Had a bit of a scare today sooo...

[BoostedFridge]

Hi all,

In the last few days my computer has started to be more 'temperamental' than usual, and freezing up frequently when doing simple tasks such as using a web browser, or zipping a file. Previous to this I might get a blue screen of death once every few weeks when gaming, but otherwise it has given me almost 5 years of trouble free operation.

My game plan had been to run the system 'as is' until the end of this year, then sell it privately for ~$400-$500 CAD, and buy a complete new gaming PC then. I added a new PSU, GPU, and SSD in 2013 for approximately $400 (CAD), so I have some cost that I had hoped to recuperate by selling the rig secondhand.

My dilemma is that if one of the older hardware components (Mobo, CPU) is failing me now, or fails soon, that I will only be able to recover a fraction of my computers value from selling the remaining components individually. Also, the timing is terrible since I don't get my next commission cheque until the end of March, and would really like to avoid having $1500 for a new PC sitting on my credit card until then.

Do you think it would be worth buying a new 'modern' mother board & CPU (~$350 CAD) to go with my existing hardware? Or just suck it up and go for a brand new system? I am making the assumption that the mobo or CPU would be the most likely components to be on their way out, as they are the oldest parts left in my rig. Also, I feel that my CPU is likely holding back some of the performance of my video card.

My rig:

AMD Phenom II X6-1055T 2.8Ghz 6 core AM3 socket CPU (2011)
Gigabyte 8800GMA-UD2H Mother Board AM3 socket (2011)
MSI Radeon R9-270X 2GB video card (2013)
Kingston 64GB SSD (2011)
Samsung 128GB SSD (2013)
Western Digital 1TB HDD (2012)
EVGA gold series 750w Power Supply (2013)
New case fans (2014)
Windows 7 Ultimate

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.

[peterhayes]

Is it worth running some diagnostics to see if it is hardware or software related.
What you describe could be due to either.

Run Disk cleanup
Defrag Hard Drive (not SSD)
At a command prompt as administrator (Google) run sfc /scannow (Google) any errors?
Windows key + r/R type in dxdiag OK - any errors?

Is the OS 32 or 64-bit
Is the OS installed on a SSD or spinner HDD? How much free space on OS drive?
How much RAM installed (run a RAM diagnostic test eg memtest or the inbuilt windows one - Google)
How full are your hard drives incl SSD's
PSU - any issues?
What temps are the cpu and gpu?
De-dusted lately?
Try a gigabyte mobo diagnostics utility http://www.gigabyte.com.au/support-down ... ility.aspx
Last option - windows repair or clean install of Windows 7.

After all of that you can decide if its hardware or software related.
Regards
pH

[gtrtroger]

Please.....
Make a CD/DVD a backup of Siskiyou Line, Asset and Content dirs/files before you do anything........
Don't want to see all your hard work lost....

[Ericmopar]

Please.....
Make a CD/DVD a backup of Siskiyou Line, Asset and Content dirs/files before you do anything........
Don't want to see all your hard work lost....

X2

You need to get into widows and look for error reports. The blue screens in the past were a warning. If you've been overcloaking, the CPU would be one of my first suspects, but Peter is right about it can be anything. If the CPU is getting hot because of old thermal paste, oc or dust that will cause issues. The same can be said of the GPU.
You can Google how to do the different checks.
AMD and Intel both have free software to test CPUs and other Mobo chips.
Windows has a built in RAM check.

AMD GPUs are notoriously hot compared to Nvidia ones, so that's another possibility.

[BoostedFridge]

Peter, thanks for the troubleshooting checklist!

It was very useful to take a step back and run through a process. The SSD that my OS runs from was @ 91% capacity, so I've deleted and moved some files, and cleared the 'temp' files, which has brought it down to 84% of capacity. Also, despite dusting the case out a few months ago I found the heatsink fins on the CPU cooler, and GPU were full of dust. I removed both, cleaned them out thoroughly, and then scraped and reapplied thermal paste between the CPU and its cooler.

So far, so good. My GPU idle temperature is down about 6 degrees from where it usually is. I have yet to boot Railworks yet though.

For some reason, none of the system monitoring tools I've download seem to be reading my CPU temperature. I have 'Open Hardware Monitor', 'AMD System Monitor', and 'Core Temp' open and running, but all of them show 0*C for the CPU.


Rest assured guys, I have the Siskiyou route is backed up on 2 different hard drives, and a cloud backup as well.