Newly rebuilt PC freezing?

xcylent

Posts: 230   +17
Hi there!

So I recently rebuilt my brother's old Dell XPS 8100, adding a new case, CPU, motherboard, and CPU cooler. It worked perfectly fine for 2 days, handling everything with ease.
However, came home from school today and he said that it was just locking up and freezing.
e.g. he's just listening to music and chatting on skype, everything freezes. Music continues to play but mouse/keyboard unresponsive, nothing happening on screen.
I had a suspicion it was the CPU overheating, so I checked and it was running VERY hot. turns out he turned off the CPU fan accidentally via Speedfan (a program which controls PC fan speeds). Whatever though, I replace the Coolermaster heatsink witht the stock AMD heatsink. PC boots, windows updates, everything ok. So I replace the Stock heatsink with the Coolermaster heatsink again, and boot.
Next boot, everything is running cool and right, however it freezes after a few minutes after logging in. It's not the CPU temperature, which is running fine, I placed my hands on the heatsink and it was nice and cool. Nothing else comes to mind which could be causing this issue. Help me out?

here is the parts list:

CPU: AMD FX-8320
CPU cooler: Coolermaster Hyper tx3 evo
Motherboard: ASrock 970 extreme 4
RAM: 8GB of generic ram he had from a while back.
HDD: 2tb storage and 1tb boot
Windows 8
450W Antec PSU
 
Could it be your Coolermaster heat sink is causing the problem? You said when you put the stock one on it runs fine.
 
GhostRyder Is right when he states the PSU is a bit low. You may need to invest in a new one.
 
I have to disagree with the PSU being "too low". A 450w PSU should power that machine with ease. I'd say check your RAM. Run some Memtests and see if you get any errors. You mention they were some "generic brand" and he'd already had them. I wouldn't be surprised if they were causing the lockups and such.
 
Could it be your Coolermaster heat sink is causing the problem? You said when you put the stock one on it runs fine.

yeah I thought this too, but now apparently his system is working fine again (with the coolermaster heatsink)... it's weird.

I have to disagree with the PSU being "too low". A 450w PSU should power that machine with ease. I'd say check your RAM. Run some Memtests and see if you get any errors. You mention they were some "generic brand" and he'd already had them. I wouldn't be surprised if they were causing the lockups and such.

will do, thanks!

What video card are you using, a 450 watt PSU is a bit low and im curious if that could be part of the problem.

might have to disagree here, 450 should be fine for his system, I ran it through multiple PSU calculators and all came up fine.
 
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