GA-P67A-UD7-B3 - hard freezing

[fiendish]

A friend and I built identical systems in March this year, based on the GA-P67A-UD7-B3. My friend's machine was fine for the first month, then randomly started freezing hard under Windows 7, requiring hard reset. If audio was playing sometimes this would result in loud white noise or feedback until the reset button was pressed. Soon enough, the freezing started happening more often. Sometimes once a day, sometimes four or five times a day. After a fair amount of testing, and swearing, it seemed impossible to tie the crash to any particular event, it was always entirely random. We've tried all sorts to get to the bottom of it, but nothing has worked, the freezing always crops up again eventually.  This is what we've tried so far...

We've upgraded the release bios through each version to F6.
We've clean installed Windows twice. 
We've upgraded the SSD firmware.
We've MEMtested both ram sticks individually in different slots, all passed.
We've ditched the SSD and clean installed to a standard SATA HDD.
We've removed all non essential cards or HDDs.
We've tried different graphics cards.

My question is - what shall we try next? We have another identical build to pillage from. Or does anyone have any idea what the hell could be at fault here? Any help would be amazing. The spec is below.
Incidentally, my machine has done the freeze only three times ever, twice with the audio splurge, despite being under much heavier use. I don't know what to make of this.

Many thanks,

Ollie
Lian Li PC-C32B Alu Case Black HTPC
Corsair 850W Modular PSU
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7-B3 P67
Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM
Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Zotac Fanless GeForce GT430 1GB DDR3 ZONE Edition
Noctua NH-C14 Top-Flow Flexible CPU Cooler with 140mm fan
OCZ Vertex 2E Bigfoot 120GB 3.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive
Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen 2TB SATA-II 32MB Cache x 2
Samsung SH-S223 DVD-RW

[Aussie Allan]

  I suspect you don't have identical keyboards......what are they and which one is on the troublesome machine ?

        Logi..

  Aussie Allan

[fiendish]

ha! Are you serious? Mine's an MS Wireless Multimedia Keyboard 1.0a, USB. From memory I think he's got a wired MS keyboard, USB as well, will check. It's connected through a KVM but we've got it to freeze on a direct connect too.

[Aussie Allan]

  When fault finding I have a PS2 keyboard in the back shed.....run over it twice but it still works OK   point is ....if you don't have a PS2 spare.....swap with your mate.....you have the perfect test setup.......... with two rigs (Almost ) identical to swap parts to and fro.....this way you can rule out hardware issues....one piece at a time .....if you come through that.....then your down to drivers , setting and apps ....in that order!

  Aussie Allan

[Dark Mantis]

Hi as Allan has said it is handy that you have all the same parts to swap out BUT make sure that you mark them all first so that you know which ones came from where originally otherwise it is very easy to get them mixed up along the way.

Just buy a cheap PS2 keyboard. You can use it agaion for faultfinding and BIOS updates etc anyway.

Don't forget you live at different houses and so the elecricity supply could be another variable to take into account.

[fiendish]

Thanks for the tips guys. Does anyone have any idea of the likely culprit or could it be anything?

[Aussie Allan]

 Welcome again my fiendish friend

  it could be over 50 things ..... but if you want me to hazard a guess......if you're using XMP......try setting the timings manually and raise the memory voltage a notch or two .

  Aussie Allan

[fiendish]

Thanks Allan. XMP is on currently I believe but it has been running and freezing on default without XMP.

[Aussie Allan]

  And the voltage?

  Aussie Allan

[fiendish]

All at default or by SPD I think. Is it worth manually setting the numbers as per memory spec?
 

[Aussie Allan]

 Definitely worth a shot

  Aussie Allan

[fiendish]

Well it was memory related.

After verifying that the timings were correct via SPD, I loaded XMP Profile1 and then began tinkering with settings.

Under MIT / Advanced Memory Settings / Performance Enhance, I changed it from the Profile1 default 'Turbo' to 'Standard'. Since then, no freezing. Weirdly if the RAM runs at stock and not XMP, therefore at 1366 Mhz rather than 1600 Mhz, the freezing problem still occurs.


Here's the RAM in question

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-290-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

[Dark Mantis]

It might be worth testing the memory with Memtest86+.

Please follow these instructions exactly.

I would suggest that you download and run the latest version of  Memtest86+ to check your RAM first.

Memtest86+        http://www.memtest.org/

Insert one stick of memory in slot 1 and run Memtest on it for at least 10 complete loops/cycles and if there are no errors then swap it over with the next one and continue untill you have checked all  modules.
 
If you have any errors the module is faulty.

If you have any faulty modules you will have to return the whole kit as they are matched.

Post back when you have done that with the results.

[fiendish]

This problem was never resolved.

Eventually we bit the bullet and put all components in an Intel Z68 mobo. All works as expected now so the UD7 was at fault. Pity it takes so long to get to the bottom of these things!