Over the past six months, I've been wrangling with a random freeze hardware issue that I haven't been able to pin down. The random freezes are a bit like this: screen stays the same, audio cuts out. Occasionally I'll get an orangeish-brown screen or a grey screen. Fans and everything else still running fine, I think the disks even still spin, though with no activity. Temps are always well within safe range when it freezes.
I started out getting these crashes only occasionally (hence the six-month troubleshooting period), and generally only when playing high-bitrate video files. Now they're much more common and generally hit me whenever I try to load up any video game or video file, and occasionally when browsing the internet.
I've eliminated the following components:
Video card. Popped in an old Radeon card, issue persists.
Ram. Building a PC for a friend, so I swapped ram sticks to see what happens. No change.
HDD/Software. Booted up an install of Windows onna USB stick, still crashes.
Power Supply: Same story with Ram.
Motherboard: Again, same story. Both MBs are the same model.
At this point, I think the only thing I haven't replaced is the processor.
But see, here is when things get a little strange. Over the course of the past six months, I have noticed there was a slight correlation between the frequency of crashes and how often I air-dusted my PC. If I dust it off, immediately the condition improves (but never gets fixed completely). So, I left it alone for a few months until the crashes were so frequent opening a tab in my internet browser would cause my PC to freeze up. I then dusted each individual component until I discovered it was dusting my PSU that improved things. You would understand that I was scratching my head a bit when replacing the PSU did nothing.
So right now I'm considering replacing the processor just to see if that would fix things. At the same time, I'm a bit apprehensive, worried that the crashes would still persist and the root problem is something not even in my PC, like the wiring to my house or something like that. I can't really find any way to connect dust buildup in my PSU to my CPU failing.
I started out getting these crashes only occasionally (hence the six-month troubleshooting period), and generally only when playing high-bitrate video files. Now they're much more common and generally hit me whenever I try to load up any video game or video file, and occasionally when browsing the internet.
I've eliminated the following components:
Video card. Popped in an old Radeon card, issue persists.
Ram. Building a PC for a friend, so I swapped ram sticks to see what happens. No change.
HDD/Software. Booted up an install of Windows onna USB stick, still crashes.
Power Supply: Same story with Ram.
Motherboard: Again, same story. Both MBs are the same model.
At this point, I think the only thing I haven't replaced is the processor.
But see, here is when things get a little strange. Over the course of the past six months, I have noticed there was a slight correlation between the frequency of crashes and how often I air-dusted my PC. If I dust it off, immediately the condition improves (but never gets fixed completely). So, I left it alone for a few months until the crashes were so frequent opening a tab in my internet browser would cause my PC to freeze up. I then dusted each individual component until I discovered it was dusting my PSU that improved things. You would understand that I was scratching my head a bit when replacing the PSU did nothing.
So right now I'm considering replacing the processor just to see if that would fix things. At the same time, I'm a bit apprehensive, worried that the crashes would still persist and the root problem is something not even in my PC, like the wiring to my house or something like that. I can't really find any way to connect dust buildup in my PSU to my CPU failing.