I've tried to explain as much of what I did and the resulting behaviour below. Should you take the time to help, I thank you.
Setup:
Gigabyte SKT-1155 Z77-DS3H motherboard
EVGA nvidia GTX 660 factory OC.
Intel 3570K 3.4GHz
Kingston HyperX (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit installed on Sandisk SSD
Cooler Master GX Lite 500 Watt PSU
Vast majority of files (Steam library etc.) on hard disk.
Played games regularly with this setup for 3 months. No problems that I can recall.
Two nights ago, mid game, everything freezes. I have no mouse, sound is stuck, all control is gone.
I hold in the power button until it turns off. It restarts by itself. I get to the "Start Windows Normally" screen. Choose start normally. It gets to the little Windows loading animation, but the animation never starts.
I force a restart again. It starts up, beeps continuously for about 15-20 seconds about 2 beeps a second, then restarts again by itself. This time it starts to load the blue Gigabyte BIOS screen. It never gets to a menu it simply restarts again by itself. This time it manages to boot normally and I get back into Windows. Wary, I try out a view simple things like browsing, starting a youtube video. It crashes again. Same as before.
This time I try to restart in safe mode. Wondering if it's graphics I try reverting to older drivers. The screen went off and never came back on again during driver installation.
Restart. Launch in safe mode. Safe mode doesn't use the graphics card so I can finish installing the drivers without interruption though I know it's probably in vain. Reboot Windows. Everything seems fine. I try out some youtube videos, it seems fine. Eventually though I get another crash while using that earth wind map website.
Starting to wonder about temperatures I reboot and start speedfan. Crash(everything went white instead of just a plain old freeze). Reboot. Start GPU-Z. No crash and temperatures are all ~30C. I open Mumble and speak to some friends briefly about my troubles. Crash.
Power off. I'm done for the night.
It should be noted that every successful reboot up to this point involved the process I listed before where it restarts by itself a bunch of times, or where I choose to run startup repair. There were no successful reboots in which I didn't go though one or the other route.
Yesterday:
Disconnect everything. Open case. Checked all connections. Took out the GPU for a look, though I don't know what I expected to see. Put everything back in its place, check all connections again and close up the computer. Reconnect all cables. Boot up the computer. Everything seems fine. Start Speedfan... no crash. I let it graph my current temperatures.
I downloaded PerformanceTest. I run every test, to put each individual thing under a bit of stress. Everything is fine. Temperatures are all in acceptable range (CPU<50, GPU< 60). For something a bit more intensive I run the benchmark that comes with Metro 2033 at maximum settings. Carries though with few problems though there was a little bit of graphical stutter even in high FPS moments.
I start up my current regular game, play for 90mins or so without a problem.
Today:
On mumble, play game for a short while. Freezing returns. Restart without having to go through either of the rigmaroles listed above. Start up mumble, talk for about 20 seconds and everything dies again.
Started writing this message, went to look up earth wind map site mentioned above, and I get an instant crash.
My own inkling is that it's the power supply, but I could be wrong and I don't want to buy something that won't fix the problem.
Help.
End message.
Setup:
Gigabyte SKT-1155 Z77-DS3H motherboard
EVGA nvidia GTX 660 factory OC.
Intel 3570K 3.4GHz
Kingston HyperX (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit installed on Sandisk SSD
Cooler Master GX Lite 500 Watt PSU
Vast majority of files (Steam library etc.) on hard disk.
Played games regularly with this setup for 3 months. No problems that I can recall.
Two nights ago, mid game, everything freezes. I have no mouse, sound is stuck, all control is gone.
I hold in the power button until it turns off. It restarts by itself. I get to the "Start Windows Normally" screen. Choose start normally. It gets to the little Windows loading animation, but the animation never starts.
I force a restart again. It starts up, beeps continuously for about 15-20 seconds about 2 beeps a second, then restarts again by itself. This time it starts to load the blue Gigabyte BIOS screen. It never gets to a menu it simply restarts again by itself. This time it manages to boot normally and I get back into Windows. Wary, I try out a view simple things like browsing, starting a youtube video. It crashes again. Same as before.
This time I try to restart in safe mode. Wondering if it's graphics I try reverting to older drivers. The screen went off and never came back on again during driver installation.
Restart. Launch in safe mode. Safe mode doesn't use the graphics card so I can finish installing the drivers without interruption though I know it's probably in vain. Reboot Windows. Everything seems fine. I try out some youtube videos, it seems fine. Eventually though I get another crash while using that earth wind map website.
Starting to wonder about temperatures I reboot and start speedfan. Crash(everything went white instead of just a plain old freeze). Reboot. Start GPU-Z. No crash and temperatures are all ~30C. I open Mumble and speak to some friends briefly about my troubles. Crash.
Power off. I'm done for the night.
It should be noted that every successful reboot up to this point involved the process I listed before where it restarts by itself a bunch of times, or where I choose to run startup repair. There were no successful reboots in which I didn't go though one or the other route.
Yesterday:
Disconnect everything. Open case. Checked all connections. Took out the GPU for a look, though I don't know what I expected to see. Put everything back in its place, check all connections again and close up the computer. Reconnect all cables. Boot up the computer. Everything seems fine. Start Speedfan... no crash. I let it graph my current temperatures.
I downloaded PerformanceTest. I run every test, to put each individual thing under a bit of stress. Everything is fine. Temperatures are all in acceptable range (CPU<50, GPU< 60). For something a bit more intensive I run the benchmark that comes with Metro 2033 at maximum settings. Carries though with few problems though there was a little bit of graphical stutter even in high FPS moments.
I start up my current regular game, play for 90mins or so without a problem.
Today:
On mumble, play game for a short while. Freezing returns. Restart without having to go through either of the rigmaroles listed above. Start up mumble, talk for about 20 seconds and everything dies again.
Started writing this message, went to look up earth wind map site mentioned above, and I get an instant crash.
My own inkling is that it's the power supply, but I could be wrong and I don't want to buy something that won't fix the problem.
Help.
End message.
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