Computer Freeze..graphics card to blame?

admgamer

Honorable
Feb 26, 2012
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10,510
Hey,

I have recently purchased the following components and built a machine:

Intel Core i7-2700K 3.50GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
HIS ATI Radeon HD 6950 IceQ X Turbo 2048 MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Asus P8Z68-V GEN3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Crucial RealSSD M4 128 GB 2.5" SATA 6Gbs Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2)
OCZ ZX Series 850W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply
Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gbs Hard Drive - OEM (ST2000DL003)
Corsair Carbide 400R Midi Tower Case - Black
Kingston HyperX Genesis 12 GB (3x4 GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Triple Channel
Sony Optiarc AD-7280S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
TP-Link 150Mbps Wireless PCI Express Adapter (TL-WN781ND)
Air Series A50 Performance CPU Cooler

Everything is running smoothly except I get the occasional freeze up where the computer appears to be unresponsive yet the audio slows down but carries on. It seems a bit random although I have noticed it happening a lot more when watching videos. Games seem to be fine (most of the time but has happened once or twice)

I have run memtest and nothing has been flagged up, I have all the latest drivers for the components and now I'm stumped.

This is a Windows 7 64bit machine fully updated using Windows Update. There are no obvious event log messages as to what could be causing a problem.

I think it might be graphics card related as it only ever seems to happen when watching videos or occasionaly when playing games. Does anyone have a clue if it is graphics related?
 
Check your temperatures under load.
For the GPU, get MSI Afterburner and try its stress test.
For the CPU, load with Prime95 and check the temps with HWMonitor or RealTemp.
If the GPU's above 90C or the CPU's above ~75C, that may be the issue.

Incidentally, your hardware does not support triple channel RAM operation.