New Gaming Rig Freezing Infrequently

[mathminded]

I've had my new gaming rig all set up now for over two weeks (longer than that if you include the time before I gave up on installing linux w/ all my "windows only" peripherals / drivers). Everything is working REALLY well except an occasional freeze.

Here is my set up:
MoBo: abit IP35 Pro
CPU: Intel Quad Core Q6600 (G0 stepping)
RAM: 8 GB of Corsair XMS2 (1 pair of one model and 1 of another, though)
Video Card: XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 XXX
HDD's: 640 GB Western Digital WD6400AAKS x 2 RAID1
Sound Card: None Installed (Yet); using IP35 onboard sound
Case / Cooling: Thermaltake Armor VA8003BWS
2 x 80 mm Apevia Red LED fans (front / back)
2 x 30(25?) mm Thermaltake fans (come w/ case)
1 x 250 mm side case fan
1 HD DVD Sata Drive from ASUS
1 Pioneer HD DVD Burner
OS: Vista Premium x64

Other than the graphics card, which comes OC'ed, I have yet to overclock anything or play with the BIOS much (beyond setting it to use the IP35 Pro's built-in RAID controller.

As far as I remember, the only times the system has crashed thus far are when I am playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This is currently the only graphics intensive game I am running on the system. Each time it has taken at least an hour of online play for the system to freeze, hence my initial thought that it had something to do with the graphics card, but I'm still not sure. What happens is I'll be in the middle of a game, and suddenly (without any weird sounds or any other indicators I can identify) the screen freezes. I've waited 5-10 minutes (possibly more) without seeing any changes. As such, I've resorted each time to forcing a shutdown by holding the power button. When the system turned back on the first time this happened, the initial IP35 Pro self test indicated that the RAID1 was deprecated but allowed me to continue. So, I continued, booted the system normally, and went into the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. It was not automatically restoring my RAID setup and showed one of my HDD's as having failed. I told it to ignore the error, and it restored the RAID just fine. In the two or three times since then (each has been on a different day with no problems before or after), the system has yet to output that "deprecated" error, and the Intel Matrix Storage Manager has automatically begun restoring/verifying my RAID.

I have considered that it might also be a temperature issue, as I do have the mobo setup to shutdown if the CPU exceeds its suggested maximum, but this as also been set to activate the case speaker. Since the system is neither shutting off nor beeping, I doubt this is the cause.

Is this something I should be concerned about? Are there any likely culprits? Is there any software that could help me test my hardware to ensure its not a problem there? Could it be CoD4? With the size of the case and the lack of some internals (for the time being), there should be plenty of airflow, but it's my first complete build; I'm paranoid and haven't ruled anything out yet. Any advice on how to handle this issue and what could be its cause would be hugely appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[jordanpr]

I would revisit the notion that it "is" perhaps a temperature issue, and install PC Wizard and let us know how hot it runs while you are playing CoD4

 

[mathminded]

Thank you for your reply, jordanpr! As I mentioned at the end of my first post, I was looking for some diagnostics software, and you just so happened to point me to an old favorite of mind that I had completely forgotten about! I'll *ahem* force myself to play CoD4 for several hours tonight for the sake of diagnostics and, more generally, for the betterment of science.

 

[jordanpr]

Haha!

How'd it go?

 

[mathminded]

Well, for some reason PC Wizard keeps crashing on my system immediately after it's opened. I did, however, use GPU-Z to look at the temps as best I could (not a lot in terms of logging the temp while in the background...or at least that I can see). I don't know how reliable the sensor data is, but GPUZ was indicating a GPU temperature for my 9800 GX2 XXX in the high fifties to low sixties when running very little other than Vista and a maximum observed temperature of about 67 degrees (this is all in Celsius, of course. I wish it was in Fahrenheit or Kelvins!). That temperature was achieved in game once or twice at most, on the largest, levels with the highest animation demands and ~48 - ~64 people playing. It was also indicating that the temperature dropped from 67*C to the 60*C to 62*C range after just a second of having the game minimized.

Just in case, I should probably note that GPU-Z auto detected my 9800 GX2 as a GTX, but I didn't think that that was an issue, given that - as far as I can tell - it was reading its sensor data and specs fine.

A couple new observations / questions about this I could use assistance with in addition to my original question:

1. According to GPU-Z, even when I am mid game and go straight to the monitoring software, the maximum fan speed that the 9800 is achieving seems to be limited to 60% of its rated speed. Is this normal? Can I OC this? It seems counter intuitive to check the BIOS given that it's a PCI card and controlled by the nVidia driver. (Please don't flame me if I'm completely off base; I'm new to this). Is there any reason (perhaps beyond noise level, which I don't really care about) that I should not OC it?

2. Is there a common crashing problem with PC Wizard 2008 on Vista Ultimate SP1 x64? More importantly, is there a solution? If not, can anyone recommend some other graphics card monitoring software?

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Can you test your power supply with a multimeter? This may sound like a typical and repetitive suggestion, but a bad PSU can cause all sorts of problems. Do you have another card you can test?

 

[SKULLOTOI]

could be psu. sound like overheating problem with card. temps say otherwise. silly question, does the game freeze or does the ENTIRE machine freeze?

 

[mathminded]

Thanks for your responses! I forgot to mention my power supply lol. I decided to go a bit overkill with the available power (in case I wanted to switch to SLI w/ new mobo in the future) and purchased the Antec 850W TruePower Quattro. Unfortunately, I still need to purchase a multimeter, but I'll try to run out and get one...

The whole rig, not just the game, is freezing. Down to the lights Caps Lock light on the keyboard. It just happened two days ago again. I checked GPU-Z at start up today, and it raised from 42*C to 59*C with the fan remaining at 38% (or maybe 39%...can't remember). Now with Firefox open its gone up to 62*C @ 41% fan speed.

 

[mathminded]

Any ideas? It hasn't occurred in about a week now, but it is still disconcerting given that nothing was resolved.