Basically, I put in a new Asrock Z77 Extreme4 Motherboard. After overclocking my CPU, in normal use, my system would freeze on the desktop. I cannot move the mouse cursor, or alt+enter+del+ctrl. Requires the press of the reboot button, sometimes, hard shutdown. This happens anywhere from 1 hour to 24 hours of use. It's very random.
I've done the following to check for stability in the following areas:
- Checked if CPU overclock is stable with 5 different tests of Prime95 for 24 hours, each time. All pased, no stops.
- Swapped out GTX 670 with my old GTX 580 to see if the cause was my GPU.
- Swapped out RAM with another pair of RAM sticks.
- CPU cooler is seated properly (never had this issue in my life) so I'm 100% certain of this.
- Temps are excellent, lowest it has ever been for any build I've done.
- All cables are snugged in, triple-checked.
- No broken or bent pins.
- All drivers for motherboard for up to date from website.
- BIOS is updated to most recent update.
- MEMTEST, passed, no errors.
- Diagnostic Memory Test, passed, no errors.
- Chk Disk - both HDD's, no issues.
- Turned off all power saving options for full performance. Although, I've never had any issues in the past running with a more ecco-friendly power option mode in windows and BIOS setups. This would be odd, but I tried it anyways.
- Audio drivers are up to date.
- Onboard Audio and Video are disabled.
- LAN drivers up to date.
- While using Event Viewer, no errors or critical errors are showing up. It's clean.
- Registry, defrag, spybot, malware, you name it. I've done it.
- Tested with my other MSI motherboard and everything is stable, even with an overclock.
- PSU checks out, doesn't cause freezing while tested with other motherboard and I've used my Corsair PSU on two different builds with no issues.
- I've tried RAM at different timings, set manually, according to advertised speeds and voltage. Even tried XMP profile.
- I've tried different video drivers for GTX 670.
I just need some experts here to solve this mystery. Or maybe it's not much of a mystery, and it's just a faulty motherboard. I'm already in the process of returning this motherboard and getting a new one. In the meantime, Amazon.com has been awesome enough to already ship one right now as we speak. I'll have the motherboard for one more night for more testing, even though I don't seem to have much more to test. Maybe I left something out. I'll be shipping this MOBO back tomorrow to Amazon.com
To be honest, I've never had a single issue overclocking my CPU. I've even managed a stable E8500 @ 4.0GHz on a cheap ASRock board several years ago before ASRock was more popular.
Sounds frustrating, but my new board is on the way and hopefully history doesn't repeat itself. Maybe I should have avoided this board with over 100 one egg reviews on newegg.com but people seem to praise it especially for the budget price. I figured I'd give it one more go and if the second board still causes issues, while i have no issues with my other MSI motherboard, it has to be ASRock extreme 4.
I'll go with Asus or Gigabyte if that happens.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Log in to comment