About a year ago, I purchased a PC from CyberPower. (I only learned of their...reputation later, but whatever.) Almost as soon as I started using it, this issue began to show up, but like a moron I figured it was minor and not worth the trouble of an RMA.
Essentially, any time my graphics card is required to deal with 3D graphics (usually only in games, but once in a while the Win 7 UI is enough to set it off), there is a chance that it will freeze for about 20-30 seconds. How likely it is directly corresponds to the intensity of the game in question--i.e., playing pre-2006ish games will usually work without a hitch, stuff like Civilization V or Mass Effect will probably work for a while, and DirectX 11 games are almost guaranteed to set it off within a few minutes. What happens after the freeze depends--sometimes (usually only on simpler, pre-DX10 games) it'll start running again without a problem. More often, it'll crash to the desktop or give me a useless black screen while the sound continues. (The latter is occasionally accompanied by a "The AMD display driver stopped responding and has recovered" message bubble from Windows.)
"Okay," I hear you asking, "but why are you posting this in the power supply forum when this sounds like a clear graphics card issue?" Well, I thought it was an graphics card issue too, and a few months ago finally bought a shiny new MSI Radeon HD 6950. Lo and behold, not only did the issue continue, but now it has a significant chance of resulting in a bluescreen instead of just freezing. Argh.
So I figure at this point that it's almost certainly an issue with the motherboard and/or CPU (I've memtested the RAM extensively, cooling seems to be working fine, etc.), but I want to exhaust every possible option before I swap out the motherboard, and from what I've read, a power supply that's not up to scratch can result in symptoms that...vaguely resemble the ones I've been having. What do you all think? Is a PSU replacement worth a try?
PC specs:
MOTHERBOARD: ASUS M4A77T/USB3
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
HARD DRIVE: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM
RAM: 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3/1333MHz
VIDEO CARD: MSI Radeon HD 6950 2GB
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
PSU: 600 Watts XtremeGear Power Supply - SLI/CrossFireX Ready
Essentially, any time my graphics card is required to deal with 3D graphics (usually only in games, but once in a while the Win 7 UI is enough to set it off), there is a chance that it will freeze for about 20-30 seconds. How likely it is directly corresponds to the intensity of the game in question--i.e., playing pre-2006ish games will usually work without a hitch, stuff like Civilization V or Mass Effect will probably work for a while, and DirectX 11 games are almost guaranteed to set it off within a few minutes. What happens after the freeze depends--sometimes (usually only on simpler, pre-DX10 games) it'll start running again without a problem. More often, it'll crash to the desktop or give me a useless black screen while the sound continues. (The latter is occasionally accompanied by a "The AMD display driver stopped responding and has recovered" message bubble from Windows.)
"Okay," I hear you asking, "but why are you posting this in the power supply forum when this sounds like a clear graphics card issue?" Well, I thought it was an graphics card issue too, and a few months ago finally bought a shiny new MSI Radeon HD 6950. Lo and behold, not only did the issue continue, but now it has a significant chance of resulting in a bluescreen instead of just freezing. Argh.
So I figure at this point that it's almost certainly an issue with the motherboard and/or CPU (I've memtested the RAM extensively, cooling seems to be working fine, etc.), but I want to exhaust every possible option before I swap out the motherboard, and from what I've read, a power supply that's not up to scratch can result in symptoms that...vaguely resemble the ones I've been having. What do you all think? Is a PSU replacement worth a try?
PC specs:
MOTHERBOARD: ASUS M4A77T/USB3
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
HARD DRIVE: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM
RAM: 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3/1333MHz
VIDEO CARD: MSI Radeon HD 6950 2GB
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
PSU: 600 Watts XtremeGear Power Supply - SLI/CrossFireX Ready
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