Ok so a couple of months ago I decided to build a new pc after a 10 year hiatus from pc gaming. But I've been having some persistent crashing problems that I just can't seem to diagnose. I have a 3 year old son and a 4 week old baby girl and about 2 hours of commuting a day to the worksite. So my time for gaming is at a premium and these crashes seriously cut into my gaming time.

I need pc giant bombs help, I'll post specs ASAP. But if anyone can suggest where to start as far as basic diagnostics that would be amazing.

Cheers

Dave

Specs:

Gigabyte z87x - ud3h

I5-4570

16 gigs gskill 1600 MHz

Corsair enthusiast 850tx

Radeon hd7950

Crashing only happens during gaming for some reason diablo 3 doesn't crash but lego marvel jazz punk and bf4 and dark souls all crash. No error messages just a lock up.

First thing would be to check the temps on the cpu and gpu as it sounds like it might be related to 3d load. Make sure the psu cables are all alright as well.

Yea. Might want to make sure the heat sink on your CPU has been installed correctly, that all the fasteners are tight so that the heat sink makes good contact with the CPU and transfers heat correctly. If you have one of those fans, it's easy to think the heat sink is installed correctly when it's not. All the pins need to be tightly locked. Pull gently on it to see if a pin is no tight. If it's installed correctly, it won't budge at all. Mine got loose when I moved my PC, that's why I'm recommending this check.

@noizy:

Thanks for the quick reply. I have an extra fan I bought that I'm going to try and add this weekend so I'll check the seating of the heat sink.

Any good recommendations for temperature checking programs I only know speed fan. And testing for heat?

@garris: try hwmonitor. I've been using it for years. It's free, lightweight, has live min/max/current for virtually everything and will parse output to a log file if you want.

Since I typically start my PC in Big Picture Mode, I have hwmonitor starting up automatically at boot so I can go back after playing a game for awhile and see how high my temps got. It can run in the background indefinitely with no perceptible performance hit.

Here's an example from this morning of the types of data it monitors. The level of granularity will depend on your hardware but it should be similar:

Ok I I ran 3d mark test with the temperature program running can Isomeone help with analysis.

@garris: The voltage values there look pretty strange from a first glance, kind of hard to know if hwmonitor is doing a bad job at monitoring or if the voltages really are that wack.
at least the voltages are not fluctuating much between min and max, but some of them seem to be off by quite alot, like the 3.3 volt being at 2 volts.

temps look fine, man, you're running that fan on the graphics card pretty fast aren't you?
What kind of crashes are we talking about, multiple games crashing to desktop without errors, with the same error?

Or are we talking blue-screens here?

Are you running the latest catalyst?

@andmm: @devildoll: it's a hard lock usually with some kind of horizontal looking artifacting and the sound it makes is kind of like hypno toad.

I built this pc myself so it is possible something is wrong. The crashes aren't that predictable the other day I put in two solid hours on dark souls 2 without crashing and the following day I put 15 mins into lego batman with my son before it crashed out. Another time I got about 20 mins into dark souls 2 before it crashed out.

Tldr. Computer crashes at random intervals while playing different games locks up with a hypno toad sound and resets.

Also that's the default fan speed I never touched anything

Oh I also ran the windows Memory test and came up dry on errors I'm going to find a USB stick to do memtest86.

And I am running the newest catalyst drivers.

I was going to ask about your PSU but I see that you have a very high quality Corsair one...I'm stumped. I think that HWMon may be misreporting your voltage values, it does happen.

Since it's a new machine it may be time to start RMA'ing parts...I'm stumped.

memtest86

@alternate: @mb: ya I'm going to memtest 86 next and if that doesn't turn up I think I'll Rma the Radeon unless there are other suggestions

@garris: Try running on-board video before you go through the video card RMA process and see if even that works. Pull the video card completely. If it doesn't work at least you know it isn't the video card.

@mb: ok il give that a shot as well. Lol maybe I should have saved myself some money and frustration and got a ps4

yes, artifacting sounds like a problem with the gpu. On my old Pc I'd get artifacting on boot and then a blue screen. It also happened when the actual gameplay in a game started. At some point it didn't boot at all (didn't get a POST beep) On board graphics worked fine and saved me until all the new parts for a new PC got here. So like MB said, pull the card and connect the monitor to the motherboard.

@sogeman:

I'm wondering if artifacting is the right term. Ok gonna pull my card to check manufacturer hopefully this process is relatively quick I have watch dogs preordered on steam

A component could be internally damaged?

Crashing can be a number of causes, even software related. Run a detailed hardware diag, manually check all components.

It could be anything, bad ram, overheating, bad PSU, bad video card, or the Cpu.

Is it blue screening? Just freezing while gaming and forcing a restart? If it's blue screen you could check the error number online and see if any info is out there. It could just be a faulty graphics card that you need to replace, you can try a program to stress test the gpu and see if it overheats or crashes.

@unilad: any diagnosing software recommendations

@garris: Did you pull that video card out yet? Basic troubleshooting, one step at a time.

Also has this PC ever worked, or has it had this problem since you put it together? Are you sure you hooked up all the required power connectors to your motherboard and video card?

@mb: not yet to busy withe the kids. And this problem has persisted since I built it.

I was hoping that it was a driver problem something that would fix itself obviously that was a pipe dream.

When the kids go to bed tonight I'm going to pull everything apart and check all the seating and such.

I feel like in my desperation to fix it I'm leap frogging instead of doing a procedural going over of the system.

@garris: one thing you could check when you have time, is if the voltages in uefi align with the ones that HWMonitor report.

if you could grab a photo that would be great,
it is supposed to be under M.I.T and then PC Health Status

looks like this

Often simple things are the things to start with.....Have you tried uninstalling/reinstalling the latest graphics driver? I had a BSOD problem the other day, and that seemed to fix it.

@devildoll:

sorry for the crappy phone quality.

Also I decided to check my even viewer and find out if I could glean any info. here it is.

You should be sorry for the gangster style 90 degree photo, not the quality.Hehe jokes aside, those values look much better than what hwmonitor reported, this suggests your power-supply being okay, at-least in that snapshot.

I couldn't parse anything specific out of those event viewer logs however.

@devildoll:

well I decided to go for one last gambit, I uninstalled every driver from mouse to sound to gpu and put in the latest ones I could get I got 2 hours of dark souls 2 last night with no crashing. I'll test it with watch dogs tonight,and will see what the results are. If it crashes then i'll have to buy a usb stick and make a boot for memtest86.

Hope it's working now, memtest would be a good next step in your diagnosis; I was having blue screen issues once I installed some new ram and tried many other things to avoid having to do memtest but soon as I ran it sure enough one of the sticks was whack.

@moztacular: so far it has been positive results 3 2 hours gaming sessions in a row no crashs I think my problem is fixed. I'm cautiously optimistic now that my problems are over for the moment.

Thanks for every ones help I'll see you next crisis