Newly upgraded system freezing

[theindianajones]

Hello, and thanks in advance for your help.

I recently upgraded my budget gaming PC that I built in 2012. Here are the current PC specs:

NEW* AMD FX-8370 - stock clock and volts for now. All I have done is turn off turbo, quiet and cool, etc.
ASUS M5A99X EVO Motherboard - most recent BIOS installed
Ballistix 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866
NEW* MSI Gaming X 6G 1060
NEW* Samsung 500gb SSD
Rosewill Hive Series 650W Modular PSU
Fresh install of Windows 7, all updates done and the Bulldozer hotfixes installed.

The problem: When gaming, the PC randomly freezes. Also, from time to time, with Chrome or IE open, the window will freeze and like gray out. I can still do other tasks on the computer, as long as it is not with Chrome or IE. A little back story; when I first upgraded this computer, 2 days ago, I had put in two more brand new sticks of (the exact same) ram for a total of 16GB. When I would boot into the BIOS it would not recognize one of the new sticks. After reseating all of the ram sticks a few times it finally recognized them. After booting into windows 10 ( used my old HDD at first) which took probably 3 or 4 minutes, and trying to play games (PUBG and Starcraft 2) it would randomly crash. Sometimes the program would just crash, other times it would cause the PC to reboot. I tried removing the 2 new ram sticks and trying again, but the system just seemed to preform slower, to the point I could not even load into PUBG. So I bought a new SSD and installed my original copy of windows 7 on it. When I put in the SSD I added the new ram sticks back into the machine. After windows 7 installed I attempted to update windows and all of my drivers. Windows would not update and the PC was still extremely sluggish. Upon removing the two ram sticks the PC is much faster, and generally feels like it should feel, except the issue noted at the top. Also, windows updates were successful after removing the new ram.

Help! I took a system that worked, but was slow, and made it into a "fast" unstable system.

Edit to add: Browsing around on the web tonight I had it freeze a couple of more times. When this freezes I can still minus down stuff that is open, however I cannot interact with any program that is open or launch new ones, nor does the computer respond to CTRL ALT DEL. After a couple of minutes it "catches up with itself" and works fine.

I went into the bios and bumped my ram voltage up slightly from the stock 1.5 to like 1.55 or so. This has not helped.

In summary, what all I have done to trouble shoot and the results:
-remove 2x4gb sticks - system ran faster and seemed less unstable - still random freezes and crashes in game, much less common.
-installed SSD with fresh windows 7 install w/ all updates and the 2 bulldozer hotfixes - faster boot times and program launch times - with all 16gb of ram, system still seemed slow - with 8gb it ran like I would expect a computer to run with an SSD.
-installed old fx4100 cpu, thought there might be an issue with whatever controls the memory... system works with both 8gb and 16gb. However, the system still freezes some, much less often.

 

[EarthDog]

Logic tells me to test the ram sticks for being bad...

 

[trents]

What do you mean when you say, "I installed my original copy of Windows 7 on it"? Did you do a fresh from scratch install of Windows 7 or did you clone it to the new SSD?

Have you tried resetting the bios to optimize defaults? Sounds like this is an overclocked computer since you say you disabled Turbo and C ool N Quiet.

What about cooling? How are you cooling this CPU?

 

[theindianajones]

Logic tells me to test the ram sticks for being bad...

I did the windows memory diagnostic when I first installed everything and it did not return any errors.

What do you mean when you say, "I installed my original copy of Windows 7 on it"? Did you do a fresh from scratch install of Windows 7 or did you clone it to the new SSD?

Have you tried resetting the bios to optimize defaults? Sounds like this is an overclocked computer since you say you disabled Turbo and C ool N Quiet.

What about cooling? How are you cooling this CPU?

Fresh install of Windows 7 on the SSD. I haven't messed with anything in the BIOS other than turning off turbo core, cool n quiet, and other power saving features, as I heard that those made PUBG choppy. The fx-8370 was still all stock voltages, minus the slight increase in ram voltage, and all stock clocks. The fx-4100 that I put back in to see if I had an issue with the CPU I did the same thing to, stock clocks and voltages.

Edit: Cooling is an 212 EVO, in a pull configuration. The FX-8370 failed intell burn test, but ran Prime95 for around 1.5 to 2 hours with no issue.

Here are the results, I had my original 2x4gb sticks of ram in it for this test:

 

[trents]

Do the temps in HWMonitor from your last post reflect stress testing under IBT or Prime95?

IBT is a very memory intensive stress test. I would try taking out all but one of the memory sticks and rerun the test. If you pass, then swap in the other memory sticks, one at a time, and rerun.

Have you tried bumping up the CPU/NB (memory controller) voltage a bit?

 

[trents]

I would also look at a possible video driver issue. I would suggest uninstalling and thoroughly wiping the old drivers and then reinstalling the latest from Nvidia. Download one of those Nvidia driver wiper programs to make sure the old one is thoroughly purged before reinstalling.

 

[theindianajones]

Do the temps in HWMonitor from your last post reflect stress testing under IBT or Prime95?

IBT is a very memory intensive stress test. I would try taking out all but one of the memory sticks and rerun the test. If you pass, then swap in the other memory sticks, one at a time, and rerun.

Have you tried bumping up the CPU/NB (memory controller) voltage a bit?

Those temps were IBT. I bumped the CPU/NB voltage up a little and my boot time into windows from my ssd went from over a minute to less than 8 seconds. Everything seems stable, no issues so far. Thanks for this! The temps got a couple of degrees higher on IBT. Not sure how much overclocking I will be able to do with my current case layout and this 212 evo.

I would also look at a possible video driver issue. I would suggest uninstalling and thoroughly wiping the old drivers and then reinstalling the latest from Nvidia. Download one of those Nvidia driver wiper programs to make sure the old one is thoroughly purged before reinstalling.

Did this also, but I believe the fix was the CPU/NB voltage increase. Thanks for the help!!!!!!