New Computer locking up

[gunshy_33]

Hey all,

I just built my new system last week and everything worked great except:

1. my games,CS2 and L4D, would lock up as soon as I started playing with crossfire,
so I removed 1 of the cards and CS2 and L4D both played great at the highest settings, but....

2. I down loaded some trial versions of Crysis and Total War and both of them lock up even under
low setting withen 5-10 minutes.

My drivers are up to date, and so is my directX
I have two dedicated PCI E power cables going to my card.

I have two week that I can send the video cards back if they're faulty,
what's the best way to test them out?


Here are my parts:
CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W SLI/CrossFire Active Power Supply Retail

MSI R4890 Cyclone OC Radeon HD 4890

PATRIOT Extreme Performance Viper Series PVT36G1333ELK 6GB PC3-10666

SEAGATE Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5 TB

Intel BOX CORE I7 920 2.66GHZ-8M

GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD4P Core i7


ThanksFor you help

 

[hunter315]

did you remember to manually set the timings and voltages for the ram you are using? There is very little modern ram that runs properly at default voltage.

 

[wathman]

You'll have to do more diagnostics to eliminate possibilities. As of now you could be having heat problems, bad RAM, improper RAM settings, Sound card/driver incompatibilities, in addition to the possibly faulty video cards. Get some temp readings with Speedfan or Core Temp. Try some stress testing on the CPU with Prime 95 to help figure out if the graphics cards are the cause. Also, check the event logs in control panel admin tools to see if there are any problems your system is picking up before the lockups.

 

[gunshy_33]

Okay, thanks for the info I will try those things and
let ya'll know how it works out

 

[gunshy_33]

One more quick question,

The way my video cards are built, they're almost touching each other, you might be able
to slide a piece of paper between them. My mobo has a third PSI E slot, any harm in
using the top one, skip the middle one, and using the bottom one for my crossfire?
just to give them some room to vent.

 

[hunter315]

The orange slot at the bottom of the board is only an 8x slot so that card wont contribute quite as much as it could from the blue slot, but if its overheating and heat throttling then it will do better down in the orange slot

 

[kikireeki]

What about the Xfire bridge? does it have enough length to connect slot 1 with 3?

 

[gunshy_33]

"did you remember to manually set the timings and voltages for the ram you are using? There is very little modern ram that runs properly at default voltage."

Okay, this is done in the bios right? I have been working on computers for quite
a while but I'm kind of a bios noob, I have only made basic changes in the past.
I found were I put the numbers in last night but the directions that came with the memory said to leave it auto mode, so I thought I would get ya'll feed back before
I made changes.

Also, is there a program you could recomend that would test my memory?

 

[wathman]

Even if they say that in the manual, putting in their specified timings won't hurt anything. Unless do something silly like cranking your RAM voltage to the highest possible setting, the RAM will be fine.

Memtest86+ is a good program for memory stress testing

 

[hunter315]

Unless X58 boards automatically set the voltage to 1.65 your system wont be stable. Find the ram voltage and bump that up to 1.65v and set your timings to 9-9-9-24
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220398

DDR3 requires manually settings unless it runs at 1.5 volts, only a few manufactures like gskill do that.

 

[gunshy_33]

I think I have firured out my problem....
My cpu's temperature skyrockets when ever I put any stress on it.
I removed the heatsink removed the thermal paste, re-applied high quality
thermal paste and re-installed making sure it was seated well.
It's still overheating
So I guess my next step should be to buy a higher quality
cpu fan right? If so, what type do you recomend form my cpu?

Intel BOX CORE I7 920 2.66GHZ-8M

Thanks

 

[graffspree]

Have you checked to see if the CPU fan is actually turning?

 

[gunshy_33]

Yeah, it's going... I have tried to adjust the speed too.. no luck

 

[gunshy_33]

right now it's idling and the temp is 62c but when I do a stress test it will
jump up to mid to high 80c

 

[hunter315]

You need an aftermarket heatsink and you need to stop loading your processor ASAP. Intel lists the max safe temp as 63ish for load, you should be idling at 30 or below. Take a look at the xigmatech darkknight cooler, and double check that your intel cooler has all of the pushpins down and locked in place, they sometimes come loose.

 

[gunshy_33]

Good advice, I had already ran up to best buy and bought a after market heatsink, it fixed my issue with cpu
over heating, I get mid 50c at full load. This is what I went with.
Thermaltake Spin Q CPU Cooler
http://www.xoxide.com/thermaltake-spinq-cpucooler-lga1366.html

Unfortunately some games are still locking up, catalyst is showing my crossfire 4890s at a 90% load with crysis even at the lowest settings, but they're staying cool. I'm not sure what to check next.