ASUS Maximus VII Formula Random Freeze

[walalang023]

Good day everyone!

To start with, my PC Specs:

Mobo: Asus Maximus VII Formula
Processor: i7 4790k
Ram: F3-12800CL7-4GBXM (4x4gb, total of 16gb. it says PC3-10700 (667mhz) on CPU-Z )
GPU: 2x Inno3d GTX670 I-chill in SLI
PSU: Seasonic x series 850w gold modular
OS Drive: OCZ Agility 3 120gb
Other HDD: 1x 1tb WD Black/ 1x 500gb WD Black/ 1x 320gb scorpio/ 1x 250gb Samsung
OS: Windows 7 64bit home premiun
Full custom liquid cooling (EK)

To start the story:

I was playing GTA V when suddenly whole PC shutsdown and I go into the "american megatrends" style bios saying there was a Power surge detected. I didn't understand what that meant (i assumed the mobo triggered safety?) and restarted the PC.

I launched GTA V when before even loading itself, PC shuts down. and enters the "american megatrends" bios again, no errors this time, only instructing me to reload defaults in the bios.

So, I'm thinking maybe my PSU is going (2years old?) so I go buy a new one, the exact same model, except newer. I install into the PC and restart it. It runs fine, except it doesn't and it freezes itself! (an issue I thought I solved by updating the firmware of the SSD earlier)

So I have to hard shutdown the pc by holding the powerbutton. I turn it back on and it works properly. Well, until it freezes itself randomly while I am away (maybe few mins, maybe few hours idle) it doesn't freeze on me while I work. only when left idle.

I try to solve this when a google search turned up nothing. I disassemble my PC, reverted back to the stock air cooler for the CPU.
Removed both my GPU's and just ran the intel hd4600. I also plugged in the 2nd 4pin for CPU (so now it's 12 pin).

It still freezes. So I remove 2 sticks of ram (i kept stick 1 and 2 in slot b1 and b2 i believe) and turn it on. PC freezes on me with google chrome and viber running.

So I pull out the ram in slot b2. and PC hasn't frozen for the past 3 days i have left it running.

Temps were great when it was still watercooled, lows of 30-ish highs of 60-70 (ambient with no AC is about 30/35)

Memtest results after 10hrs is 0 errors.

I'm afraid to run Prime95 due to temps shooting up to 100c on the stock cooler in a few seconds of starting the test. But when it was on watercooling, no issues after 8hrs

GPU furmark test is stable after 8hrs overnight stress test.

I don't know where else to look? I checked the mobo physically and there seems to be no problem, no bent pins, burnt out caps.

Help? I'm typing this right now and i really want to get it to run smoothly 😞 I'm about to swap ram sticks for the other one i removed 3 days ago.

[Nate152]

Hello walalang

Welcome to the ROG forum !

Is your ram a single 16GB kit? If not I would suspect this is why you are having problems, it's not a good idea to mix ram kits even if they are the same specs.

[walalang023]

Hi Nate152, thank you for your reply

My ram is 2 2x4gb kits. they were bought on two separate occassions but they are all the same specs as I made sure of that (only the serial number would be different haha)

They were working fine on my Gigabyte z77 udh5 and my previous ASUS Gryphon z87.. So i'm just really confused if this is a RAM Problem 😞

Though if it was really my RAM, I would be more than glad to have that as the problem rather than the Mobo or CPU cause these are the 2 things I changed on my PC then it started having random freezes.

[Nate152]

Try with 2 sticks of the same kit, it's possible you have your kits mixed up and have 2 sticks from each kit.

[walalang023]

I suppose that may make the system unstable, but it doesnt really make sense as a memtest bootable usb run for 10hrs produced no issues.

Ill try that when i get home. Since i changed the heatsinks for EK heatsinks, my only identifying mark is that two of the sticks say gc and the other two say gd on their respective PCB

[Nate152]

All right

Give two sticks of the same kit a try, if you still get the shutdowns/freezing we'll look further into the problem.

[walalang023]

Whoop dee-doo.

It just froze on me again, I ran a P95 blend test (lots of ram tested) and while I was away for a bit, PC froze.

So I guess it's not Idle either that causes my PC to freeze. also full load?

I'm about to perform another blend test on the 2nd stick of ram alone.

I will update you guys if something changes.

[walalang023]

Thank you for your Assistance Nate152,

I've put a second ram into slot b2. so I have 1 (GC Marked) and 1 (GD Marked) Installed on the PC. I have to wait now if it will freeze on me.

I'll try to post a pic to show what I mean by those GC/GD markings later.

thanks again!

[Nate152]

Yes please do !

Question:

Did this problem start happening after installing your new heat sinks or was it happening before?

[walalang023]

Hi Nate,

Well, the thing is, the new heatsinks were already installed way back when I first built the PC and had a Gigabyte board. No problems there even when I changed to a z87 Gryphon. It only started on this particular Board/CPU combo :'(

Update, when I have 1 stick of ram, It seems to be working fine, even when I blend tested the 2nd stick of ram last night, no errors and it didn't freeze up after 2 hours. i shut the blend test cause temps were getting scary (89-93c)

Right now though I'll be leaving the PC idle today and maybe tom. Just to see if it will freeze.

It's so difficult trying to replicate the conditions for the pc to freeze. 😕

On a side note, Viber.exe will start climbing to 20% cpu usage and stay there if left idle for awhile.

Thank you again Nate152 🙂