Random freezing and rebooting

[Aquilo86]

Purchased a new gaming PC from newegg about 2 months ago. Fresh out of the box it had problems with randomly freezing, but the freezes were few are far between so I didn't view it as a huge problem. I was busy working most of the time so I just let it go and viewed it as something I would look into when I had more free time to do so. Lately though the freezes had started to happen more often, accompanied by random reboots. I did some research and found that some other users had had problems with this PC as well, and the general assumption was that the motherboard was a bit wonky and couldn't properly handle 8 gigs of ram, the quickfix was to removed 2 of the 2-gig ram sticks. I did this and it seemed fine for the next few days. Then suddenly this morning, I start up the PC, and while windows is loading the PC reboots. Attempted again and the same thing happened. Third attempt it loaded the desktop, but when it was loading the programs it froze up completely. I even had it once where, upon pressing the power button, the lights in the case came on for a few seconds, then shut off and nothing happened at all. So I called the manufacturer and they told me to send it in. I was preparing it to be sent in, I replaced the 2, 2-gig ram sticks and decided I would try it one more time, and now low and behold it appears to be working. It has been running now for about 2 hours without any problems. My question is, what do these symptoms mean, does it sound like a bad power supply, or possibly motherboard problems? Any help would be greatly appreciated seeing as due to financial issues I can't send it in until friday, so I have a few days to mess with it and see if I can diagnose and repair the problem myself.

Here are the specs from the website of the machine I purchased:

General Spec
Brand iBUYPOWER
Model Battle Gear X3
Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300(2.50GHz)
Processor Main Features 64 bit Quad-Core Processor
Cache Per Processor 4MB L2 Cache
Memory 8GB DDR3 1333
Hard Drive 750GB SATAII
Optical Drive 1 22X DL DVD+/-RW Drive
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 1GB Video Card
Audio Realtek High Definition Audio
Ethernet Built-in Gigabit LAN
Power Supply 680W
Operating System Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

Motherboard
Chipset Intel P45

CPU
CPU Type Core 2 Quad
Installed Qty 1
CPU FSB 1333MHz
CPU Speed Q8300(2.50GHz)
L2 Cache Per CPU 4MB
CPU Socket Type LGA 775
CPU Main Features 64 bit Quad-Core Processor

Graphics
GPU/VPU Type NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Graphics Interface PCI Express x16

Memory
Memory Capacity 8GB DDR3
Memory Speed DDR3 1333
Memory Spec 2GB x 4
Memory Slots (Avail./Total) 0/4
Maximum Memory Supported 16GB

Hard Drive
HDD Capacity 750GB
HDD Interface SATA II

Optical Drive
Optical Drive Type DVD±RW
Optical Drive Spec 22X DL DVD+/-RW Drive

[Kryssan]

Stress test the machine, easiest way to find out if it still has issues. Also useful in troubleshooting.


Run memory checks as well, if you think the issue was with your memory.


Also; is it generating any messages in event viewer for the reboots/freezes? Might not be but worth a look anyway. I'm guessing no out and out crashes so no dumps to review?


Symptoms sound like a power supply problem, or a shorted component. Could also be bad memory/incompatible memory. Not much to go on with only the information provided however.

[Aquilo86]

Oh sorry, yes I ran a memory test and it went fine.

And yes I checked the event viewer and theres nothing there about the crashes

[Okan]

Before you pulled the sticks, did you notice it freezing/rebooting when running any one particular application? Was it a game, memory intesive app, or just not much? Do you remember what you were doing? What other steps have you performed at the moment? Increased page file size? Double checked and updated most drivers? Specifically video and audio.

[Olo401]

If you have it, what's the brand & model of the motherboard.

[Aquilo86]

Asus P5Q3

The freezing and rebooting would happen anytime, didn't matter if I was gaming or it was sitting idol, or I was watching a movie or anything. Also all drivers are up to date.