Freezing in game

[madswimmer]

Alright so basically I'm getting these weird freezes in Black Ops and other games(cod4, WoW, Red Faction, etc.) I can be playing one second and then it will randomly just freeze up and I have to ctrl-alt-del and than press esc to get back in(pretty much exit the game some how and come back in). My computer has always done this and I have tryed this with 3 video cards. The first one was when I first built my computer with a 5770 which I returned because I thought that was the culprit. I than obtained a used 8800 which did the same thing! After that i settled in with a gts 275 and pretty much gave up. in CoD4 it wasnt too bad because I could get back in game much faster but with black ops the wait is unbearable and it has happened many times in matches which is starting to become a problem.

So what I am wondering is what could be the culprit? mobo,ram,cpu,hard drive?

sometimes it also freezes up with sort of a tint over all of the screen and when it seems like the freezing is happening a lot, it sometimes does some light artifacting usually before a freeze. a few times i have also gotten sort of like a snow artifacting after a freeze where pixels are flicking black and white.

PS I already tried reformatting and reinstalled windows and drivers and the works. nothing is OC'd and CPU/GPU run at good temps

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

check the HDD with crystal disk info
check the ram with Memtest run it through 5-10 complete loops (takes awhile)
could also be the powersupply but if its doing it with multiple GPUs id say PSU or Ram but since the 5770 is low power id test the ram first.

 

[madswimmer]

alright i downloaded crystal disk info, wat am i looking for exactly? it says health status is good tho

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

thats all you needed to do if it says healthy it means the S.M.A.R.T data the disk is giving out is saying its a-ok and in working order,

next bet get Memtest burn it as a bootable disk to a cd or use a flash drive laying around and make a bootable usb version to test your ram.

 

[madswimmer]

alright i got it on my usb so how do i boot from it? do i gotta change something in my bios or will it automatically work?

 

[Hayder_Master]

i guess it's the ram, try different channels maybe can fix it

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

just google how to boot from usb etc

 

[madswimmer]

alright i think i got it, but am i going to need to test one stick at a time in the primary slot?

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

you can test both at the same time its just recommended to test 1 at a time because if the ram fails how do you know which stick it was?

 

[madswimmer]

ah good point, ill test it later tonight and post later tomorrow, thanks for the help

 

[de.das.dude]

btw. is anything getting too hot?
check your video card / cpu/ hdd even.

 

[Mussels]

video artifacting would almost always be the video card at fault, but you say its happened on multiple cards?

thats unusual

 

[madswimmer]

i would think it would be the video card too but yea it artifacted and froze on 3 different cards. could something maybe be wrong with the pcie slot? and i was also thinking could it be the NB?

 

[Mussels]

i would think it would be the video card too but yea it artifacted and froze on 3 different cards. could something maybe be wrong with the pcie slot? and i was also thinking could it be the NB?

it could be NB related, yeah. something overheating.

 

[madswimmer]

wats the NB listed under in HWmonitor?

 

[Mussels]

wats the NB listed under in HWmonitor?

dont use software, use a thermometer (infrared, not one you stick up butts or whatever) or a finger test

 

[Goodman]

Buy a can air duster & clean all the dusts out of your case & the PSU included

PC's accumulated lots of dusts after a while & needs to be clean out & most people don't think of doing it :shadedshu

I clean out my inside case about every ~2 months or so

 

[madswimmer]

hmm no thermometer so how would i go about a finger test? and with a nb heatsink?

 

[Mussels]

hmm no thermometer so how would i go about a finger test? and with a nb heatsink?

stick your finger on it. if you can hold it there, its fine.

 

[madswimmer]

its not rly too hot. could it be a voltage problem maybe? and if it was which option would it be in my bios? cpu/nb voltage, nb voltage, nb 1.8v voltage?

 

[de.das.dude]

check your sata cables for the hdds to. if they are loose this might happen.
and also as i mentioned before is anything heating?sometimes when component overheats, it down clocks, and that cause freezing.

 

[Mussels]

you dont have a kingston SSD do ya? just saw something in there about a firmware update to solve their SSD's causing PC's to freeze randomly

 

[madswimmer]

alright I ran memtest 8 times and found no errors. nothing is overheating either. in a few days im gonna clean out my comp for dust and ill make sure all the cables are firmly in. any other ideas tho?

 

[xenocide]

All things considered I would say it's probably just the Motherboard. If it were the HDD's or RAM it would present itself in other programs and even the OS itself, if it was the GPU it would have stopped when you tried different setups. The Motherboard and CPU are the only unchanged elements and if you had an issue with the CPU it would probably fail to boot.

 

[madswimmer]

thats what i am thinking. i also havent heard many good things about asus recently