EX-58 UD3R i7 920 - constant hangs (forced to reset)

[r4ytrace]

System:

EX58-UD3R
i7 920 @2.67Ghz
6GB OCZ Gold
Zotac Geforce GTX 260
Corsair 750W PSU
Windows 7 32-bit
C1E and EIST off
Turbo off
HyperThreading on


Ok, I'll try to make this short but its kindof a long story. I got my PC about a year ago at this stage and when I got it was OC'd at 3.4 Ghz, and it ran fine and without a hitch at all. About 3 months ago I started to get the occasional BAD hang, pretty much as bad as a BSOD, but where you couls still see the screen, what happens is at first the main screen graphical data freezes (i.e. for example I can bring my mouse down over the taskbar icons and the 'onmouseover' highlight effects etc. dont happen and start menu button will not work, I can still move the mouse around for about 15-20 seconds but then, the mouse also itself stops moving and ALL I can do is press the physical reset button on my tower, ctrl+alt+del, ctrl+shift+esc, window key + L, none of these buttons work.

I started looking through the event log, and I seem to be constantly getting 'Event error ID 18' but it says some meaningless thing about a serial connection, which I dont understand. I have ran memtest86+ and all is ok, and as I have HT and Turbo off surely the system should be stable - it has gotten really bad now as it hangs a lot (about 12 times last night) - I used to think it only happened when graphical operations were being done - ie loading MAME or something and while it switches resolution, but the fact is, while it may happen MORE at these times, it can also happen just when I hover over an icon or double click something. It is extremely frustrating.

I am starting to unfortunately think it must be the mobo or CPU - are there any specific diagnostics you could recommend I do for either of these.

It isnt any of the post 270.xx nVidia driver hangs either, as I have flash movie acceleration off, and it happens a lot when there is no flash content open on my PC anyway.
It also seems to definitely be a hardware and not a software issue unfortunately, as I dual boot Win 7 64-bit and the problem occurs when I log onto the 64 bit OS too.

Really if any one can help me with this I will be very happy as it is driving me nuts.

Could it be a power issue (and how might I test this?) - I do have quite a lot of stuff taking power I suppose, but then again it worked fine for so long, though there is maybe some corroboration with the time the crashes started happening really badly and the time I got my latest card for the PC (UAD - 2 DSP card) - here are all the things which I suppose are taking power:

UAD-1 PCI card
UAD-2 PCIe card
ESI Maya 44e Soundcard
2 Samsung HDs

again, Any help is very much appreciated

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome.

I would suggest checking for latency as in it's worst form it can have this type of effect....slowdown to a grinding halt. Try downloading DPC Latency Checker and running that for a while.

Download and run dpclatency checker from  http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Also open Resource monitor and Task Manager and see if that helps track it down.

[r4ytrace]

thanks a lot I shall run some tests with latency checker

[r4ytrace]

Ok I've been running latency checker for a while and (unfortunately) it seems to think my PC is ok - current latency is 122 ms, and even when I open a 1080p movie it only goes yellow for 1 bar and goes just below 1000 ms

[Dark Mantis]

OK, well at least that has ruled that out of the running. How old is the PSU ? I don't know much about your UAD cards or hpow much power they draw specifically but you do seem to have quite a plethora of add ons so it could be a power problem. Can you get hold of a larger, good  quality PSU even for testing purposes ?

[r4ytrace]

Hi sorry I havent replied till now, was very busy this week :/

Yeah I'm not too sure how much power the UAD cards suck but I'd say it must be a fair bit as I always max out their DSP/chip usage.

I have just realised that it's actually a Corsair TX650W, so maybe/hopefully it is just a power issue, I think I will buy a Corsair HX850 and see if the hangs stop. Is that how PSU hangs manifest themselves just a kinda lag, then mouse keeps moving and then dead? 

Thanks again for your help

[Dark Mantis]

To be honest it is hard to say how a power problem will show, just that it will cause all sorts of problems. I would say that your PSU would seem to be underpowered especially if it is a bit older. The HX850 is a really nice bit of kit, I use one on my main system and it has never let me down. I think that you will probably find the issue disappears with the addition of the new PSU but please keep us informed.