Memory Dump BSOD + Other issues

[rman3349]

Hello all. It's been quite a while since I've posted here, but I'm having some issues that I just can't solve myself, and who better to turn to than the community that helped my through my first build.

So first of all, here's what I'm working with:

Phenom II X6 1090T
Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 Mobo
Sapphire Radeon HD 6870
Gskill 1866 4GB (x2)
Thermaltake 800W PSU (more on this later)

So I've had this machine for about 18 months now, And through that time, these problems have existed to a degree that's juuuuust mild enough that I haven't totally gutted it yet. I've found some of these issues individually, but never any threads with all of them. Really at a loss at this point. A list of problems:

- Maybe 1 or 2 times a month, I get a BSOD from a physical memory dump. This typically happens when the system is under stress, but seemingly not max stress.

- If the machine is left alone and on for an extended period of time, I often find it shut off when I return. In order to get it going again I need to unplug and re-plug the power cord from the PSU.

- Browser crashes and/or browser plug-in (eg adobe or adblock). These seem to be fine for long periods of time, the suddenly I will have a day or two when I literally can't open Chrome or Firefox for more than 5 seconds without it crashing. Then it will be fine for a month again.

- Some weird issues with Steam, like a game that will pause its update and never resume no matter what I do. (I've basically had to give up playing TF2 because of this )

I have seen a number of potential problems that any one of these issues could be attributed to, including:

- Inadequate PSU. I figured this must be it so I changed the PSU (originally 650W) after about 9 months to a 800W one, but the problems persist (although they did seem to go away when I first made the switch, the eventually resurfaced)

- Faulty Hard drive. This system has two hard drives, a 10,000 RPM one that I use for basically just the OS, and regular 750 GB one where I store most of my stuff. Both of these are salvages from my previous system, so I think this is the most likely problem, but I'd like to know a little more before I drop some more cash.

- One of my memory sticks is bad. I've tried switching the slots they occupy, but have not yet tried running it with only one or the other in there. Would this be worth while?

- I also read somewhere that the CMOS battery may be to blame. This seems unlikely to me


So overall, I kinda just built myself a lemon and I need to figure out if it will ever get better . Thanks to anyone with the patience to read this whole post and provide some advice!

 

[crewton]

You do have a lot of annoyance. Your steam issue I've had before with Portal being stuck in "update paused" status. I just kept pausing update and then hitting resume and eventually it told me that Portal needs to be reformatted for better efficiency or some crap and then it finally updated. Oh, I think I reinstalled steam too which is a pain but make sure you save your game files and user settings!

I'd put one stick of RAM in at a time and run memtest86+ if one of your sticks produces any errors it's bad and should be replaced.

Adding more watts to a psu doesn't make it stronger. You'll want to look at the amperage coming off the 12V line. Your 6870 only needs 13A so either psu you had should be able to do that. However, psu are designed to be efficient at their wattage. It's a fairly steep curve and only using ~300W instead of the 800W it's designed for means you are in a low efficiency band where more psu problems occur. For your system a 450W or 500W would be the best. I don't know if that's the cause of your power issue, but you should try to get a psu to match the other components.