Absolute Freeze: Hardware?

[craby987]

Hello everyone. I just bought a new PC and assembled it my self so naturally there was problems.

Specs

• PSU: Ultra LSP750 750-Watt Power Supply
• MAINBOARD: XFX nForce 750i SLI Extreme Motherboard
• CPUFAN: Thermaltake / V1 / Multi-Socket LGA1366 Core i7/775/AM2/939/754 / Copper / CPU Cooler
• GPU: XFX GeForce GTX 260 Video Card - 896MB GDDR3, PCI Express 2.0 x16
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Processor BX80580Q9400 - 2.66GHz, 6MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB
• RAM: Corsair Dual Channel TWINX 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (2 x 2048MB)
• HDD: WD Caviar Green 1TB 32MB/SATA-3G

Full Story
I installed Windows Xp Home and started playing games with my friend. Mid way into our game my computer just froze. No artifacts were shown, no tearing, no weird pixels, it just stopped what it was doing as if some one hit the pause button. I couldn't move the mouse or anything else. I looked inside my case and saw that all 4 fans were still running (if that means anything).

Anyways I restarted and my friend and I began our game again. 5 minutes later it froze again! I decided that was it! I checked my graphics drivers and they seemed to be up to date. I ran speed fan and verified that my temperatures for my GPU never surpassed 48 C and my CPU 38 C. I even ran a memtest CD to check for bad RAM. No problems.

The strange thing is that the freeze not only happens when Im playing games but sometimes when I start windows. It also happens rarely when Im browsing the web. After all this I said to my self NVIDIA must have some boogie drivers, so I ran safe mode. It froze >_<

Im going to try and reinstall windows ATM.

Just to add I think I might have done the thermal grease a little crappy, but if the CPU temp is 38 C then I guess not.

Even now I dont know whether or not its my GPU, CPU, or my mainboard thats causing this. ( or software!!)

Any thoughts would be great!

-CRBY

 

[davisjaron]

Well it's either going to be your graphics card or your motherboard... everything you said before about the game freezing up made me think graphics card, but then you said browsing, boot up, and safe mode, makes me think its your motherboard...

HOWEVER... it's possible it could be the hard drive... but the hard drive is the least likely of the problems in my opinion... to me it sounds like the motherboard...

 

[craby987]

Well it's either going to be your graphics card or your motherboard... everything you said before about the game freezing up made me think graphics card, but then you said browsing, boot up, and safe mode, makes me think its your motherboard...

HOWEVER... it's possible it could be the hard drive... but the hard drive is the least likely of the problems in my opinion... to me it sounds like the motherboard...

Hey thanks for your input. Im also leaning towards the mobo as the problem (I can run games fine until I freeze). Maybe there is an incompatibility between the GFX and the mobo. That sounds stupid seeing as the GFX and the MB are from the same ****ing manufacturer! But I've heard that XFX is **** company (Im starting to understand that. Ive had a support ticket open with them for 5 hours. No response.)

Another question. When you enter windows safe mode it disables all third-party drivers right (windows provides its own VGA driver?)? So my nvidia driver would not be active there for rulling out the GFX?

 

[davisjaron]

no your graphics card would still be running, just not to it's fullest capabilities without the driver installed; so it's could still possibly be the graphics card failing, however i doubt it is seeing as how it does the same thing on boot and while browsing the internet. It's mainly the boot and internet doing the same thing that makes me thing it's a motherboard issue.