At wits end - pc keeps sometimes hard locking when exitting games or wake from idle

[fromage]

Hi there


Haven't posted in years, my sig is quite old.

Here are my system specs before I get into my problem:


Intel Q6600 at 3.25ghz on stock cooler and voltages
2x2GB Corsair DDR2 and 2x1GB Corsair DDR2 stock speeds
Asus P5Q Deluxe
brand new Asus R7 260X DirectCU2 OC 2GB GDDR5 - replaced Sapphire Radeon HD4350
brand new Crucial m500 240gb SSD
brand new Seagate 600 240gb SSD
500GB Hitachi Deskstar 32MB cache
brand new eVGA PSU 500W 80+ Certified - replaced Antec EarthWatts 500W psu
Antec SOnata 3 case


I had upgraded the harddrive and GPU recently because I wanted to play the latest games and speed up my computer. I game at 1080p so I figure I dont need the latest and greatest really, so thats why I didnt touch my cpu, and only added SSDs and a midrange GPU. The q6600 is still pretty capable.

My computer has always been rock solid stable with prime95/memtest to infinity and beyond with my OLD video card - Sapphire Radeon 4350 512MB. But it crashes with the new video card. My overclock on the CPU is only modest 3.25GHZ and Ive been running that since day 1 on stock cooler and stock voltages. My temps hardly ever reach 55C under full load max across all 4 cores.

My problem with my computer is that sometimes it will hardlock(screen blank but computer still running) when quitting games and trying to return to desktop. Often I will find the computer hard locked(still running but screen blank once again) when it has been idling for a few hours(power profile is on high performance and always on). Also sometimes I will get artefacts, and the video card sometimes makes a funny whiny sound on boot up.

I immediately suspected my power supply, the Antec Earthwatts 500W. It was getting old and my 12V voltages were getting extremely low on the 12V1 and 12V2 rails(speedfan was reading ~11.20V on both, same in BIOS) - I figured eh why not buy another psu. I have always liked eVGA video cards, and got a good deal on a eVGA 500w 80+ psu. It had a single 12V rail with like 40A on it so I thought it would help. Now my 12V is reading 12.26V which I guess is closer than the old Antec PSU.

But that didn't solve the issue.

So I RMA'd the video card to Asus(6 business day turnaround door-to-door, it was glorious, excellent RMA process). It the 6 days that I waited for the RMA, I reinstalled my old 4350 and voila, no crashing, though I didn't play any games, it at least didn't crash after trying to wake from idle. Once I got back the 260X, I reinstalled it, and left for a few hours only to come back to it hard locked again after idling.

Now I am at my wits end. I'm going to try going back to stock clocks and see if that helps. Perhaps my new video card demands too much from the motherboard and subsequently killed it. I dont know if that is a possibility. How could my computer be rock solid stable with an old 4350, and but instable with new 260x?



TLDR: Old 7 year old computer thats been stable forever
- decided to upgrade video card,
- new video card causes system instability
- bought new PSU to replace old 7 year psu as it had low 12v
- still same exact symptons
- RMA'd new videocard and reinstalled old video card and was completely stable again
- received new video card and system is once again unstable with it installed.
- is motherboard bad?
- computer is otherwise prime95, memtest, furmark 3d stable


plz halp gooby

 

[Dangman]

I immediately suspected my power supply, the Antec Earthwatts 500W. It was getting old and my 12V voltages were getting extremely low on the 12V1 and 12V2 rails(speedfan was reading ~11.20V on both, same in BIOS) - I figured eh why not buy another psu. I have always liked eVGA video cards, and got a good deal on a eVGA 500w 80+ psu. It had a single 12V rail with like 40A on it so I thought it would help. Now my 12V is reading 12.26V which I guess is closer than the old Antec PSU.

You replaced your PSU for the wrong reasons: BIOs and software voltage readings are completely useless as they're extraordinarily inaccurate. You need to use an actual multi-meter in order to get near accurate voltage readings.


Anyway, try your Asus card in another PC and see if the same symptoms occur.

 

[fromage]

I did try an el cheapo multimeter and it showed 12.00 flat... But that was a dollar store multimeter.

I don't have another computer to try my card in

 

[Bluesun311]

What OS are you on? Old hardware + new OS = confusion

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

I would drop the overclock and run it completely stock and see...

 

[fromage]

Running windows 7 home premium 64bit, all legit and completely updated. When the computer hard locks, there's no events in the log. So it's a hardware problem.

Running stock clocks makes no improvement.

 

[Dangman]

I did try an el cheapo multimeter and it showed 12.00 flat... But that was a dollar store multimeter.

I don't have another computer to try my card in

FInd a friend who has a computer with a PCI-E slot and bring over your PSU if needed.