What is wrong with my computer?

Runs horrible as in what? Slow? Resolution is off? Software won't run?

If it's a new comp with WIN just installed you need to install drivers for everything. Won't recognize optical drives or even LAN w/o chipset drivers. Display will prob be at a horrendously low resolution w/o GPU drivers.

Runs horrible as in: you can't do anything at all. As soon as I click anything, I lose all responsiveness.

I took it to Geek Squad just for the heck of it. They do a free diagnosis. He agreed with me that there is definitely some sort of hardware problem. However, if I wanted to know what exactly was wrong, I would have to pay $69.99, and I wasn't going to do that.

I hope this doesn't happen to me, I have the same mobo. banth is helping me right now because I can't get a clean win7 install on my wd caviar green.

I wouldn't wish this sort of mental torture on anyone, lol. I so badly want to use this thing.

My Specs:
Core i5 750
WD Caviar Green 500GB
ATi 5870
Corsair 750W
4gb G.SKILL DDR3 1600mhz
Gigabyte P55 USB3

It's killin me too. Thats crazy how close our specs are.

Geek squad charges as much to diagnose a problem as it takes many small time computer repairs shops to fix something.

You did install your drivers right? =P

Run Prime 95 and see if it gets you any errors (if you can).
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

Go into bios and see if you can see your HD's SMART statistics.

That PSU is very suspicious. It might simply be it's not providing stable power to the RAM/CPU.

My advice:
Try PRime 95 first.
Then look at HD SMART stats.
Then borrow or buy a quality PSU from a place with a good return policy.

If all that doesn't work, install HD in another comp and run WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=608...

Thanks so much, banth. I'll try all of your recommendations. Do you think that it could be the mobo? I thought that might make sense as the problem due to the part about the opticals not connecting. And also, I can't install the drivers. I lose responsiveness every time I try.

If it's a MOBO issue, it shouldn't even post. Because you managed to get as far as load windows before you have issues, and Memtest came out fine, this leaves CPU HD and PSU.

And that PSU looks very very suspicious.

I'm saying the other stuff.

1. MAKE SURE DES software is NOT installed. I have no idea why Gigabyte still automatically install DES, but DES is known to cause all kinds of problems, including BSODs,etc.

2. Make sure all drivers are installed.

3. Check temps via RealTemp to make sure you aren't over heating (which leads to throttling back on the CPU).

4. Disable/reduce pagefile size.

5. Do a fresh install of Windows.

Thanks everybody. Is there any way to test my cpu?

^ Doubt CPU is the problem.

You can use OCCT CPU test or Prime 95 Small FFT to test CPU.

Aside from the optical drive, the problem screams RAM issue. The Memtest wont always identify the RAM as a problem especially if it is the RAm settings that are wrong.
My computer was constantly hanging up at random points, in the end I went down to one stick of RAm and went to Bios and change Voltage and frequencies to the recommended (depending on RAM) one stick failed to boot, the other stick got to windows but was unstable (the freezing occured) I then adjusted the voltage (increased it from the recommended 1.6v to 1.7) and now it runs smoothly and I will RMA the other stick.
Interestingly, both sticks work stably if I reduced my speed from 1600 to 1066 with the recommended settings, so technically both sticks work, but one is faulty as it fails to boot the computer at its official settings.

The problem here is that any test that I want to run has to be bootable and self-contained. Basically ignore the fact that Windows is installed, because I cannot do anything inside it.

If you have a legit xp cd, I think there's a free disc you can download and build called ultimate boot cd for windows. There's a different cd though called Ultimate boot cd and that it can be dowloaded as an iso file and burned to disc. As far as I know it's free, and has memtest and some cpu tests on it. What does it do if you boot into safe mode?

^ Correct. What OP want is this: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It's got Memtest86+ and a bunch of other utils.

The thing I do like about ultimate boot cd for windows is that you basically get windows xp on disc with a bunch of utilities. Just gotta dig out my old xp cd so i can build one.

I FIGURED IT OUT! This was probably a simple problem that I was too stupid to figure out, but after reading this, my computer runs effectively. http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=84371

Glad you got it working. May still want to grab that cd though for when your friends want help .

Okay turns out it wasn't just my power settings. It worked slightly better when I set the correct voltages and all of that, but it still ran like crap. I went out and dropped a hundred bones and bought a BFG 550 watt PSU and not my computer is truly running like its supposed to.

The Orion 585w cost me $24.99. You get what you pay for.