brice8989

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Jun 2, 2010
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18,510
So heres my system I made almost a year ago with 1 upgrade today.

Mobo: EP45-UD3R rev1.1 http://www.gigabyte.us/Support/Motherboard/BIOS_Model.aspx?ProductID=3014
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=n82e16819115041
PSU: Zalman 850W http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=198
Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145217
GPU: ATI HD 4870x2 before but now I just switched over to the EVGA GTX 480 superclocked

The problem is my system keeps freezing randomly for no apparent reason. I can sit in bios for days or in safe mode for a while. Rarely does it happen in safe mode. In normal mode if it starts up it will sit there without a problem temps for cpu 20-30 idle gpu 30-40 idle. When I start a 3d application however its as if the timers started. It seems like theres a 30 second period that it doesnt freeze if its fullscreen. It lasts about 10 mns in windowed mode. It's not overheating I'm 100% positive on that since there are no artifacts and the gpu is around 46 normally and 56 is max I've seen it under load. Just in case this thing was stupidly sensitive to heat I replaced the stock thermal with arctic silver 5 and found a nice 8 degree drop but fixed nothing. The ATI did the same thing before also. It would do it everytime I updated drivers then it was like over time it started working right slowly but always when I updated. I thought maybe things would be better this time going with a different company period and also going with a single core gpu instead of the horrid dual core. My OC was working fine with my ATI before and I tried it with this 480 and it froze so I thought that might be the problem. I went to default and it still does it. Yes I uninstalled ATI drivers, did driver cleaner, rebooted in safe mode did driver cleaner again and ran ccleaner then rebooted into normal and ran driver cleaner again and ccleaner to be safe then installed nvidia. Not only that but I repeated that process and tried installing in safe mode also. I'm completely out of ideas I don't know what to do anymore and its driving me crazy. Is there something I'm missing in my bios settings perhaps if anyone knows this mobo?
 
It's your RAM. The set you have needs 2.1V, and the default for DDR2 is 1.8V. So if everything is at default settings now, your RAM is getting 1.8V, which is a serious deficiency of juice. The result tends to be random freezing, exactly like you described.

Fortunately, that's simple to fix in the BIOS; just bump the voltage manually to 2.1 and you should be fine.

If you've already done this and it doesn't work, I apologize ... but it is the one thing you didn't mention.
 

brice8989

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Jun 2, 2010
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18,510
Yea I thought it was the ram to I put it to 2.1 before I went to default and tried it with everything else default. There's only a few settings I dont actually have default. My PCIE is at 100, Dram is at 2.1 my bios has memory profiles that I have no clue what they even do but they are standard, turbo and custom. Default for those profiles is turbo but I've tried standard also. My timings I put to manual to 4 4 4 12 which is stock for this set. Should I up the voltage on the ram a little?
 
Set your RAM down to 1:1 with the FSB, Which will be about 667mhz. make sure the timings are set as in jedec #1 in your SPD tab. If this doesn't resolve anything than the issue is probably not RAM and we can look at other things like the PSU and GPU.
 

brice8989

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Jun 2, 2010
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18,510
I'm fed up with it and I figure its time for me to board the i7 train anyway so here's my new build. Haven't ordered it yet tell me what you think.

HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
Ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231254
Mobo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128422
CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225

Plan on OC the cpu. Need advice on a good heatsink. Going to be using the same gtx 480 and PSU. At least if I get the same problems I'll know its the PSU this time lol. Unless I get the pleasure of having to rma something.