Okay so I've been noticing for a while now that my computer is not 100% stable.

If I need to provide full stats, I will. Perhaps someone can point me to a flow chart for error checking or something like that so I can figure out which parts are bad so I can underclock/overvolt them for stability. Right now it's a crapshoot, and perhaps I need to just buckle down and underclock everything except one thing, then stress test it.

Problem 1:
Leave computer on all night, computer restarts at some point. Culprit points to ATi's shitty drivers and the "sleep" command for the monitor.
Solution 1:
Turning off monitor sleep has solved this. I only mention because it might be important.

Problem 2:
Crashing when using RAM intensive processes. Open up GIMP, work for a while without saving, BAM computer freezes. Also happens when I run prime95 and furmark.
Solution 2:
Underclocking everything has sort of solved this. I thought underclocking my (OCZ) RAM would have helped too, but it's occasionally back after I put everything back up to stock and RAM down to ddr3-800 speeds (it's supposed to be ddr3-1333.

Problem 3:
Artifacting. They flicker in and out in squares, though occasionally they are not complete squares, but parts of squares/speckled. The ones that flicker do not show up in a print screen. However this one just showed up on my icon, and DID stick on print screen. They disappear as soon as I switch windows.

Solution 3:
No idea yet, which is why I'm making the thread.

Other stuff:
My room is constantly around 80 F, Case is ~ 45 C, southbridge is a constant 80 C (or at least I assume that TMPIN2 is southbridge), HDDs are 40C, CPU is 33-40 C, GPU is 40-70C.

[edit]
Got more to show up:

They disappear when I switch tabs.

Problem 2 sounds like bad ram in one of the modules.

Problem 3, I had something like that, and solved it by reseating the graphics card (surprised me as it looked like a driver problem to me).

40-70c is quite cool for a GPU, no problems there. CPU is also quite cool.

You can try reseating it, if not try running on onboard video for a while and see if the artifacts go away. If not then yes it does sound like memory issues of some nature.

Also, ATI drivers are fine.

I had strange vertical lines of desaturation on my monitor ages ago, thought the monitor was duffed but it reseating the gfx card solved it.

Aslo: problem 2 is definitely mammory gland related. Google MemTest and run that (burn it to CD and run it during bootup for best results).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 21 2011, 5:33 pm by Cardinal.

Aw man. I was hoping this was a thread about spastic technology, like the baghdad battery

Possibly helpful:


More here.

Try to isolate the problem. If you have multiple sticks of RAM, use one at a time and see if you can recreate the problem. Don't undervolt/underclock them, run them at stock suggested speeds. Same thing goes for video card, see if you can switch to a video card you have laying around and try to recreate the problem. If you can identify what component is giving you problems, your best bet is to then try and get a return on it from where you bought it, provided you're still covered by warranty. If not, try and replace it, and if that's not possible, then you could look into undervolting and running at lower speeds. I'd also suggest taking a look at your motherboard and video card for any sort of physical damage, e.g. swollen capacitors. If you identify it as your video card, it's also a good idea to try reinstalling video drivers. Couldn't hurt.