I am not sure where to start with this. On my prior rig which was 5 years old minus the GPU which is about a year old, I started to run into lots of stuttering, freezing up, and mouse flickering. When it was really bad for example in game my computer would start beeping loudly according to my inputs. So I thought it be about time to build a new pc. I brought all brand new parts only keeping my older harddrives, which I mainly wiped clean and my GPU which I planned to switch out at a later time.

here are my specs now.

Windows 7 64bit

CPU: i7 4790k

Ram: 16 gb corsair vengeance 2400mhz

Motherboard MSI 87 - g45

GPU: AMD Radeon HD7870 (plan to switch it out eventually with a gtx980 or 70)

1 TB samsung SSD (system and games)

2x750 regular mechanical drives.

CP 750w power supply.

Me and my friend just put it together today, so I was looking forward to actually getting some pc gaming in. Trouble is, it is to a degree still flickering, stuttering and freezing up whenever I do anything demanding it seems. I think it might be my gpu, because when I remove the drivers it all seizes again. But you cant do much of anything gaming wise without drivers installed of course. It is very depressing regardless. I have tried installing drivers manually and using the amd auto tool. Who knows I might be on the complete wrong path since I am an idiot when it comes to trouble shooting these things, so I was hoping some one here smarter at this could help a fellow out.

if I forgot to list anything useful just let me know.

Have you checked all your temperatures, it would be interesting to know how to the graphics card is in particular, idle and load.

what driver version are you using? have you had this issue over multiple drivers, or just one?

Bare with me, I am not that great at all this.

Temps on my gpu go from 30 to about 50c.
Every other temp is fine. Cpu runs at about 40c.

As to the driver. I think I am using the latest? This is what it tells me when I go to device manager I hope it helps.

Amd Radeon HD 7800 Series:

Driver Provider: Advance Micro Devices Inc.

Driver Date: 15-09-2014

Driver Version: 14.301.1001.0

I just used to the tool that comes with AMD catalyst center and I reckon it keeps me updated going forward.

As to previous drivers I don't know, it must have run fine since this started to happen within the last two months.

try too remove your GPU. and see if it still freezes and flickers, if it stops your GPU is or broken or one of your drivers is broken

@tothenines:

What exactly do you mean by mouse flickering? like the cursor actually flickers?

Stuttering and freezing could be your hard drives too, specially given it was one of the 2 thing you didn't upgraded, have you checked the system logs for any errors? hard drives are the parts that wear the fastest.

Those temps on you GPU are 30C idle and 50C heavy load? or it fluctuates 30C to 50C while on idle?

Also a good way to know for sure if it's you GPU or not is to just remove it altogether and use your i7's HD graphics for a while.

Double check that you're running at least bios Rev 17 for proper Devils Canyon support on that Z87 board. Also disconnect those old hard drives for now to try and narrow down the problem.

I am almost positive that is a HD issue. I had an old computer that was doing exactly that and it was because of a faulty WD Green drive. It turns out the drive took an extra half second to start spinning and PC's don't respond well when it has to wait.

Thanks for all the replies guys.

I used to think the issue was with my hard drives on my old pc, but since I bought a brand new SSD harddrive which I run my system on and games etc. I don't think that's it. I mainly only keep program installs and movies on my old drives, so I don't think that they are interfering? Anyways I am going to try and remove them regardless and see what happens.

I am pretty sure its the GPU in someway since the problems stop right away as I uninstall the drivers. I am going to remove my GPU after I try the hard drive thing and see if thats the problem. To be honest I am just hoping I can get the GPU to work until I can buy a new one. I don't think the cpu integrated one can handle any gaming at all.

Anyway other than that the only old thing I have from my prior rig is the psu and I don't know if that can affect performance in this way.

Also MB I don't know what you mean by the latest bios Rev 17 or where to check that exactly, but I am going to google that afterwards. thanks!

This is all really frustrating, since it happens anywhere from 20 to 60 mins of my computer running, sometimes sooner than that depending (it seems) on what I am doing intensity wise. Anyway, again thanks for the help!

Oh to onarum, what I mean by mouse flickering is that it blinks? and yes, my gpu is about 30 degrees idle and 50 in game, sometimes 60. I have this temperature monitoring program and everything looks fine to me.

@tothenines: a yeah so it's definitely not overheating, those are perfectly normal temps.

And I didn't see you had gotten a SSD, so it should not be the old harddrives (unless you have some constantly used software installed in them), you should check the system logs regardless, sometimes it helps a lot with trouble shooting.

So it really looks like it's the GPU even though it's not overheating, that intel HD 4600 should be able to play some stuff(while you wait to get a new GPU), maybe not the latest games at ultra, but hey.

edit: oh and you can check your BIOS version by checking at the BIOS itself(just constantly hit the DEL key when booting your PC), but if you haven't updated the bios at all since you got the motherboard it probably means you do not have the latest version.

Which GPU driver version are you using?

@mb: version 14.301.1001.0 according to device manager. I just use the autodetect tool from AMD. I tried manually installing a driver by finding my card and just picking the latest but the issues still came up.

@onarum Yeah, I just removed my old drives just in case. And reinstalled my GPU driver once again. So far so good, but it can take a bit of time before the stuttering to occur again. About the bios, yeah I haven't really done much of anything, I went to MSI page but it was a cluster fuck for a guy like me to navigate, but I found my board and installed random fixes and features. I dont recall any Rev 17. If any of you have a link it would be much appreciated!

@tothenines: I believe he meant version 1.7, which is the one that introduced compatibility for haswell-refresh processor

On this page here the latest version is 1.9, so I suggest you install that, just make sure that is the exact model of your motherboard before.

I'm not familiar with MSi boards, but it seems the easier method for bios updating might be this MSI live update thing, though there should be a way for you to do it directly from the BIOS setup screen, at least that's how I do it on my asus board, just download the file, reboot, load up setup and then browse for the file to update.

@onarum: Yeah, I also just found the live update program myself. Makes life a lot easier. Thanks man.

Removed my old HDDs and they weren't the issue. So I removed GPU now while I am installing drivers for the motherboard and making sure its updated.