Brand new build works great except random freezing

[mojomonkey12]

Alright,

Let me get this out of the way, I have very little tech knowldege. I really shouldn't even attempted to build my own PC, but I did, and I think I acrually did a good job. I booted it up for the first time on Saturday, a week ago tomorrow.

I have had two random freezes before today, and now I have had two in the past 3 hours. Things will be working fine, there is absolutely no slow down or anything before this happens, it just happens and all of a sudden I cannot do anything. No commands, not ctrl shortcuts, no mouse, etc. Only solution is to hard power off system.

When I turn it back on, the event viewer only has critical errors for the hard power off, there is nothin(that I can see) about the freezing.

Here is what I have.

Gigabyte Z77x-UD5H Motherboard
Intel Ivy Bridge i7 3770s processor
EVGA geoforce 570 2.5 GB GPU
Mushkin Redline 2x4GB RAM
Crucial 128 GB SSD
XFX 850w XXX Pro 80plus silver PSU

I think that is all the hardware.

Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this and how I could fix it? Remember, I am not really that great at this stuff, so responses that are spelled out for an idiot like me are appreciated! I used this forum more than once when building this thing, I know how helpful and knowledgable you all are

Oh my OS is Windows 7 home 64 bit

 

[elayman]

My friend had the same thing. I think it's just the new motherboards didn't ship with good BIOS. Update your motherboards BIOS by following this:

1.
Download the newest F7 BIOS
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4167#bios

2.
WARNING THIS WILL ERASE THE WHOLE USB STICK: Format a spare USB stick to FAT32 with this program: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/FAT32format.shtml

3.
Then plug the USB into one of the BACK usb ports - sometimes the front USB isn't recognized before windows loads. Follow directions below (restart and hit Del button to enter QFLash to update BIOS)
http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/121/flashbios_qflash.pdf

I think you then select the USB and hit the one that says something F7.exe

 

[mojomonkey12]

Does it matter if the USB back port is 3.0 or 2.0?

So then I just restart and hit delete like I did to enter into the BIOS the first time I booted, select quick flash, select proper file off of USB and hit enter.

I will pick up a USB stick tomorrow then, I have several, but they all have stuff I'd rather not lose on them. Thank you.

 

[inzone]

Alot of times freezing is the result of a conflict between either hardware or software with the most common conflict being software. A hardware conflict will cause freezing all the time while software can be intermittent because the software may not always be in use.
The first thing you can try is to make sure that all the drivers are up to date. Then you can make sure that the MB bios is the most recent release.
I also know there can be a hardware conflict between certian SSD's and the Marvell chipset that controls the sata3 ports. In the owners manual if you look at where the sata3 ports are listed it will show you the ones controlled by the marvell chip and the ones controlled by the Z77 chipset. I would make sure that the SSD is connected to the Z77 sata3 controlled port.

 

[elayman]

You can try and update drivers, but might as well update BIOS since I think newer chipsets tend to have compatibility issues until the newer BIOSes come out. You should only need a small USB stick to do this - you can always reformat after and load all of your stuff back too.

 

[inzone]

This eraseing the whole usb stick must be something new because I haver done many bios updates with files on the stick and they weren't erased.

 

[mojomonkey12]

Well, I know for a fact that I don't have the most updated BIOS. I think mine is F5 or something and F7 is now released. I never updated because I was told not to mess with it unless something wasn't stable.

I was very careful to utilize the proper SATA ports for the SSD and the eSATA port, and the optical drive. The SSD is plugged into SATA0, which according to my Mobo manual is indeed run by the Z77 chipset.

When you say drivers are up to date, are you referring to the motherboard drivers, hardware drivers or both?

EDIT--Also, when I downloaded the BIOS drivers/software, I got this program called @BIOS, it has an option to update the BIOS from the Gigabyte server...would this do the same thing as using a USB device?

 

[inzone]

There are several ways to update the MB bios and the @Bios is indeed one of them , and at this point since we don't know what is causing the conflict then it would make sense to update all drivers.

 

[Xenturion]

I blame the SSD. But, then I would, considering I've got two in RAID 0. I update both of their firmwares before building the array. Things worked well, got Windows installed, and then just started having infrequent strange things happen. Sometimes Intels RAID software tells me one SSD is inaccessible. Sometimes I lock up for short durations of maybe 5 - 10 seconds, where I can't do anything, and then I hear a strange sound over the speakers as it catches up. I get an occassional blue screen, sometimes doing something as simple as using Windows Explorer. SSDs are quite a bit more subtle than hard drives when it comes to malfunctioning.

 

[mojomonkey12]

Xenturion, Thanks for the input, however the only issue I have ever had is lockup/freezing. There is nothing leading up to it, or any other strange behavior.

Inzone, I did update all of my drivers late last night and just turned on today, so we will see. Thanks for the help.

 

[mojomonkey12]

Alright, I checked the drivers and all were up to date, so I went ahead and used the @bios feature to update the BIOS. I was actually at version F4 and the update took me to F7. It was easy enough to do that way.

Been on most of the day with no freezing, I am not convinced that I am out of the woods yet, but considering I had three just yesterday, things are looking up. Thanks for the advice. Unless you hear back from me, consider this issue solved.

 

[mojomonkey12]

Best answer selected by mojomonkey12.