ASRock Z68 Pro Gen3 Issues?

[jzbass25]

Hey guys, my rig is :

Intel i2500k
cooler- COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 EVO with arctic silver compound
ASRock Z68 Pro Gen3
G.Skill Ripjaw X 8gb (2x4gb) model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL
Evga 560ti
Thermaltake Toughpower 775w
Western Digital Black 1tb hdd
Windows 7 Pro x64

I am having issues where the pc is freezing up, while it is frozen it repeats the split second audio that was playing in a loop. I noticed the display driver would crash if it froze for a longer period of time and my msi afterburner would show at/around the point of freezing that the gpu would have erratic usage from 0-6% for about 4seconds. Sometimes instead of freezing the display driver might crash multiple times in a row. Sometimes I may not even be doing anything on my pc, not even surfing the internet, I just notice the crashes and display driver crash message from afar.

I am rma'ing my gpu because of this, but I notice just running off the 2500k's gpu I still sometimes get slight freezes still. No driver crashes, also it seems to happen much less often than when I had my 560ti plugged in.

Overall these freezes seem to be extremely random and I can't seem to recreate a freeze or tell when it is going to happen. When the 560ti was plugged in I noticed more freezes while in browser and fewer when in game but that could just be because I'm in browser more often. Also the only game I noticed artifacts in was bf3.

I ran memtest for a few passes and found 0 errors, I tried using my old 600w psu and still had freezing and I doubt it is windows or my HDD since I did a fresh install of windows when I made this pc with my old hdd and my "old" hdd was rma'd only a few months ago because the last one was clicking after a year or so. Also temps are fine, I use custom 560ti fan profiles, and the coolermaster hyper 212 with arctic silver compound.

Also a slight sidenote, I notice if I press the delete button multiple times at bios post to get into the bios setup sometimes my system just hangs where I have to restart.

Could this still be a ram issue even though memtest found nothing? I am hoping it isn't a mobo problem since taking it all apart and putting it back together wouldn't be fun while finals week looms.

Thanks,
~Joe

 

[jzbass25]

Bump, please anyone? I need help.

 

[jzbass25]

I'm starting to suspect the motherboard, like I said earlier sometimes I can't get into bios, it sometimes just freezes at the post screen when I try and enter bios and I have to clear cmos to be able to enter it again.

Also I am running the hdd in ide mode still, should I try and change it to ahci?

Edit: pc just had a long freeze and intel's display driver crashed. Hmm, it also almost always seems to be when I'm surfing the internet, I've tried both firefox and google chrome and still had freezing.

 

[syhrus]

I've had similar problems running the same MB, CPU and power. I'm using Corsair RAM and an ATI 6950, but my graphics driver crashes frequently (I even had MASSIVE issues installing it in the first place), and it hangs on the boot screen a lot too. Also my network ports have both just crashed, am reinstalling the drivers now, but I get the feeling this MB is just unstable.

 

[roscolo]

I have an Asrock z68 Professional Gen3. Had a few intermittent freezes before I bought a graphics card and I was just using the onboard intel graphics. Got a few BSOD's. Never figured out what the cause was, maybe flash video related. And I don't think it's related to the board as I've read others with same / similar issues on different z68 boards using the onboard intel graphics.

Anyway when I installed my EVGA GTX 560 ti, it went away. Installed the latest beta drivers dated 11/28/2011. Not a single freeze or glitch since. Love this board.