New(ish) build freezing up

[Atharos]

Hello,

I built my current rig about a couple of months ago. It's been fine up until recently. My displays would go out, and everything completely freezes. There would still be sound coming through, but its the typical noise a frozen system would sound like (it'd take like the last second captured and repeat it over and over.) It's hard to explain. It doesn't give me an error whatsoever, but I have had to hard reboot my system as it doesn't fix itself. Both of the times that its happened so far were in LoL. First time, I had League, FIFA, Skype, and a few Chrome tabs running. The second time, I only had League and Skype up. I went into a custom game and looked at my temps. Nothing went about 55 C. Here's the build that I'm working with:

 

i7-4790k

Corsair H100i

Asus Maximus VII Hero

Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB DDR3-1866

Samsung EVO 250GB

WD Blue 1TB

EVGA 780 Ti 3GB Superclocked ACX

NZXT H440

EVGA 850 G2 PSU

 

I don't really do much with this system yet. I only play League and FIFA for now. I do plan on streaming with it in the near future, and it was built anticipating some upcoming games. I probably will look at my temps some more when I play tonight. I believe all my drivers are up to date. What else can I do to find the problem? Could it be League related and not hardware at all? Any help to pinpoint the problem would be greatly appreciated!

[Semper]

Do your system logs produce anything?

See if you can reproduce the issue outside of LoL (I.E. run some heat generating stress tests... Furmark, Prime95, OCCT, ETC)

 

it sounds like, to me, that the 780 Ti might be failing.

[VeryTallMidget]

Turn off the overclock on your GPU. If that doesn't work keep the temp monitoring open for your GPU.

[Sinned]

Try changing the SATA port of the storage device with your OS on and see if you can cause it to happen again. If that doesn't work I'd just agree with @Semper and say it's a GPU problem.

[Tomatodude95]

Be sure to check both your CPU and GPU temps, but the tasks you are doing don't seem to be really intensive though.

 

See if you can reproduce the issue outside of LoL (I.E. run some heat generating stress tests Furmark, Prime95, OCCT, ETC)

 

it sounds like, to me that the 780 Ti might be failing.

I agree, it might be either the hardware or the driver (maybe you have a beta driver installed?).

I would also try to reproduce the results using other games.

[Atharos]

So I'm not really familiar with these stress tests. I did do the 1920x1080 15 minute burn-in benchmark on FurMark. The score was 6571 points with 65399 frames, 72 FPS, and 78 C. No crash or anything during the test. Did I need to do something different, or is it fine how I did it? Which program can I use to stress test my CPU? I know I have MemTest86 is what I would use for the RAM.

[Semper]

Prime95 and OCCT will both stress test the CPU.

What you're looking for is instability or high temps, in the case of furmark, instability, artifacting in the render, or high temps. You're not necessarily looking for a score in this case, however comparing it to other cards of the same architecture can reveal deficiencies. 

[Atharos]

I'll definitely try Prime95 and OCCT later. I didn't notice any instability or artifacting during the test. How much of a deficiency is there? Also, what do I need to do now?

[Semper]

You'd have to compare that yourself. I don't know the average scores for a 780Ti (i'm running a standard 780) there should be a link under your score that will take you to the Furmark website benchmark cache, just look to see where you're card is hovering, if you're around other Ti's, than you're good, if you're in amongst 680's or something, you've got a problem.

 

What you need to do for the time being, is just try to reproduce the issue outside of games... play other games, stress test, ETC. you've got to narrow down the options of the problem.

 

Try reinstalling LoL.

[frozeefrank]

usually when the screen freezes and you don't have any error message, the GPU is playing with you.

 

I Had the same issue on a build i made and didn't pay attention about the PCIE power cable. One of them wasn't clipped in properly. When ever the card needed more power, the screen would freeze and i had to reset the computer to make it work again. Sometimes it just never happened for weeks, and other times, id run a video on youtube and it would crash.
 Just make sure that the PCIE power cable a clipped in the connectors properly if you didn't already do that.

 

Also, make sure that you are running the latest driver , with the gforce experience software it is pretty easy to keep everything up to date, even if the solution is a beta driver, you have an option within the software to look for or avoid beta drivers.

 

I don't think the temps would cause a screen or system freeze. Like cpus, gpus will undervolt, stop and/or pop you a blue screen or a massive warning messege before overheating. + if i'm not mistaken, the new nvidia chip will max out @ something like 90-95 C. when it reaches this threshold, you will have noticable FPS drop in what ever you are using.

 

What you could also do, for tests perposes, disable your GPU from your bios and only use your onboard graphics to run your games and tests. If you see that you have the same issues, we can start looking somewhere else, if you don't, you just found the problem.

 

Good Luck

[UnderwearThief]

I had these same problems with my card. What fixed it for me was changing to the stable driver release, and then I adjusted the power limit to +50%(I have an R9 290). If it is possible with an NVidia card, try the power limit thing.

[Atharos]

Alright, so I messed around with my system last night. I made sure all the power cables are clipped on correctly. I reinstalled League. I played quite a few games, and it didn't happen. Of course, I haven't really quite figured out how to reproduce it yet. I'll keep trying the suggestions you guys have listed for me, and keep you all updated. Thanks for the help!

[Atharos]

Hey guys. So I haven't found a way to recreate the problem. Although, it occurred again last night while I was just doing some basic browsing. I wasn't on Skype. I wasn't playing any games. I only had Chrome up. Do you guys still think it's the GPU? If it is, I might just RMA it to EVGA. Better yet, I might try to use their "Step-up" program. How good is EVGA's support when it comes to RMA? Do you guys think I would be able to switch it out with a 980?

[Semper]

It's my best guess.

 

Do you have another GPU that you could test it with?

 

EVGA customer support is second to none, by far the best in the industry.

 

You have 90 days from the date of purchase to use the step-up program. I believe your card must also have been registered within 14 days of purchase to be eligible, too.

If you're eligible, i'd say go for it, the new 900 series are a powerful choice any way you look at it.

[Atharos]

So, I ran into something new today. The displays went out which is what's been happening before, but now, power to my keyboard and mouse went out as they normally have red led lights. When I tried to turn it off and turn it back on,the system powers on, but the problem persists. The led's still light up on the motherboard. I've done some research, and all I keep coming up with is that it's either the mobo or the PSU. Is there any way I can narrow this down to one or the other?

[UnderwearThief]

If it is the PSU, taking out some components will reduce the load on the PSU, so try that and remove all the peripherals you don't need. Try also with just the SSD plugged in and one RAM stick to minimize components drawing power from the PSU. If you still can't boot after that, I would think it's the motherboard.

[Stefanopolis]

Do you have extra GPUs laying around? No? It may be the PSU if your monitors and keyboard LED's are going out. Maybe try an RMA, see if that works...

[Atharos]

So, I found the issue. It seems that my 24 pin connector is ever so slightly disconnected. It's barely noticeable. For some reason, it just would not clip well onto the motherboard so I spent quite some time making sure it clipped. I haven't had any problems since.