struggling with new pc build. Tried everything. HELP!

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kartmen007

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Nov 11, 2014
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I built this pc last month, with all new parts.

Athlon X4 860K
8gb G.Skill Ripjaws 1600
XFX R7 265
Corsair CX430
Asrock FM2A88M Extreme4+
OCZ ARC100 240GB
Toshiba 750GB 5400 rpm

It has been freezing randomly since I built it. It freezes with the sound loop on gaming and video rendering. I have also experienced the blue screen with a message "a clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval" twice now, more recently. Three times now it has froze and the screen went black. Each time I have to hard reset. I have ran memtest86 on the ram (both sticks together and separately) and tested each ram stick individually by gaming and experienced freezing with both, so I'm thinking it's not the ram. I have 4 case fans and the temps I have seen with multiple programs are within reasonable temps. I have never seen the cpu go above 60c and the gpu above 70c. It has locked up with a game on one monitor and Speedfan on the other showing good temps more than a couple of times so I don't think it's a temperature issue. I have tried the most recent AMD Catalyst drivers, the most recent beta drivers, and the drivers that shipped with my video card. The most recent that I downloaded from AMD website seemed to make things worse over time, such as the black screens, and when I would load windows I would get nothing but colored pixels at the top of the screen and then reboot. So, I downgraded to the drivers included on the XFX cd that shipped with my card. That seems to help, but still randomly I get freezes with sound loop. In my humble opinion it's either the graphics card is bad (even though I never get artifacts) or the motherboard, or some kind of weird driver/ windows 7 issue that I cannot diagnose on my own.

I need expert help here, I'm about at my wits end with this thing.

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
ingtar33


I know what the cpu is.

:D

listen, there isn't much you given us to figure this problem out. There are a LOT of parts that can cause this strange series of problems, from bad drivers...
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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a couple of things could be happening. the problem is your description of the crash is pretty generic... so i will probably toss a bunch of stuff at you because i don't really have a great idea of what's going on.

1) first thing i want you to do is uninstall anything with the word "AMD" in it, and make sure in the device manager you remove the display drivers
2) reboot your system, let windows load with generic drivers.
3) download the latest catalist whql display driver from the amd site, and install it
4) download the latest bios updates from asrock
5) update your system bios.
6) make sure the system bios is set to default settings.
7) test and see if you're still getting errors

Other possibilities...

piledriver cpus sometimes like their ram overvolted a little. it might not hurt to bump the voltage on the ram 0.1 or 0.15V over stock.

i'd also make sure your ram is being detected correctly with the right settings in the bios. double check that, cause your problem is screaming "ram" to me right now... however i want you to do the bios update and clean driver install for the gpu first just to take those out of the equation.
 
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kartmen007

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I have the most recent BIOS update already. Actually the motherboard shipped with a BIOS version that didn't recognize my 860K so I had to call Asrock and have them mail me an updated BIOS chip. It's the only BIOS revision that works with that processor so I know it's updated. I have tried 3 times now using DDU to uninstall the current drivers in safe mode and then rebooting to reinstall.

In BIOS I have set the RAM clocks to the G.Skill default 1600mhz and recommended timings 9-9-9-24.

Also, this CPU is Kaveri without the onboard graphics.
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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I know what the cpu is.

:D

listen, there isn't much you given us to figure this problem out. There are a LOT of parts that can cause this strange series of problems, from bad drivers to bad hardware to bad windows install to bad settings in the bios... seriously, the first thing i started to type was "wipe everything and reinstall windows" mostly because that is the most surefire way to insure it's not a bad install of windows or bad driver install somewhere messing with you.

however, i figured we'd run down the list of likely suspects first before suggesting that, because after reinstalling windows if the problem persisted you'd probably not be happy with me, especially since i'd then start having you run down a list of likely hardware causing the problem.

In all my years of experience there are two main culprates most likely to be causing your problems. 1) drivers, 2) ram. after that comes the psu and gpu and motherboard (motherboard probably topping the list, due to asrock's horrid track record with amd chipsets, especially the apu lineup)

Heck if you forgot to put spacers under your motherboard when installing it into the case that could possibly cause this problem too... as i said the list is long, and i don't really know what your level of expertise is or what you've tried, since you really didn't cover it. (btw: if you don't know what motherboard spacers are, now is the time to admit it, cause it's a pretty simple fix to your problem if you left them out)

 
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Solution
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kartmen007

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If I knew what more I could tell you that would help in diagnosing this I would gladly supply it.

I can say that when I first built this pc I had a different ssd and I upgraded it so I had to reinstall windows 7 once already.

I also suspect the motherboard, but I'm not sure how one knows for sure that the motherboard is the issue.

I did install the motherboard spacers.

I forgot to mention that once I did leave a game running and when I came back 15 minutes later the PSU was really hot for no apparent reason. It hasn't happened since so I just blew that off.

I appreciate your input, if you have anything else I'm all ears.
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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ok. lets do what i do when i'm on the job and a client has the same issues.

We'll breadboard the pc. Pull everything out of the case, find yourself something cardboard to rest the motherboard on. if you can hunt down a spare jumper to jump the power switch that would be great. we're basically taking the case/grounding issues out of play

1) make sure nothing is connected EXCEPT what you absolutely need to use. such as a hard drive, mouse and keyboard, video card and monitor.
2) while everything is outside of the case visually inspect everything for signs of damage, especially stains or corrosion or scratches.
3) put a room fan over the exposed system and keep it on high with constant airflow, we're going to simulate a test bench here, basically we want to make sure all the variables are taken out of the equation (and temp is a big variable)
4) if you have the problem even while bread boxed and at the absolute min- we're going to have to assume it's a hardware fault somewhere, so we're gonna narrow it down (if the problem goes away we have a temperature or grounding problem in your system somewhere. and we'll have to track it down)
-borrow someone's working power supply, or use an old one you know works. try this power supply and see if the problem comes back. if it comes back
-pull out one stick of ram, and see if the problem comes back, if it comes back
-replace that stick and pull out the other, see if the problem comes back, if it does
-put the ram back in, now you're gonna need to find another gpu to try. it doesn't have to be the same, just something that can play the titles/do the things you did with the otherone. make sure you do a clean driver install. ideally you'll borrow this from someone. if you can't get your hands on a gpu, i'd return your current one as faulty wether it is or not. claim it's at fault get a second one and try that.
-at this point if the system is still giving you trouble there are only 3 parts left it could be. cpu, motherboard and hard drive. Since asrock is notorious for poor AMD fm2/fm2+ motherboards i'd do a return on the motherboard first. If that doesn't work, flip a coin on the hard drive and cpu. it's one of the two (there isn't anything else it could be)

 
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kartmen007

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Can you give a specific reason a to why you think the CPU is at fault?
I have run Prime95 for a few hours with no freezing.

Also, after uninstalling the graphics drivers and installing the latest WHQL drivers I no longer have any problems except the random freeze.
I tried upping the ram voltage by .15v which was the smallest increment available in BIOS which led to blue screen and system freeze and I had to reset CMOS.

UPDATE: After tearing my hair out a few more times, I got brave and just started throwing voltage at the ram to see what would happen. It appears that an increase of .25v helped. I was able to go for 8 hours without a freeze whereas just prior it was freezing every 15 minutes or so while I was trying to play a game on one monitor and run video on the other. I don't know if that means anything or not. Should I keep upping the voltage? I don't want to blow anything up. I'm also wondering if the fact that it stopped freezing for a good while with higher ram voltage give anyone a clue as to what my issue actually is. I haven't built a pc in 15 years so a lot of this is new to me, what with all the overclocking options I have in BIOS and my previous build just ran perfectly all the time so I'm pretty new to troubleshooting also.

UPDATE 2
I ended up sending my mobo back to Newegg and gettng an MSI board instead. Problem solved. It was in fact the Asrock board that was bad. In fact, I first tried ordering the same board a second time, and then a third to see if I could get a good one but they were all bad. So for the benefit anyone thinking of buying the FM2A88M Extreme4+ I would not recommend it.
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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not a surprise. note my comments early on. Asrock just makes junk AMD motherboards, and their FM2/FM2+ boards are even worse then their AM3+ boards. I'm glad you found the problem and it now works properly.
 
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K

kartmen007

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Nov 11, 2014
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Thanks for your help ingtar33. I originally had a gut feeling it was the mobo and then you said the same thing which confirmed my suspicion. I was holding out on returning it though, hoping I could find the problem to be another component, because I didn't want to take everything apart and deal with a lengthy RMA, you know how that is... but in the end my gut was right. I was taught as a child that your first instincts are usually correct and I have found that to be mostly true.

As an interesting side note, you had said you thought the problem was RAM, and near the end of my troubleshooting I noticed that if I set the RAM speed to auto on the board, it kept choosing different speeds every time I would check it and they were never the rated speed for those sticks, so I feel like the problem with that board was the memory controller. Good call.
 
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