Trouble

[SkyTime]

Hullo, lately my PC has been bombarding me with issues, it basically does everything to **** me over and I have absolutely no idea what is causing all this, but hell it's annoying.

Whenever I manage to get my PC to run, it works fine for a little while, might work even the whole day but the troubles start with my audio stuttering, display driver freezing and unfreezing in 5 minutes, again with audio stutter and then a complete freeze. It might happen without any audio stuttering too, and it might unfreeze but pretty rarely, it just spent 10 minutes "installing" one update, my mouse cursor was visible and the loading icon was there but nothing moved.

Now, it shut down after ages and I booted it up again and it's doing nothing normal. Once I power up, everything starts and my screen turns on with a no signal message, after that my computer shuts down and starts again with my screen not turning on and nothing happening, though on my mobo it displays error 59 which in the manual reads CPU micro code is not found or micro code update is failed. Now all I can do is shut down my computer, and after I reboot it, it works again up to the point when it gives me some kind of an error'ish message that has a big American Megatrends logo on it, tells information about my system including my memory, DDR3 1333 which is silly because I have DDR3 1600.

The troubling part about this screen is that at the bottom it says Overclocking failed! Please enter your setup to reconfigure your system. Press F1 to run setup.

F1 takes me to BIOS where I have this quick clock system. I have set it to Power Saving (Normal and Optimal are the two other alternatives) after these things started happening and my BIOS also claims I have 1333 RAM eventhough it god damn surely is 1600. Well I'll go set it to 1600. I save changes and reset, my PC reboots and starts normally.

Now, before all this, I had some trouble with my RAM sticks. I have two 4GB sticks of DDR3 1600 and I suspect the other one is broken, I had to remove it for my PC to start because with it, it would either display error 58 or 59. 58 is CPU self test failed or possible CPU cache error.
I also have another thing in my mind. I have a 750w PSU to power up my Radeon HD 6950 Direct CU II which in minimun requires 600w of power, I also have all my other junk with headset and keyboard both requiring 2 USB's, I have 2 fans on VGA 1 on processor, 1 on PSU and 2 extra which I removed both because I'm afraid I'm running low on power. Though removing the extra fans is not helping, my **** still keeps crashing.
My BIOS shows the power usage on the 12v rail and it's pretty much all used, about 80% while the others rest at 50'ish %

I truly hope there's someone out there who can help me with this, it's insanely annoying when your **** doesn't work. Sadly this second PC I'm using is also a piece of ****, so I can't do anything.

Also my specs are

Asus P8P67 Deluxe mobo
Radeon HD 6950 Direct Cu II graphics card
Intel i5 2500k 3.30GHz processor
8GB of DDR3 1600 but only 4gb is in right now
Some Chieftec modular 750w PSU
Two 1TB hard disks
some random disk drive
front USB hub

 

[Fehnor]

You're on the right track. Because you moved/removed ram and it changed things, I would guess that you should pick up some more to see if your issue is fixed. The good news? You can pick up RAM for less than an air duster. You should also pick up an air duster.

750W PSU is more than you need for a comp with a single video card. It could probably handle 2.

Good luck!

 

[SkyTime]

You absolutely sure that 750w is enough? For the card takes quite a big pile of it, and then I have a ton of other things, including a cheap ass led fan that I picked for 1e.

 

[Splintert]

You won't usually begin to see power issues until your CPU/GPU are under load. If you know its the power supply having problems on boot, something's broken.

Try updating your motherboard BIOS. Also try using one stick of RAM at a time. Also make sure all the power connectors are in the right place, especially the one leading to the motherboard and CPU.

 

[SkyTime]

Thanks, I'll check our the ram and update BIOS tomorrow

I do wonder though, if my RAM or the sockets are damaged, what might've caused that? They are relatively new, barely a year old and Kingston isn't a cheap producer either.

 

[Fehnor]

I burned through 5 sets of ram on a pimped out dell I bought about 6 years ago. Same brand and model was given to me every time. Overheating.

 

[SkyTime]

I see. Now I don't quite know how hot the RAM sticks are supposed to get but after an extended period of HC gaming, the sticks are damn hot, warm them up a bit and you won't be touching them.

It's most likely a ram problem, now, it occurred to me that my computer always makes one loud'ish fast beep at startup. Has been making that ever since I assembled it. I checked and on some things it means RAM error but I'm not really sure.
Haven't had the time to meddle around with the sticks yet so I'll do that later.


E: I tested with both of my RAM sticks and it was the same with the both of them, I currently can't get my hands on other sticks that are compatible with my mobo, but I'm now updating my BIOS to see if that makes a difference. Now I can run my PC with both mem sticks though.
I also made a video about the battle to start up my PC succesfully, going to upload it and post it here if updating doesn't help.

k updating BIOS isn't as easy as the ****ing manual makes it to be, considering it offers me 4 options and none of them work. Can't install the updater given with the disk, or even online because it fails to start the launcher. Now the site offered me an update to fix that issue but it did jack all. I cannot use my BIOS EZ update thing with an USB stick because when I try to run the update, it fails an image integrity check, tried with NTFS and FAT32.

gawd need to spend more time on this later.

 

[Splintert]

Dump the BIOS image in the root directory of your OS drive. It's impossible to update via Windows, and any disk installer you download off the internet is more dangerous than hitting your computer with a hammer. Only the manufacturer's website should be trusted with something so crucial as a BIOS for your motherboard.

You should probably put those fans back in.

 

[SkyTime]

Yes, fans are back in and every software / update was downloaded from asus' own site, though the **** they supplied me with are faulty and even the mobo manual is full of ****.


E: Alright after months of pain I finally managed to update my BIOS to somewhere not as ancient as the factory version but that did jack ****. My memory still downgrades to 1333. Anger.