Freezing new-build computer

[atomictom]

Hi,

about 1.5 months ago i built my brothers computer with components brought from scan. since the build though his computer will often freeze sometime in the first 15/30min of using the computer but apparently after it has been running for an hour it won't crash at all for the remainder of that session. He has told me it often happens consecutively and there's no pattern to what applications/games he's using that could trigger the crash.
The freezing involves the screen frozen on whatever application is using and can no longer use the mouse to control anything and videos freeze. If left in the frozen state the computer shuts itself down.
This happens when regardless of the operating system (tried 3 distributions of linux and windows 7) so i thought it's probably a hardware problem

The graphics card was removed to see if it was a problem with the card and running from on-board graphics it still occurred.
I gave my brother my SSD to see if he has any problems with that and it has crashed soon after giving it to him.

I also stressed the CPU to try and raise the temperature to see if its overheating but it didn't rise above 39 degrees (got a Corsair H100 cooling it)

Could anyone recommend a solution to the problem or diagnostic tools to tell whether it is the motherboard, CPU or the RAM. i unfortunately don't have another compatible motherboard or CPU to swap in.

Here are the specs:
motherboard - Gigabyte GA Z77X-UD5H
processor - i5 3570K socket 1155
RAM - Corsair Memory Vengeance Red 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz
graphics - GTX 670 Palit
PSU - S Stone 750w Strider st75f-g
Harddrive = OCZ Agility 3 240GB

Thanks in advance

Tom

[shaithis]

My guess is it's a power-state bug.....seen them myself with my main rig.

Try disabling the CPU C states in the BIOS.

[atomictom]

Thanks but it didn't work :/ .

i disabled all the CPU C states i could find (i think there were 6?) but it just crashed

[pctech2012]

I take it you've checked all the power connectors and data connection to the SSD are secure?

I wonder if the PSU is having an issue and not supplying stable power, do you have a spare you can try?

[c12038]

check too see if there is a firmware update for the SSD as that may have something to do with the freezing issue....

[Dareos]

1 stick of ram at a time? first rig i built had a faulty stick, tended to BSOD or crash and reset more than just freeze tho, totally random

oh, and memtest

[atomictom]

Thanks for the replies,

yeah checked all of the connections. they were solid.

I'll try with a mechanical harddrive tomorrow but if it still crashes it's probably not the firmware on the SSD but i might aswell update it.

thanks i'll give memtest a shot. if all else fails i'll take a memory stick from my rig and fire it up on that.

I'll give you another update tomorrow on how it goes