Computer Freezing!

[warblade24]

Recently my comp has been freezing at random times no matter what im doing. Sometimes the screen will flicker a couple of times then freeze. I have run various programs to try and fix the problem and none of them worked. I even switched out memory to see if the mem was bad and it still froze with the new memory. I am starting to think my CPU is going bad because it has been get hot after running it for a while espcially when i play games. my specs: p4 2.8ghz 511 presscott ASUS p5vd1-x Patroit 3200 1GB and nvidia 6600. Nothing is overclocked and i have cleaned my comp it is dust free. i would appreciate some help Thank you

 

[IcY18]

it would seem that your CPU is overheating and or your gfx card is overheating...so there are a couple of steps to take

first download this program. its Everest Home ED. it will tell you how hot your cpu and gfx card is running, if the temps are above 80 degrees for either then this may be causing you your trouble, this may be the result of a bad cooler or bad contact between the cpu and heatsink

if the temps look normal

then i would advise reinstalling windows to try and fix it

if they don't

it could be b/c a prescott runs VERY hot, and the only way to fix it is order an aftermarket cooler and put it on yourself and/or take it to a local shop and have them do it for you

 

[warblade24]

i already have everest and usually my CPU is around 150 and my GPU is at 120. I bought some new thermal paste and it brought the temp down about 20 degrees. Before i got that paste it would be at 170 and 180 as soon as i turned it on. I alrdy tried reinstalling windows a couple weeks ago i think my windows is fine. It runs smooth until that thing freezes. thanks for your help

 

[rahul_cracker]

hi
Try looking at your mother board especially at the opwer connector at time the board get bent or strained and causes power supply to get the sys to free :lol: .but do tell me

 

[rahul_cracker]

hi
Try looking at your mother board especially at the opwer connector at time the board get bent or strained and causes power supply to get the sys to free :lol: .but do tell me

 

[paybax]

Hey War,
One other thing to look at since you said that you DID reapply the thermal paste. Take a GOOD look at your air circulation. REmove the side panel of your case and look at the wiring. IDE cables, power cables, etc. etc. Also have a look at WHERE the air is going.
For example, the ideal air flow is IN through the front and OUT the back. If there is ANY impedance of airflow in between, this will give you a problem. If air is collecting in the middle area of the case near the gpu and cpu, this will give you grief as well.

Now I realize that you said "RECENTLY" you have had problems....one thing you didn't mention is if you have added any new hardware.

Damn I can't believe I forgot to ask this.....When you removed the cpu fan to reapply the thermal paste, did you take the MOBO out of the case to do this?? The reason being is that it is extremely difficult to place the heatsink on the cpu properly AND SAFELY since the sides of the case prevent you from getting a parrallel view of the cpu.

I'm NOT being condescending here but you DO KNOW that if you don't have a firm, perfectly level seat of the heatsink, this will definitely cause a heat problem.

When I built my rig 4 months ago, I installed my Athlon dual core 4800+ with the mobo on my kitchen counter with an anti-static wrist cable (VERY IMPORTANT TOOL TO HAVE) , and after thoroughly cleaning both the heatsink and cpu surface with isopropyl alcohol, I used a razorblade to evenly spread the Arctic Silver paste in a thin coating over the core. I then applied the heatsink slowly and carefully and clamped it in place.

When I booted up my rig for the first time, the temp rose to 37-41 C, and leveled out at that temp.

Hope this helps bro,

Let me know how what happens k?
Mike

RIG specs
Antec P180 PerformanceSeries Mid-Tower Case
Asus A8N32 SLI mobo AMD N-Force 4 SLIX16 (bios 1103 V02.58)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Toledo Core, 2 X 1mb L2 cache (AMD drivers w/MS hotfix)
2 gigs of Corsair TwinX3500LL Pro @ 437Mhz 2-3-2-6-1T
2- BFG Tech 7900 GT OC 256mg in SLI (nvidia driver 84.21)
Western Digital RAPTOR 74.3 gig 10-K rpm HDD for XP & Apps
Maxtor SATA II 250 G HDD for gaming, movies, MP3's
Maxtor SATA II 250 G HDD for document backup (unplugged)
Sony CD rom 52X
Plextor 708-A DVD/CD rom
SeaSonic S12 600 watt power supply
Logitech Z-5500 digital 5.1 THX Surround 500watts
RealTek 97 onboard digital 5.1 Surround

 

[Scarchunk]

I'm assuming the temps you gave are at idle other than Everest running and 65C(150F) is way too hot for an idle temp. There is a good chance that you could be hitting 80C under load ecspecially while gaming. Even your 6600 is idleing a little warm at 48C while idle. This would suggest a combination of bad airflow and poor HS cantact since both the cpu and gpu are reporting high temps. The 500 series Prescotts run pretty warm but your borderline throttle temps. I would suggest at least reseating your HS, but an aftermarket solution (Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro 7) would probably do much better and be much quieter than the stock Intel. Download Throttlewatch and run some light load programs.

http://www.panopsys.com/Downloads.html

Throttlewatch will allow you to see if your cpu is throttling due to heat and you can even have it record a log while you game or benchmark. Other than that run a hard drive diagnostic from the manufacturer of your hard drive and check event viewer for any reoccuring errors.

 

[dreams411]

I'm with the other guys on this one. Sounds like a heat issue. Are you running this thing in an enclosure of some sort? What is your fan set-up like in the case? You temps should be lower than what you are reporting.

 

[warblade24]

I know heat could be a issue but my airflow is good. Sometimes my CPU stays around 130 and it even freezes then but i dont know if 130 is considered to be cool. anyways thx for ur guys help im gonna re seat the heatsink later. 6 months ago when i first built my comp it was running fine and i only had a fx 5200 and 512 ram. Then about 4 months later my HDD died. SO i got a new hardrive new ram and new video card about 2 months ago. For those 2 months everything worked fine. Now stuff is freezing and overheating lol. thx

 

[AntiHax0r]

I've heard problems with some 6600s where they would freeze a lot in many games. My friend had a 6600GT which hard-locked the comp like every 10-15mins.. he tried different drivers as well as a clean install(no effect on the lockups). I tested the card in my system it would lockup.. but not as frequent. Oh yea there was more than adequate cooling for the card.. im talking like idle temps around 30C and load up to ~37C.

You should try swapping in that 5200 of yours to see if that eliminates the freezes. If not I'd suggest you run MemTest86 to test for faulty ram.

 

[waylander]

it's called summer... hotter ambient temperatures means hotter operating temperature... unless you have central AC.

When you say your airflow is good, that doesn't really help us... how many fans and what size are they?

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

I'm with waylander on that one, i see this happening too often, you get "winter-stable" rigs doing fine until summer comes and then BAM...problems start to arise..also as for the air flow, you absolutely have to make sure there is a path in your case that's not filled with wires and stuff that goes from the front to the back of your case, because even if you have 51 fans in there but it looks like the amazonian jungle, it won't do you any good...and since you mentioned that you replaced some stuff 2 months ago, it would make perfect sense to pick temperature as your culprit since 2 months ago we sure didn't have the temps we have now. And as someone pointed out maybe a fresh Winxp install would be a solution if all else fails.

 

[warblade24]

my fan setup is 2 fans in the front blowing in both 80mm, 1 fan on top of my case blowing in 80 mm, 2 on the side blowning in both 80mm. and 120mm fan in the back blowing out.

 

[Scarchunk]

Try turning the top fan to blow out like a "blowhole" The warm air rises to the top of the case and you want to eject with the top fan. I doubt that has much to do with your problem but you might drop temps a few degrees. Have you checked to see if your comp is throttling before it shuts down?

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

As scarchunk suggested, turning over your top fan might help release some of the trapped heat in your case because if we look at it more in depth, you have 5x80mm fans blowing in (let's assume they're on average 35 CFM fans) this gives you 175 CFMs of incoming air, versus (lets assume your 120mm fan has an average CFM displacement) 110CFMs of outgoing air, which give you positive pressure inside your case ( Air has more pressure inside your case then outside), which is not a good thing. But as you pointed out, your CPU idle around 150F...thats pretty high don't you think? Maybe rechcikng your heatsink contact surface, re-applying thermal paste again would help, but also you could try and open up the case side panel and sticking a floor fan to blow air inside, just to take heat out of the equation. IF this doesn't help at all maybe it's more of an hardware faillure than an overheating one.

Oh..i forgot about PSU fans, I surely hope your PSU has at least 1 fans (well make it a 92mm one and assume it displaces about 50 CFMs) it still shows that you have more air comming in than going out. The best solution is to have about the same outgoing air than incoming air or even more going out thus creating negative pressure which will help cool your rig.

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

Just another thing, did you ever try to go in your case and touch your RAM to see if it isn't being fried up by adjacent components that are in your System? do they have heatspreaders or just plain PCBs with the memory chips on it?
Also if you could list the complete Specs of your rig it woud help out a bit thx.
I'm bringing this up because in my older system i had OC'ed the cpu quite a bit and after a couple of hours running it at full load it would crash randomly, so i went in and check out the temps to find out that my CPU's HSF was blowing the rather hot air directly on my RAM which had heatspreaders, thus transforming them in "hotplates" instead. Switched Ram slot and everything went ok from that point on.

 

[warblade24]

My psu has 2 fans on it and my RAM has heatspreaders. I touched them before and they were warm not hot. Im pretty sure its not the ram because i switched out with diff RAM and it still froze. heres my specs. P42.8GHZ 511 presscott ASUS P5VD1-X1 1GB Patriot PC3200 @200MHZ, WD 250GB ultra ata, PNY Gforce 6600 256MB AGP8x, Soundblaster Audigy2, and Enermax 330watt psu

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

Hmm..330W PSU...thats a bit light powerwise don't you think? I mean if you can, i'd switch it out with a 400 or 450W one and see if it still freeze..

 

[waylander]

330w should be fine but if it's an old psu then it may not be performing to spec.

Also, look at your cabling like others have said, poor cable management will disrupt air flow. I would also change that top fan to an exhaust, hot air rises and all you are doing is recirculating that hot air back down into your case, I usually suggest front and side as intakes and back and top at exhaust.

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

I would also change that top fan to an exhaust, hot air rises and all you are doing is recirculating that hot air back down into your case, I usually suggest front and side as intakes and back and top at exhaust.

Exactly.

 

[warblade24]

ok today i took out my mobo and reseated the heatsink all the pins of the heatsink are secured accept for one that doesnt go all the way in bc it is bent somehow prob just intel junk. Anyways i reconnected everything and my temp drop from 150-140 to low 130s at idle and at full load it jumps up to 160 and 170 quick. Whenever i took the fan off i noticed that only 3/4 of the heatsink was touching the CPU. now i think all of it is touching idk its hard to tell. but the temp did drop a little though. And i also switched the fan on the top of my case to exhaust.

 

[dreams411]

Got any thermal grease to make sure you're getting a better contact between CPU and heatsink?

 

[MCMONOPOLY]

Got any thermal grease to make sure you're getting a better contact between CPU and heatsink?

Come again?!

 

[warblade24]

i do have thermal paste and i alrdy applied it. i also got some good news i just orderd the arctic cooling freezer 7 pro off newegg. so it should be here in a couple of days. hope that works.

 

[BaronMatrix]

Recently my comp has been freezing at random times no matter what im doing. Sometimes the screen will flicker a couple of times then freeze. I have run various programs to try and fix the problem and none of them worked. I even switched out memory to see if the mem was bad and it still froze with the new memory. I am starting to think my CPU is going bad because it has been get hot after running it for a while espcially when i play games. my specs: p4 2.8ghz 511 presscott ASUS p5vd1-x Patroit 3200 1GB and nvidia 6600. Nothing is overclocked and i have cleaned my comp it is dust free. i would appreciate some help Thank you

When it starts to get hot open Task Manage - right click on the taskbar or hit CTRL-ALT-DEL - and see if any programs are spiking the CPU. Usually when CPUs die they die, that's it. No more boot.


As much troube as it is, it maybe time to reinstall your OS.