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How do I diagnose which part is making my PC randomly freeze

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My specs:
- i7-4790k
- 980ti XTreme gaming waterforce
- 16GB DDR3 Corsair Vengence pro RAM
- 200GB Sandisk SSD 550mb/s
- MSI gaming 5 motherboard Z97
- 750W Corsair bronze power supply

Issue:
After a few hours or occasionally after one, a black, green, orange or purple screen will just appear (a bit like when you've pushed your overclock too high) and I'll have to reboot, sometimes I'll remain in discord and everything will carry on working fine although instant disconnect to the game I was playing.

My attempts:
Running no overclock on anything, reinstalling windows, trying different harddrive, newest and older drivers on GPU only.
I can also run AIDA 64 GPU test for 12 hours without this issue happening once..

Question:
How can I find out, definitely what part is causing the issues? I know it sounds like a graphics card issue but I'm unsure.
 
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Possibly your gpu. Those signs seem to indicate it.

Try using windows 7 or 8.1 if possible to see if this continues. Assuming you are on 10.

10 can be unstable for some. worth a try.
 
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have you checked the temp of GPU? could from bad GPU, overheat
 
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I'll check, idle temperatures are definitely okay but also, it's water-cooled without a overclock so I'd be worried if they were high.
 
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Try another gpu. It could also be you power supply or a cable. Trouble shooting is going to be switching parts till you resolve the problem. Or take the gpu and put it in another pc and stress it.
 
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Do this try down clocking it. See if that helps
 
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Do this try down clocking it. See if that helpsI
I lowered the core and memory to the minimum in the xtreme gaming utility (-something), and it crashed so I then increased the voltage and power limit and couldn't get it stable.
 
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The water cooling could be failing. Check the load temps
 

HTC

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That's kinda what I was thinking about doing but where can I borrow a GPU?

Doesn't your CPU have an iGPU? Set your PC to use the iGPU and remove your 980Ti, then try stressing the PC and see if it still freezes: if it does, you'll have ruled out the 980Ti as the culprit, and if not, the 980Ti is the problem.

Ideally, you'd want to do this with another GPU but, if you can't get your hands on one, this is a suitable alternative, no?

Worth a try, IMO.
 
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Also Aida64 is not a good GPU stress test. It doesnt load the GPU to 100%. Its good for stressing the CPU and Memory, but not the GPU. Use something like 3DMark or one of the Unigine stress tests.
 
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Also Aida64 is not a good GPU stress test. It doesnt load the GPU to 100%. Its good for stressing the CPU and Memory, but not the GPU. Use something like 3DMark or one of the Unigine stress tests.
Oh, okay I've bought 3D mark so I'll run that for a few hours

Doesn't your CPU have an iGPU? Set your PC to use the iGPU and remove your 980Ti, then try stressing the PC and see if it still freezes: if it does, you'll have ruled out the 980Ti as the culprit, and if not, the 980Ti is the problem.

Ideally, you'd want to do this with another GPU but, if you can't get your hands on one, this is a suitable alternative, no?

Worth a try, IMO.
How do I get my computer to crash? It only seems to happen in games after a while of playing and it's not constant at all.. I've tried AIDA 64 but I cannot get it to crash with it.
(If i manage to get it to crash with a program I'll uninstall it and test to see if it happens with the integrated graphics

Thanks for all the help already guys :) I really appreciate it
 
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Try heaven 4.0
 
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I did 3D mark timespy and got a stability of 96.6% with default settings. I'm wondering if my GPU might be auto-overclocking itself?
It was running at 1506
 

rtwjunkie

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I did 3D mark timespy and got a stability of 96.6% with default settings. I'm wondering if my GPU might be auto-overclocking itself?
It was running at 1506
That’s actually a thing. That’s what boost does.
 
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Ate you playing a certain game when it happens?
 
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10 can be unstable for some. worth a try.
??? Any OS can be unstable for some. It is my experience W10 is much more stable than any previous version of Windows as long as the hardware makers have developed and made available W10 drivers.

But this does not even sound like an OS issue. To me, it seems clearly a HW issue, and likely graphics.
Question:
How can I find out, definitely what part is causing the issues? I know it sounds like a graphics card issue but I'm unsure.
Troubleshooting intermittent problems is always the most difficult - especially when nothing points directly to the culprit. So it ends up being a long process of elimination. Being able to run AIDA 64 GPU for 12 hours suggests adequate cooling - at least for the GPU. What are your other temps? Is the case interior clean of heat trapping dust?

Since everything inside your computer case depends on good, clean, quality power, before replacing any components, I would swap in a known good PSU to see what happens.
 

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How do I get my computer to crash? It only seems to happen in games after a while of playing and it's not constant at all.. I've tried AIDA 64 but I cannot get it to crash with it.
(If i manage to get it to crash with a program I'll uninstall it and test to see if it happens with the integrated graphics

Thanks for all the help already guys :) I really appreciate it

That's the tricky part: due to it not being consistent, it's harder to pinpoint the cause.

Suggest you play the games you know have had the PC freeze before but you'll obviously have to reduce resolution / details, by a lot, because ... Intel's iGPU is way WAY off in performance VS 980Ti.

With everything else being the same, if it still freezes then the 980Ti isn't to blame and you'll have ruled out one piece of hardware: a step in the right direction, but only a step. If it doesn't freeze, then most likely the 980Ti is to blame and you've reached your goal to figure out what causes the PC freezing.
 
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That’s actually a thing. That’s what boost does.
Do you know if there's a way to manually stop this from happening? It might be too aggressive as I'm fairly sure my default clock is 1206.

??? Any OS can be unstable for some. It is my experience W10 is much more stable than any previous version of Windows as long as the hardware makers have developed and made available W10 drivers.

But this does not even sound like an OS issue. To me, it seems clearly a HW issue, and likely graphics.
Troubleshooting intermittent problems is always the most difficult - especially when nothing points directly to the culprit. So it ends up being a long process of elimination. Being able to run AIDA 64 GPU for 12 hours suggests adequate cooling - at least for the GPU. What are your other temps? Is the case interior clean of heat trapping dust?

Since everything inside your computer case depends on good, clean, quality power, before replacing any components, I would swap in a known good PSU to see what happens.
Okay, I guess I'll order one from Amazon since there return policy will back me up if the issue persists (I don't have one laying around)

That's the tricky part: due to it not being consistent, it's harder to pinpoint the cause.

Suggest you play the games you know have had the PC freeze before but you'll obviously have to reduce resolution / details, by a lot, because ... Intel's iGPU is way WAY off in performance VS 980Ti.

With everything else being the same, if it still freezes then the 980Ti isn't to blame and you'll have ruled out one piece of hardware: a step in the right direction, but only a step. If it doesn't freeze, then most likely the 980Ti is to blame and you've reached your goal to figure out what causes the PC freezing.
Okay, I'm going to take it out and see what kinda stability score I get on 3D mark
 
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Okay, I guess I'll order one from Amazon since there return policy will back me up if the issue persists (I don't have one laying around)
Well, IMO, it is always good to have a spare PSU laying around - especially if you are the "go-to" computer guy in your family or neighborhood. But even if you could borrow one from a trusting friend or relative, that would be good for now.
 
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I've taken the 980ti out, and now I can't get a picture.
When I boot the system I get this white glow which goes across the screen and actually shows a faded Xtreme overclocking utility which I had up just before I shut my computer off to take the GPU out and after that, I get a black screen with white glow at the edges.
I've got the monitors lead plugged into DVI, is ridiculous to say my monitor or cable could be an issue right?
 

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Do you know if there's a way to manually stop this from happening? It might be too aggressive as I'm fairly sure my default clock is 1206.
You can certainly try downclocking, which could reduce the starting point for boost. AFAIK you can’t turn off boost without modding the card BIOS, if you can at all.
 

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I've taken the 980ti out, and now I can't get a picture.
When I boot the system I get this white glow which goes across the screen and actually shows a faded Xtreme overclocking utility which I had up just before I shut my computer off to take the GPU out and after that, I get a black screen with white glow at the edges.
I've got the monitors lead plugged into DVI, is ridiculous to say my monitor or cable could be an issue right?

Did you change the GPU setting in the BIOS so that the PC "knows" it should use the iGPU instead of the 980Ti you had installed before? This should be done with the 980Ti still installed in the PC.

Back when i had an APU system, i did this when i sold my GPU and started using the APU's iGPU instead.
 
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