Hello everyone In the past few weeks my desktop has started doing some weird things, namely locking up/crashing every 45 minutes or so. The crashes always occurred after the monitor went to sleep so I thought it might have something to do with that. I set the monitor to never go to sleep but the problem persisted. When the computer crashes it starts by locking up and only allows me to move the mouse but I can't actually do anything. A few minutes after this happens the contents of the windows on the screen go black and then the monitor turns off along with my keyboard and mouse (lights on the devices go out, both wired). When this happens the tower itself seems to still be on or at least all of the fans are still running. The only way to unlock the computer is to power it down completely and then turn it on again. After Windows boots up again I checked the error logs but the only error that was listed was an unexpected shutdown from when I turned the computer off. This is what leads me to believe that the issue is hardware related. I am not getting a bluescreen or anything so I think my memory is good but I am worried that my CPU may be on the fritz. I am running a Phenom II X4 965 BE now back to stock settings. For a couple of months I was running it at a slight overclock but have since removed it to see if it would fix the problem. When I first did the overclock I set it so that the maximum CPU temperature while running intel burn test was 50*C. I think what may have happened is that some dust built up in the case and hampered the cooling a bit causing the CPU to run a bit too hot at times. Does anyone have any ideas on what I can try to confirm that the CPU is the problem or have any potential solutions? Thanks.
This could be a number of things, do you also have the hard drive turned off in power settings ? set it to never. it could be getting hot, take the side cover off and turn on computer, make sure all fans stay on, how many fans do you have ? you might need to clean the thermal paste on the cpu and reply more..also your power supply could be going out..
The hard drives are set to never turn off. All fans are working (3x120mm and 1x140mm) and the CPU cooler fan (Hyper 212 Evo) is also running. I have been monitoring the temperatures and the hottest the CPU gets is 40°C. The power supply in this computer is a 700W OCZ Modstream that is only a year or so old. I suppose I could be running short on power but I don't know why this would happen after everything was running fine for months. Maybe I'll try removing the graphics card and run onboard graphics for a while and see if that helps. Thanks for your reply.
Well I have tried a new power supply (not the problem) and reformatting to rule out software issues (also not the problem). Now I am thinking that this is either a motherboard, CPU or HD (SSD) issue. Anyone have any pointers on how to test these things out? Thanks.
