Computer crashes to random colored screen or lined screen

[Koldhart101]

I just built my computer about 3 weeks ago, and ever since I put it together, it will randomly crash. Sometimes it crashes in 15 minutes, sometimes in 15 hours. It just freezes for a second, and then crashes and goes to a red screen or black screen or green screen. Also, sometimes, the monitor will go black for a second and then display returns. I don't know if this is relevant, but the speakers I have hooked up randomly make a popping noise every 30 minutes or so. I don't know why. I have reupdated the video drivers a few times. I also have run a memtest, and it came back with no errors (but it took about 18 hours for 1 pass). I have also monitored the temperatures on my computer. GPU never gets hotter than 47C and CPU hasn't gotten hotter than 55C.

Specs:
MSI Radeon R9 270X 4GB TWIN FROZR Video Card
AMD FX-8350 4.0Ghz 8 core processor
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard
G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
Rosewill Hive 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer

Any feedback would be great! Thanks!

 

[Tanis]

Hi and welcome to TSG.

A few questions:

- Are you overclocking at all?
- What software are you using for check your temperatures?
- What BIOS version is the motherboard running?

My initial thoughts would be towards either power or graphics card problem, but really need some more info and may some more diagnostic checks to help confirm. I would lean more toward the PSU being the problem based on my info below.

That PSU is not a particularly good unit (and that is being nice ), spec sheet here:

http://www.rosewill.com/products/1802/ProductDetail_Specifications.htm

Looking at that, its only rated for 26.5A on the single +12v rail, that is pretty poor for a 750W unit. It only has a 3 year warranty, again very poor, especially if you consider good quality units can have up to 10 years warranty on them. Personally, I wouldn't use a unit with anything less that 5 years. Compare that the the Corsair HX750 (link below) which runs with 62A on the +12v rail. For a gaming PC (or any PC running a half decent standalone graphics card) it is very important to install a good quality PSU.

http://www.corsair.com/en-gb/hx-ser...y-750-watt-80-plus-gold-certified-modular-psu

Download and install Speccy (its free), once done start it up and 'publish the report to the web':

1.In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.
2.In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.
3.Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.

When you have done that post a link to the report in a reply here.

 

[Koldhart101]

Link: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/PrpC3C6Z17dXyGJP4VdMxc4

I have not overclocked the system at all. I have run memtest and it came back with no errors. I also ran furmark and tested the graphics card which came out just fine as well. Drivers are all updated. Not entirely sure about bios version. Just running UEFI DualBios for a gigabyte motherboard. And I was using CPUID HWMonitor to check temperatures. I work in an IT department and most of my coworkers agreed that it was most likely a psu issue. Any further advice/diagnosis would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer to stay around $100 for the power supply, if at all possible. But I would also like a non crashing computer. Thank you for your help!

 

[Koldhart101]

Would you recommend:
http://www.frys.com/product/8298006?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

or

http://www.frys.com/product/8021624?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

I'm leaning more towards the second one because I like semi modular a bit more than modular.

 

[Tanis]

Speccy looks reasonable for temps and voltages, however that is with the unit not under load. I still think changing that PSU will help and will certainly significantly reduce the chances of problems in the future. Do any friends or colleagues have a good unit you could borrow, just to test with and see if it makes a difference? It might also be worth getting one of them to install your graphics card and see if they get the same problem, as it could still be a faulty GPU. At least with these options (borrowing from friends, getting them to test your hardware) there should be no cost involved

For Corsair units I would only ever recomment AX, TX or HX models. On the rightup for the one you have linked, the first line says "CS-M Series is designed for basic and midrange PCs", which pretty much any half reasonable gaming machine isn't Generally speaking I recommend the above Corsair, Seasonic (build alot of the Corsair units anyway), PC Power and Cooling, OCZ and a few others. As said, the PSU really is an area you shouldn't cut costs on, the entire system relies on that one box. You wouldn't buy a high spec / performance car and then put cheap parts in it

 

[Koldhart101]

Would it still be the graphics card? I've even run the furmack test which specifically stress tests the GPU and it was fine.

 

[Koldhart101]

I replaced the power supply and the issue still exists. I have ruled out the PSU, the memory, the graphics card, and temperature problems. Any other ideas as to why it would crash? Maybe the SSD is faulty, as the entire computer keeps crashing?