Problem with my personal machine.

[ComputerRepairTech]

This is mostly a have you seen these symptoms (primarily #3) and do you have a better idea thread.

Here are the symptoms:

1. Rarely (once every 2-3 weeks) but randomly the system will go into a soft lock, meaning I can move the mouse cursor but I cant do anything else, ctrl+alt+delete wont work. mousing over some windows will change cursor to a loading cursor. This has not happened while gaming or doing any intense activites yet (though likely did have some hard drive activity during the soft locks)

2. Upon reboot some usb devices will not kick on like they normally would for example usb keyboard.

3. Boot order in bios changes by itself and is no longer the SSD. As far as I know this has only happened after the soft lock. The SSD is a Sandisk Extreme (it was on lightning sale dont judge =P)

4. Nothing in event log at all during any of the freezes which leads me to believe its unable to write to disk during the freeze.

Recent hardware changes (issue started about a week or 2 after installing the additional video cards):

1. Added another GTX 680 for SLI (i got it on ebay not new so dont freak out), same PSU which is a corsair 650 watt (rebranded seasonic)

2. Added a GT 610 pci x1 card to power an additional 2560x1440 monitor (total of 3) while the using max performance sli mode.

Test info:

1. Hard drive passes sector scan. SMART shows 3 retired blocks.

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I know the timing kind of points to the SLI but gut & symptoms lean to SSD.

I dont think its as likely to be MB related as I think i'd be experiencing issues more often but its not impossible. I don't think its PSU related as being under load does not seem to trigger it.

My first step is probably going to be to order another SSD then if that doesnt work a more powerful PSU (i dont think its likely to be the issue but extra PSU's in the home are never a bad thing).

What do you guys think?

 

[Moltuae]

An AHCI/SSD compatibility issue, almost certainly I'd say.

Had the same problem myself. Seems a very common issue with some SSD controllers when used with certain motherboards.

I tried BIOS updates, diver updates, firmware updates, everything. In the end I reluctantly switched to IDE mode. No problems since, and no noticeable loss of performance.


EDIT: You could also try a different brand of SSD, or one with a different controller.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Well the SSD has been in this system for quite some time so don't think its necessarily a compatibility issue but I do suspect the SSD the one I pick will have a different controller as well just in case.

 

[Larry Sabo]

1. CMOS battery?
2. MB caps?
3. PSU?
4. USB port damage/USB device failing?

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

1. CMOS battery?
2. MB caps?
3. PSU?
4. USB port damage/USB device failing?

1. no
2. no
3. probably not but we will see.
4. ....damn I cant believe I didnt think about that at all. I forgot for a brief while I was using a weird display port to DVI adapter that required additional usb power & when I hooked that up I also plugged back in the usb cable for my UPS. Good call! I'll explore this further.