I7 920 system locking up

[ppenguin]

System I built right when the first i7 920 came out is starting to act up and locking up a lot over the last 6 months. From reading other posts I know it's probably either 1 of the following but what is the best way to trouble shoot this without swapping out a bunch of hardware. It's likely either the motherboard, graphic card or Ram correct? Running Windows 8 but this was happening on Windows 7 so I don't see that being an issue.

Thanks

 

[amorenn]

What are the rest of your components? Any overclocking? Any driver modification? When is it locking up? Is it crashing or freezing?

 

[ppenguin]

No overclocking.

ASUS P6T Motherboard
ATI Radeon (4800 Card) I know its old but I game on consoles
DWA 566 Wifi Card
SATA Drives
16GB RAM (not sure of brand)
DVD
All stock drivers

Freezing not crashing, just completely random no specific thing causes it. Sometimes it will run a couple of days no problem and then others it may lockup a few times in one day.

 

[PanicMaster85]

1) are your drivers updated?

2) Try updating your bios
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/308518-30-update-bios

3) How old is this build?

4) Could it be over heating?

5) try running a GPU and CPU stress tester(use seperately) and monitor temps with gpu-z(for graphics card temp) and core temp(for cpu)
GPU
http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

CPU
http://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/

GPU-Z
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Coretemp
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

5) Could your ram be having issues? run memtest
http://www.memtest.org/

6) Check your hard driver/SSD
-Start menu
-Computer
-Right click main disk(for me it is C
-Properties
-Tools
-Error checker

7) Run burnintest
http://www.passmark.com/download/bit_download.htm

8) After it crashes run who crashed
http://www.passmark.com/download/bit_download.htm

hope this helps

 

[ppenguin]

Thanks. still trying to test the video but the card is ancient dx 10 and no open gl that it won't run any of the benchmark programs. CPU burn in went great as did the ram. I am thinking it's either a dieing motherboard or video card ?

I do plan on upgrading but trying to squeeze some more out of this 920 before going to an Ivy Bridge setup, which I assume will be quite the change.

thanks for your help

 

[PanicMaster85]

yep no problem(with helping)

yeah im not sure have you tried playing things that stress your gpu? if it stresses your gpu and your system locks up faster than if you are lets say just sitting at the desktop then its your gpu, also if you want to upgade why not just upgrade now I mean what do you do with your system anyways?

 

[ppenguin]

Not GPU related I don't think as it sometimes happens when I am typing and other times when I am idle. It's been good now for last 4 days not one problem which is why I am guessing it's slowly dieing components. Reason of not upgrading is $ and since I don't game on here my main reason that I WANT to upgrade are getting a new motherboard chipset, features along with the faster procssor for video encodes and multitasking.

 

[PanicMaster85]

dont forget about the ram you need at least 4gbs though 8gb would let you do all the multitasking you want also yeah i see what you mean... have you tried updating your bios?
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/308518-30-update-bios

 

[ppenguin]

Correct. Already got 16GB on this one and am considering even 32gb on the next build if RAM stays cheap. Already updated BIOS, etc. My best guess is the motherboard is just showing it's age. 5+ years of 24/7 use.