Ah, issues. It's been a while...

So I enjoyed a nice period of issue-free quad-core i7 gaming, until last night. In the middle of a game of MW2, the screen froze and I started to hear loud, sharp blips of sound, as well as losing power to my USB devices.

I powered the system off, and rebooted. The first time it took longer than usual to get past the Gigabyte splash screen (usually it almost nearly flashes) and ultimately froze again before making it to the desktop. Again, I rebooted, this time going through the splash screen normally and making it to the desktop fine.

God, let it be a fluke. :\

After a few minutes, I lost power to my USB devices and the system froze. It was interesting to me because usually when a computer freezes, a mouse and keyboard stay on (I know they lose power because both have lights).

So, I turn the system off and let it sit idle. I turn the system back on after a while, again everything goes smooth the the desktop. Since I just installed a new heat sink, naturally that's my first thought. However, I had just got done stress testing it before any of this happened and entering the game of MW2 that created the issues, and it ran at a nice ~43 degrees even under Prime95, and around ~25 in MW2. Regardless, I wanted to see its temp now, so I took the time while I had it to launch RealTemp, and all cores read out well under 30 degrees.

After talking with Wes a bit, we come to the conclusion that it's the motherboard, and start looking for some read outs for north/south bridges. After a while, the issue has not repeated itself, so we decide to call it a night.

This morning, when I go up to check on it, sure enough the system is froze with USB devices dead. I try to do the ol' reboot, and now I don't even get a splash screen, or anything going to my monitor for that matter (the monitor has a power button that switches from orange to blue when it receives signal, and after several minutes of the system being on, it won't switch).

I pretty much feel shit out of luck, but I'm hoping that someone has some magic powder I can sprinkle on this thing. Or at the very least, help me make 100% sure what the issue is so when I slap down the replacement money (it's gonna be a while lol), I know it'll fix it. Thanks guys.

Additional information:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.7GHz
Memory: 6 GB Mushkin Black
Hard Drive: 1TB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM v1.1)
Monitor: 23" De-branded from geeks.com
Sound: Mionix Keid 20
Keyboard: Microsoft Sidewinder X4
Mouse: Mionix Naos 5000
Mouse Surface: SteelSeries NP+
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Motherboard: Gigabyte
Computer Case: NZXT Tempest

Sounds 100% like the board to me especially when you mentioned you get a blank screen now on start up, as far as some tool or something to determine the board I don't know, just been around the IT business for awhile to know a bad board when you see one.

Yeah, that's what we thought. I managed to get it powered on, and so far so good, but its still a band-aid; I know it's going to happen again.

i agree.. motherboard... id be wary of nursing it along too much though.. you run the potential of damaging ram cpu and vid card.. ( that nice shiny new 5770)

technobear wrote:

i agree.. motherboard... id be wary of nursing it along too much though.. you run the potential of damaging ram cpu and vid card.. ( that nice shiny new 5770)

really?

certainly,
if part of your issue is voltage regulation the mobo could allow too much voltage to any of your components and nuke them..

IF

Well, its been running for about two hours now, certainly longer than any time before. Fingers are crossed.

Thanks for the input guys.

Not that i think you didn't take care of your machine, but could this be the cause of lack or maintenance to your PC? cleaning it out, letting dust collect, not doing something else.
I know i've had my PC for a little over a year now and i know i have never taken it apart to clean it out. I've made sure the Fans are free of visable dust, but never really took the whole thing apart to clean everything.
Much like a car, is there a schedule for cleaning out our PC's and even our mice, keyboards, and monitors as i'm sure they all collect dust and need a good cleaning...
Might be an interested topic...

technobear wrote:

i agree.. motherboard... id be wary of nursing it along too much though.. you run the potential of damaging ram cpu and vid card.. ( that nice shiny new 5770)

I second this, even thought it is unlikely.

Have you taken the motherboard out? Make sure the board is clean and such. Something might have made its way onto the board and stuck when you replaced the heatsink.

I would take the mobo out and plug in the bare minimum just to be sure. When troubleshooting, any extra peripheral is a point of confusion/failure.

But definitely make sure that the mobo is clean. Some canned air along the front and back, around important connectors and jumpers and whatnot.

EDIT: Didn't see Twodavez post until after my refresh, but he's absolutely right. Preventative maintenance, people!

Power supply!!!! would be my first look, especially is everything running fine for a while. any overclocking ? reset bios if that the case get everything back to stock.

It sounds like your mobo's southbridge is going more south than it should. The following subsystems are controlled in modern mobo southbridges (according to Wikipedia).. I'm omitting the ones that shouldn't effect you:
PCI bus, Super I/O controller bridge, SPI bus (aka your BIOS' data area), SM bus, IRQ controller, HDD controller, realtime clock, power management, onboard audio, ethernet, RAID, USB, & firewire

Specific information in what you reported that makes me think this:
- screen freeze (IRQ controller)
- audio failure (onboard or not, this still is handled through the southbridge)
- USB failure
- POST failure (SPI bus)

That said, I agree with JJSky, that a bad PSU could have precipitated this. Test that first & replace if needed, then replace the mobo.

And FYI, I've heard of plenty of people getting data corruption due to a bad southbridge, you better have your stuff backed up!

EDIT: Depending on your cooling, the southbridge may also be simply overheating but this seems unlikely if it's happening so shortly after being left off overnight. Worth mentioning though.

Good breakdown, I'm not too familiar with what each bridge on the motherboard does anymore. Testing with a known-good PSU sounds like a good idea. I'm still concerned with the idea that some dust or something might have got caught somewhere. Certainly would be the simplest problem.

+kudos to Reaper

I'm switching cases tonight or tomorrow, so I'll get a chance to make sure everything is pristine then. The parts are pretty new, this build itself is only as old as v5.5, but it doesn't hurt to check.

I'm running on around 4 or so hours without problems, so I'm going to take a chance and see if it happens again and go from there. As far as data goes, I appreciate the concern, everything important I have backed up on an external USB drive.

Everything is stock, we reset BIOS not too long ago when we had some compatibility issues an overclock setting when we switched the board, so no worries there. If I get chance, I'll hook up another PSU and see where it goes from there.

Again, I appreciate all your guys' feedback on this. If nothing else, the whole incident has inspired me to start putting some money back into an emergency hardware fund.

Lersar wrote:

If nothing else, the whole incident has inspired me to start putting some money back into an emergency hardware fund.

Hell, I'm still saving up to get an external HDD for backups. I'm running without a fail-safe right now, and it's scary.

Nearly ten hours and still running smooth

keep an eye on your voltages.
its POSSSIBLE that your house was being starved for power.. dirty power from the utility company can cause issues as well as hardware failure ( i run my pc on a line filtering UPS because of bad experiences in the country..

I didn't see any mention of what power supply you have anywhere - whatcha got?

Ultra X4 850W

Lersar wrote:

Ultra X4 850W

Haven't really seen any negative info about that psu. I was hoping it wasn't some ghetto psu.

Oh4sh0 wrote:

Lersar wrote:

Ultra X4 850W

Haven't really seen any negative info about that psu. I was hoping it wasn't some ghetto psu.

lol no, that was the unit before this one