I built this machine in July 2010 (my very first build, so I'm not going to say I'm good at this) and it's been mostly running well, but recently has been having severe problems:
ASUS P6X58D-E motherboard
Intel Core i7-930 w/ Cooler Master Hyper 212 Cooler
6GB G.skill F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ DDR3-1600 RAM
1 TB WD Caviar Black (primary)
1.5TB WD Caviar Green
250GB WD Caviar SE
LiteOn iHAS424 DVD-RW drive
Radeon 5870 1GB
Linksys WMP600N wireless card
Seasonic X750 Gold PSU
Windows 7 x64 (on 1TB primary) and Arch Linux x64 (on 250GB drive)
For the past two months I have experienced random freezes. Everything just stops on screen, audio cuts off, USB devices (ex. iPod) think they're disconnected, the keyboard caps lock light won't change, etc. There is no BSOD or anything in the Windows event log upon rebooting that would hint at a problem. I have to hold down the power button to shut it off.
Anyway, these freezes started out relatively rare; I think it only happened twice in July. In August they started happening more often, like once or twice a week. Recently they've gotten completely unbearable, and more random-- sometimes I'll go 15 minutes without it locking up, other times two days.
So, I figured I messed something up when I built it that was coming back to bite me in the ass.
-Checked BIOS settings-- everything okay.
-Heard that bad hard drives can sometimes cause lockups so I ran Western Digital's drive diagnostics on all the drives (they're all WD drives) including full surface scans-- nothing is wrong with them.
-Ran memtest86 to check the RAM, no problems. However, I suspected it was the memory anyway because I had started out running the (DDR3-1600) RAM at DDR3-1066 speed and had only gone back and set it to the "proper" speed after a few months, when I realized that it wasn't running at 1600 speed (during last winter). Sometimes after the computer froze, it would fail to boot up at all (the machine would whirr to life for a few seconds, turn off on its own)... but it would boot up okay if I pressed the "MemOK" button. I went ahead and RMA'd the RAM just in case. I got new sticks back and installed them (and also set them back to DDR3-1066 again because that would stress the parts less and I couldn't tell the difference anyway), and the problems continue, so it isn't bad RAM.
-It is not dependent on CPU/GPU load-- it often happens while the machine is idle, and has also happened while playing TF2 and Minecraft. I can even run a stress test like Prime95 or LinX absolutely fine for hours on end... the freezes just happen completely randomly.
-It isn't overheating. Temperatures stay steadily around 40C idle and around 60C under heavy load.
-It's not Windows specific, so it isn't a driver problem-- happens on my third hard drive's Arch Linux install too.
-I have tried reseating everything already, no change. Also tried removing the wireless card just to try, but it still freezes.
-I have reset the BIOS multiple times just to see if it would help. Also, I am running the latest BIOS version.
I'm not sure what else can cause random freezes. Anyone have any ideas as to how I can make this thing stable again? I can't figure out what is causing the problem.
ASUS P6X58D-E motherboard
Intel Core i7-930 w/ Cooler Master Hyper 212 Cooler
6GB G.skill F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ DDR3-1600 RAM
1 TB WD Caviar Black (primary)
1.5TB WD Caviar Green
250GB WD Caviar SE
LiteOn iHAS424 DVD-RW drive
Radeon 5870 1GB
Linksys WMP600N wireless card
Seasonic X750 Gold PSU
Windows 7 x64 (on 1TB primary) and Arch Linux x64 (on 250GB drive)
For the past two months I have experienced random freezes. Everything just stops on screen, audio cuts off, USB devices (ex. iPod) think they're disconnected, the keyboard caps lock light won't change, etc. There is no BSOD or anything in the Windows event log upon rebooting that would hint at a problem. I have to hold down the power button to shut it off.
Anyway, these freezes started out relatively rare; I think it only happened twice in July. In August they started happening more often, like once or twice a week. Recently they've gotten completely unbearable, and more random-- sometimes I'll go 15 minutes without it locking up, other times two days.
So, I figured I messed something up when I built it that was coming back to bite me in the ass.
-Checked BIOS settings-- everything okay.
-Heard that bad hard drives can sometimes cause lockups so I ran Western Digital's drive diagnostics on all the drives (they're all WD drives) including full surface scans-- nothing is wrong with them.
-Ran memtest86 to check the RAM, no problems. However, I suspected it was the memory anyway because I had started out running the (DDR3-1600) RAM at DDR3-1066 speed and had only gone back and set it to the "proper" speed after a few months, when I realized that it wasn't running at 1600 speed (during last winter). Sometimes after the computer froze, it would fail to boot up at all (the machine would whirr to life for a few seconds, turn off on its own)... but it would boot up okay if I pressed the "MemOK" button. I went ahead and RMA'd the RAM just in case. I got new sticks back and installed them (and also set them back to DDR3-1066 again because that would stress the parts less and I couldn't tell the difference anyway), and the problems continue, so it isn't bad RAM.
-It is not dependent on CPU/GPU load-- it often happens while the machine is idle, and has also happened while playing TF2 and Minecraft. I can even run a stress test like Prime95 or LinX absolutely fine for hours on end... the freezes just happen completely randomly.
-It isn't overheating. Temperatures stay steadily around 40C idle and around 60C under heavy load.
-It's not Windows specific, so it isn't a driver problem-- happens on my third hard drive's Arch Linux install too.
-I have tried reseating everything already, no change. Also tried removing the wireless card just to try, but it still freezes.
-I have reset the BIOS multiple times just to see if it would help. Also, I am running the latest BIOS version.
I'm not sure what else can cause random freezes. Anyone have any ideas as to how I can make this thing stable again? I can't figure out what is causing the problem.
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