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#1
Random Computer Freeze - Black screen - Restart
First of all , as a newbie here I'd like to say hello to everybody on this forum and also apologize if this is posted in the wrong section since defacto my problem involves black screen and not a tipical blue screen.
Computer is custom built, all new parts, 5 months old. I became aware of this problem about 2 months after.
My system specs:
i7 4930k - overclocked (bios reset to factory settings later after problem became continuous annoyance)
Corsair H110i GT
Asus Sabertooth x79 mobo
16 Gb DDR3 Corsair XMS3 1600MHz
Evga GeForce GTX 970 SC
Corsair -CS850M 850w , PSU
So this problem has been bugging me for some 3 months now.
Basically what would happen is computer would freeze, if there was sound playing atm, sound would freeze in a "bzzzzz" fashion (continuously looping), 2 seconds later screen would turn black and the computer would restart.
I have disabled later "restart on failure" feature, hoping I would get some information on screen when it happens, but sadly now it just stays on black screen without resetting.
This happens completely random, and so it happens that it is always during some not intensive computing (idle, web browsing, youtube playing, sometimes when working in 3d modeling program -3ds Max).
On the other side, it never happened when computer was doing some intensive 3d rendering or gaming - coincidence or not, I don't know yet...
Biggest problem now is that I'm still unable to recreate the event. I've tried forcing both CPU and GPU with tests for hours&hours, and everything would be successful, and then next day or in a week I would start the computer like today, opened chrome and out of nowhere it would freeze w. black screen.
Btw, I've used Prime95, Intel Burn test (on very high), Cinebench, FurMark and Heaven Benchmark.
I have tested memory with Memtest 86 for about 4h and it was ok, zero errors. (I realize this is not nearly enough time to test, so will repeat it again for 12+ h)
Initially I've associated it with power failure due to the loose main power cable on PSU, but since I corrected that and continued to experience this problem, then I started to suspect my OC settings.
So I switched BIOS back to default factory settings (didn't take the battery out) but it happened again.
I know for a fact this didn't happen before my first OC attempt and fiddling in BIOS (although I started OC about a week after the computer was assembled) , but I want to see now if some hardware piece went haywire in the meantime (or was faulty to begin with) or something else ?
As said, mentioned event would happen completely random, so far about 1-2 times in a week.
Event viewer gives me this log :
Critical - (Source) Kernel-Power - (Event ID) 41 - (Task Category) 63
EventData
BugcheckCode 278
BugcheckParameter1 0xfffffa80112144e0
BugcheckParameter2 0xfffff88008411978
BugcheckParameter3 0x0
BugcheckParameter4 0x2
SleepInProgress false
PowerButtonTimestamp 0
So far I have around 20 of these events, but I realize that they are mixed with standard instability crashes (with blue screen) which I had earlier while OC-ing.
So do you guys think this is likely a hardware fault ? Would it be likely PSU (CS850M is not so prized anyway), or a motherboard or something else ?
I do have another spare PSU, it's a very cheap, no-name unit, but it has 500w and technically would be enough to drive the system (PSU calculator estimates around 410w for my system). Should I try it ?
I'd really appreciate any help / opinions.
Thanks in advance !
Sorry for the long read, but I've tried to be as much descriptive as possible :)
p.s. If there will be need, I can post also my OC-ed BIOS settings, although I don't think it matters now since it has been reset.