Persistent to Intermittent

[~Darkseeker~]

Well, i've had basically nothing but problems with my main rig since I built it. It was fine until I gave it a total overhaul around x-mas time (new psu, new GPU, new board some months later, new memory a little time ago) and then it started persistently bombing out. I was getting about 12 different error codes, 3 or 4 BSODs everytime i tried to work with it. I've since re-replaced the motherboard (as i diagnosed one of the problems as a bad memory slot, test memory confirmed this) and then worked out the old board has also killed my proper memory, so i then replaced that with OCZ gold. It worked with minimal BSODs for a little while. I was fairly disheartened at this point, abandoned PC gaming almost altogether and resided in my Xbox.

About a month ago, there were some spare 1TB drives from an order (supplier confused it, gave us some free drives...) so the boss said i could take one (barracuda). chucked it in, reinstalled OS in the hope that the 0x00000024 errors and the clicking sounds might be to do with a bad boot drive (had a crappy old one in there) It carried on bombing out, So i just left it again. Until yesterday...

Yesterday morning I decided in a good mood to try and have another crack at this b!tch... low and behold It sat stable for a good few hours browsing the web after a memory reset and CMOS reset. Went on Steam and downloaded Abe's Exoddus (favorite old school game...) and played it until the evening with no problems. Again, turned it on this morning, played Abe to the final level and a bit of TF2 and MW2. Handled it all fine, no problems. About an hour ago i was watching TV with the missus in my room... with the PC sat idle on my desk and bam, BSOD - I wasn't paying close enough attention to see what the BSOD actually said, but i heard the POST beep as it restarted so i just held the off switch and left it until now. Windows reports it as a BCCode: 'c2'.

Literally nothing was running, completely idle besides MSE and CatalystCC. It just seems odd to me that it's been fine for 2 days during an almost continuous gaming session, then bombs out while it's sitting idle. Any ideas?

Sorry for the Wall-O-Text.

tl;dr: PC intermittently bombing out while idle, but fine during gaming sessions. what do?

 

[Indigo]

Hate to sound like an old record, but what kind of power supply? Make/Model/Wattage?

Also, how do you have the system plugged in? Shared circuit? Anything else on it?

 

[~Darkseeker~]

the description in sig is reasonably up to date; it's a Coolermaster GX650. It's on a surge protector with my laptop charger and two monitors

 

[Indigo]

Sorry, CMGX650 is a little vague for me, not used to their acronyms. Thanks for the info.

It's odd. You have all the kinds of parts I would personally recommend. Have you considered putting the system on a UPS just in case your power is bad in some way? They can solve little naggy issues like this sometimes.

 

[~Darkseeker~]

You might have been one of the people who recommended them I did spam the forums asking about parts quite a lot back then. There is one weird thing i've noticed, which is the Graphics card (Sapphire 5770) will stop the PC from POSTing if the case screws holding it in are fully tightened. It has to be slack (i.e. moving quite a lot up and down in the slot) before it will let the computer POST. Since the errors don't look like GPU errors i've overlooked it until now, i'm starting to think maybe this is the problem.

 

[Indigo]

I just built a PC last night using a CX600, so go figure!

That sounds odd, but not entirely unexpected. If the "gold fingers" aren't making a good connection, all manner of problems can occur, especially one like this. You might try loosening the motherboard mounting screws and re-aligning the board to see if that helps fix the screwy video card alignment.

Even in the face of name brand components, bad power supplies from the major makers DO happen (gasp!) so maybe it's worth trying another unit out, if you have one, to see if that helps.

 

[~Darkseeker~]

well, this is my second GX650 lol, First one went back to Scan after having failed after a week Hopefully there's a pretty low chance I've gotten two duds in a row. I'm probably going to change cases soon anyway since this HAF 922 is a major asspain. Also, I got an ntfs.sys error while playing a game installed on one of my other drives, and when i did chkdsk on that drive it was clicking pretty potently. Didn't come up with any bad sectors or anything, but i've copied all data off it and i'm gonna see if removing this drive removes any of this tomfoolery

 

[Indigo]

Definitely do so. Any weak link will only contribute further, even if it's not the primary drive. Eeek!

I love my HAF, but I love working with full ATX. I also put the casters on it, which makes it insanely easier to work with.