowns. So I proceed with testing the graphic card on BF4 on ultra and GW2 on high. It gives me a stable FPS with heat around 50-60C.
This morning, I boot up my computer, after showing the desktop window and some stuff loading, my hard drives began to power down. One after the other. Looked in my "mycomputer", and my hard drives were disappearing one after the other. Then it reconnects and then shut down.
Got tired of the issues and that nobody on this forum or the net had these errors, so I booted up the computer and began typing this. After the 1st paragraph, it shuts down randomly again. And now, here I am, surprised that the computer is able to be on still. The hard drives did power down, both of them but now reconnected.
Computer Specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58-Ud3r Rev 1.0
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
Storage: 180GB Intel SSD/500GB HDD/ 320GB HDD (HDD is from another brand that slipped my mind, it isn't Seagate, its the other one... W?)
Graphic Card: MSI N770 GTX 2GB
RAM: 12GB (2x3x2GB sticks) (Running in Tri-Channel)
Bios Version: F6
PSU: 750W Corsair (Bronze I think and not modulated) ( I believe it is this Power Supply Unit,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)
The problem(s) is/are ... there's so many issues happening all of a sudden. The now frequent disconnects of the HDDs (sometimes SSD poops too), the keyboard lag on boot up, the steam not recognizing me and saying I've installed steam on another computer, the latest Nvidia driver and reverted back to the Nvidia driver 320.18, potnetially a dying motherboard/power supply/defect card)
There's so many issues I don't know where to start. If there's any info that is needed, let me know.
Thanks in advance. I really hope I can resolve the issues. (I checked bios after Q-flash, all settings are adjusted)
Update: 10:39AM
After typing this, went to google website, and computer locked up after hearing HDD powering down. Computer is locked up. Can't click anything and firefox loading was frozen. Shutdown and rebooted. So far so good.
Update: 11:03AM
Had another random shutdown. Got frustrated and stick my GTX 460 back in. Rebooted like it normally reboots, keyboard doesn't lag, SSD and HDDs did not power down. All my icons are like what they had. Steam doesn't work though, says "The drive or network connection that the shortcut 'Steam.Ink' refers to is unavailable. Make sure that the disk is properly inserted or the network resource is available, and then try again."
Will restart for this problem. Funny how steam doesn't exist but on my computer, I see the HDD there, able to access it and able to access Origin which was also installed in the same HDD.
Update: 11:44AM
The stupid HDD switched the letters from :F to :I... which explains why steam was lost. It's back now but my games all gone. Just need to reinstall it without the need for download.
So the GTX 460 is still running fine. So the problem now is either a defect graphic card or a dying PSU. The powering down of the SSD/HDD problem could be because of a dying PSU. It happens with the GTX 460 as well but not often like when I had GTX 770 installed.