New/first build having problems with freezing

[Gijoe262]

Hello all,
I have been grappling with my first home build for about two days now, everything seems to work beautifully except the system keeps freezing up entirely, only way to recover is to reset.I would think it was a windows issue except that the first time it happened was when I was working in the BIOS, before I installed windows. Upping the NB voltage from factory 1.1 setting to 1.2 seems to reduce frequency but not fix. Specs are below, thanks for any insight!

AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE 3.4 OC'd to 3.5
ASrock 870 Extreme 3 6gb/s USB 3.0
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
WD 1TB Caviar Black 7200 RPM 6gb/s
Sapphire Radeon HD5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB PCIE 2.0
LG 10X Blu-ray
XION Gold series 90+ 700W PSU

 

[Mark56]

Have a look in Event Viewer and see what it reports for the crashes.

When you say the first time it frooze was before you installed windows, this suggests a hardware error.

This will most likely be the RAM or your graphics card.

Try running without the graphics card (if you have onboard graphics to use) and also try running with just one memory stick then swap to the other if no better.

I appreciate all your components are probably new but even some new stuff is faulty.

What OS are you using.

 

[Appzalien]

I took a look at your manual under the memory installation part. The last line says if you choose to use 2 sticks of DDR3 1600/1800 memory, its recommended you put them in the a2 b2 slots (white I think). I believe what they're saying is to use 1600 or 1800 two sticks of DDR3 you need to put them in the second set of slots not the first. Are your sticks in the first A1 - B1 slots BLUE? They probably recommend it cause some sticks will work in the Blue, but most will work in the white more often than blue. It won't hurt to try. I also read a guy had issues putting in the back plate. You have to be careful when installing the motherboard up against the back plate since there are little springy thinks that can get inside connectors and cause shorts or just block them completely. You have to watch them very closely when you press the mobo up against the plate before screwing it down.