Hi all,
I recently built my first desktop after years of gaming on laptops. While it runs games like a beast, it only does so for a while before locking up. After much googling, I'm suspecting the next thing for me to try is a new PSU, however I very much welcome other opinions/advice. The build is about a month old and this has been a persistent problem. Thanks in advance for taking time to consider what might be wrong with my rig =).
The build:
CPU- intel i5 4690k
Cooler- Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX
MOBO- ASUS Z97-A
RAM- Corsair Vengeance DDR3 8 GB (2 x 4 GB)
GPU- MSI Radeon R9 390 8gb
PSU- Corsair CX Series 750 Watt ATX/EPS Modular 80 PLUS Bronze ATX12V/EPS12V 744
Storage- Crucial BX100 250GB SSD + WD Blue 1TB
Optical- Asus 24x DVD-RW Serial-ATA Internal OEM Optical Drive DRW-24B1ST
Setup: Nothing is overclocked
Symptoms: When playing a game (usually DOTA2 as it's what I play most) my PC will often freeze and the audio will glitch- repeating whatever sound it was last playing. Sometimes it makes it to a blue screen but often it requires me to manually restart. Interestingly, when I am restarting after a lock up the PC will, often but not always, begin to start (LED's on the GPU and CPU cooler light back up and fans start going) but then stops after about 1-2 seconds only to repeat the cycle. Sometimes, though usually not, it does make to blue screen, actually makes a crash dump file and it restarts on it's own. The frequency of this problem seems like it's increasing.
Things I've tried: It may be a coincidence, but this system was first built with an Nvidia 960 GPU and I can't remember (it was a month ago) if it crashed or not with that card but I don't remember having any problems with it. The 960 didn't stay in long- I found a Gigabyte R9 390 for $30 more. At first I attributed the crashing to the GPU (it had other known issues like not being able to go into sleep mode) so I sent it back and got the MSI R9 390. Same problem.
I have installed "who crashed" and "speccy"- who crashed always points to a 3rd party driver and speccy always shows everything running cool. I have reinstalled windows twice (full wipe) to make sure it wasn't an application I installed, also ran a windows defender scan and malware bytes scan- both came up clean. I've tried switching out my mouse just for the heck of it- no difference. I can post some recent dump reports- they wont be much as I just reinstalled windows again in hopes of fixing the problem. I have also run memtest and nothing popped up.
So my next course of action is to try a new PSU... but I'm a bit skeptical as 750w should be more than enough to supply my system (right?) yet, my PC would have for sure crashed at least twice in the time it has taken me to write this up if I were playing DOTA2.
Any suggestions are very welcomed,
Cheers!
I recently built my first desktop after years of gaming on laptops. While it runs games like a beast, it only does so for a while before locking up. After much googling, I'm suspecting the next thing for me to try is a new PSU, however I very much welcome other opinions/advice. The build is about a month old and this has been a persistent problem. Thanks in advance for taking time to consider what might be wrong with my rig =).
The build:
CPU- intel i5 4690k
Cooler- Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX
MOBO- ASUS Z97-A
RAM- Corsair Vengeance DDR3 8 GB (2 x 4 GB)
GPU- MSI Radeon R9 390 8gb
PSU- Corsair CX Series 750 Watt ATX/EPS Modular 80 PLUS Bronze ATX12V/EPS12V 744
Storage- Crucial BX100 250GB SSD + WD Blue 1TB
Optical- Asus 24x DVD-RW Serial-ATA Internal OEM Optical Drive DRW-24B1ST
Setup: Nothing is overclocked
Symptoms: When playing a game (usually DOTA2 as it's what I play most) my PC will often freeze and the audio will glitch- repeating whatever sound it was last playing. Sometimes it makes it to a blue screen but often it requires me to manually restart. Interestingly, when I am restarting after a lock up the PC will, often but not always, begin to start (LED's on the GPU and CPU cooler light back up and fans start going) but then stops after about 1-2 seconds only to repeat the cycle. Sometimes, though usually not, it does make to blue screen, actually makes a crash dump file and it restarts on it's own. The frequency of this problem seems like it's increasing.
Things I've tried: It may be a coincidence, but this system was first built with an Nvidia 960 GPU and I can't remember (it was a month ago) if it crashed or not with that card but I don't remember having any problems with it. The 960 didn't stay in long- I found a Gigabyte R9 390 for $30 more. At first I attributed the crashing to the GPU (it had other known issues like not being able to go into sleep mode) so I sent it back and got the MSI R9 390. Same problem.
I have installed "who crashed" and "speccy"- who crashed always points to a 3rd party driver and speccy always shows everything running cool. I have reinstalled windows twice (full wipe) to make sure it wasn't an application I installed, also ran a windows defender scan and malware bytes scan- both came up clean. I've tried switching out my mouse just for the heck of it- no difference. I can post some recent dump reports- they wont be much as I just reinstalled windows again in hopes of fixing the problem. I have also run memtest and nothing popped up.
So my next course of action is to try a new PSU... but I'm a bit skeptical as 750w should be more than enough to supply my system (right?) yet, my PC would have for sure crashed at least twice in the time it has taken me to write this up if I were playing DOTA2.
Any suggestions are very welcomed,
Cheers!
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