Major system issues, please help diagnose?

[Blindmolerat]

Hello,
I am fairly computer illiterate and am having some major issues with a self built system. I built it during black Friday sales etc. since the overall cost was fairly cheap and my roommate knows some basic computer stuff so and has built other computers in the past.

My system is:
3rd Gen i7 3770k processor
Intel® Desktop Board DZ77GAL-70K MOBO (intel retail edge holiday bundle with the i7)
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7950 3BG video card
Thermaltake Black Widow W0319RU 850W ATX 12V v2.3, EPS modular power supply
1x 2.5" Hard drive, 1x 3.5" Hard drive
1x Kingston Hyperx SS
8 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz RAM
2x ASUS DVD burner optical drives
Rosewill Blackhawk mid tower
Windows 8

The ram was the last component I purchased. When we first put it together (around Christmas) I had 4gb of some generic PNY stick in there. When we initially put it together everything would work fine except my system would never shut down properly. I never used it for anything intensive and just played FarCry3 on it without issue. When I would shut down, the drives and the videocard would shut off, however all of my LED's and power supply would remain on. After anywhere from 5-10 minutes it would shut off on its own and completely power down. Whenever I would place it in sleep mode, or when it would auto sleep it would shut off after an unknown amount of time or the system would restart. When I try to restart the system it only sticks in the Windows "restarting your computer" shut down screen however never actually restarts, it just freezes on that screen until I manually power it off.

Around the second week of January I got the Corsair RAM installed and started plying some Skyrim (my main desired benchmark for this comp). While it looked absolutely amazing, it became unplayable. My screen would flash and after putting it in windowed mode I found out that "An AMD driver has crashed and successfully recovered". This would happen often until my whole system would freeze up and I would have to log out and back into windows to access my comp (task manager wouldn't work, nor would alt+f4). Sometimes I could go hours while playing without issues, other times it would begin right upon startup.

I also get consistent flash/shockwave crashes in chrome (I uninstalled the duplicate plugin for flash on chrome), get the driver crashes while playing Simcity, LoL, and even in Photoshop. When I first began playing SimCity I went two days without issues, then the driver crashes would bet progressively worse until I'm at the point where I can't even play 5 min without it freezing.

I also fairly often get BSOD with error messages "Memory_Management error" and "Pagefault in Non Paged Area", along with static-y BSOD without error and a loud screeching noise.

Now at my current state, I have all previous issues, plus a couple days ago when I would play SimCity my computer would just straight up shut off instantly on me, and it would not start up. After I jiggled my cables in the case a few times and reset my power strip I could get it to start, but then I play SC and it shuts off again.

And now, finally, it just shut off completely and I can't get it to start. My roommate and I looked at the cables and tried to get it to start but nothing. The leds and fans start working, then literally two seconds later it shuts off. It then cycles itself of trying to turn on but turns off two seconds later, then tries to boot up again. We can't boot the bios either in this cyclical self starting on/off issue.


So yes, I am complete novice and have no idea where to begin on troubleshooting/diagnosis's or even fixing. Our best guess is a power supply or mobo issue. I'll answer it now. Yes I am aware if I am such a novice I should not have built such a system. I have confidence in my roommate building it, and the bang for the buck I paid with all the sales and Intel retail program made it far cheaper than I would have at full retail for the power of the system. Why did I not look to fix the issues before they blew up? Yes I know I am dumb on this one. I work ~75 hours a week and literally just kept putting it off.

Any sort of help, direction, redirects, answers, questions etc etc etc would be AMAZING! If I am in the wrong place please let me know, I don't frequent tech forums often so am fairly lost and apologize in advance for any lack of conforming to guidelines, this seems like a great community so I decided to solicit your advice.

Thank you all

 

[rcm789]

Hmm, Well what have you tried so far? I'm not an expert but I have diagnosed a few systems; read my whole post before trying anything and of course be careful of static and such. I would start by unplugging everything from the motherboard except for the CPU (just because its kind of pain, usually a last resort). Then plug back in the power supply, RAM, and it looks like your MB doesn't have on board video so the video card. If you do have a video card that is very basic that doesn't require additional power that is nice for diagnosing. See if it will post with just that. If you can with just that then start adding parts back in. I would start with hard drive, then DVD drives, then front case ports, media card readers, ect, work your way up to putting in your high end video card if you didn't already have it in. If it still doesn't post try putting in that PNY stick of RAM you had before and see what happens. If that doesn't do it try to get a hold of a power supply even if you have to borrow one just to test. If that doesn't do it, take the motherboard out of the case and repeat the steps ( if you want to do this first you can of course its just kind of a pain to take it out if you don't have to.) If these don't do anything take off your CPU fan and re-seat your CPU, and repeat the steps.

 

[TenPc]

1x 2.5" Hard drive, 1x 3.5" Hard drive , 1x Kingston Hyperx SS

It seems you got a real mixed bag of had drives. Not real sure that using a laptop hdd (2.5inch) in a PC is such a good idea. Some people do it but I' d rather think that it would require a different subset of power requirements as opposed to the 3.5 inch hdds.

You got 1x Kingston Hyperx SS SSD drive but what is the 3.5 inch hdd, is that an old Pata 80 pin cable hdd or Sata?

With your internet, you need to include Shockwave object in the add-ons. You should also have IE8 (9 or 10) installed even if not in use as Chrome will still require the ieframe.dll system file.

According to most gamers, an i7 motherboard is not suitale for PC games whereas the i5 is better. The i7 is suited to vdeo editing, movie making, programming, and other graphic and cpu intensive software and programs, not that that will be of much help to you.

Do what rcm789 has suggested, that will weed out any hardware issus.

The cyclic on/off restart issue could be related to a heat issue with the cpu, if there is too much or not enough thermal paste, the cpu temps will rise above their maximum.

A snapshot of your inner case might show something that you have inadvertently done like using the sata sockets in the wrong sockets, refer to your motherboard manual for the setup instructions.

Is their a raid setup? Have you enabled AHCI?

Edit -
What OS? x32 or x64? Windows 7 or Windows 8? Any linux or other OSes on other drives?

 

[Blindmolerat]

Thanks guys, Ill start piecing it apart and let you know hoe it goes. I've memtested the ram and tried to wipe and re install my drivers is what Ive done so far.

They are both SATA HD's. The laptop one is from my old iBuypower that died on me a couple months ago, I use it purely as a backup drive and figured it would be easier to just host it in the case than using it as an external. I do not have raid or AHCI enabled however a quick search looks like both of those would be valuable to me!

I have windows 8, fairly certain it's 64.