In the summer I built myself a computer, and ever since then I've been getting the occasional BSOD. The frequency of the darn things is variable, and at first I didn't really care. A crash every two or three hours wasn't really noticable when I was busy being ecstatic about being able to play tf2 with a framerate.
However, it's been going on and on, and I am just not sure what to do anymore. I've tried all kinds of things.
1. Tried reinstallation of windows. No help.
2. Ran memtest and windows diagnostics, no problems found.
3. Ran full antivirus scan, no help.
4. Reformatted hard drive just to be really sure. Still no help.
5. Tried increasing DRAM voltage from 1.5 to 1.6, no change.
6. Tried increasing QPI voltage by increments; system at first continued to bluescreen but then only became more unstable and began freezing without bluescreening. (Ultimate max voltage was well below the red)
7. Tried removing RAM. System was even more unstable with only one stick of RAM.
8. Tried disabling EIST, no change.
Bluescreens appear to be random and unrelated to computer activity; I havn't gone as far as making a spreadsheet (yet) so I can't say for sure that they're random but I certainly can't find a pattern. I've gotten crashes while playing video games, while idling at the login menu, while writing word documents, while plugged in or not plugged in to the internet, even in safe mode. I've also had days where the computer worked fine and days where it gave six crashes in an hour.
Also, it's recently (a month ago or so) decided it really hates starting up. It'll either hang forever at the "Loading windows" screen or bluescreen in the seconds between the loading windows and the login screen. If it actually gets to the login screen, it works fine until the next random crash. Usually it takes about three tries to boot, give or take three. This started the day I had the president of the university computer club configure my BIOS (He said it would help!) and since then I've reset them all to default but the problem persists.
At around the same time it stopped booting correctly, it also started behaving very oddly concerning the internet. Download speeds from Steam look like a heart monitor, with it alternating between around 700 KBS and 0. Downloading through firefox simply doesn't work; it either says "Download starting" for all eternity, or starts the download and then promptly stops. When it stops a download in progress, the readout stays the same; Firefox continues to insist that it is downloading a such-and-such a speed and will be done in 7 minutes or whatever. Tested with internet explorer and got the same issue. Youtube videos will load the first few seconds instantly and then refuse to download the rest. Also, the Steam downloads invariably wind up with half the files corrupt once I go to verify. Friend suggested it was probably the motherboard's netcard dying.
Here's my current system:
Caviar Hard Drive 1.5TB
DDR3-1333 RAM (CM3X2G1333C9)
GA-P55M-UD2 Gigabyte Motherboard
i7 860 Processor 2.8GHz
GeForce GTX 470
Coolermaster 212 fan
Corsair 750W power supply