So, I don't if any of you guys know anything about this, but... Anyway, I just built myself a new PC. Everything works fine most of the time, an occasional BSOD here and there... But something odd has happened to me a few times now. If I leave Windows running unattended for a while (about 15 minutes or so) I'll come back to my computer to see it appears to have shut down. If I press the power button or reset button it turns on but I get nothing on the monitor, so I have to hold the power button for a few seconds until it shuts off completely, at which point I can successfully start it up and get something on the monitor. The first thing I see is a black screen with white text in the center saying something like "Warning!!! The previous overclocking attempt had failed." and a few options to enter the BIOS setup or just continue normally. At this point I can reset at any time and boot back into Windows right where I left off, with everything still open like nothing had happened. The thing is... to my knowledge, I'm not overclocking at all. I even disabled the Intel Turbo Boost technology thing from the BIOS settings menu. It just seems to happen every time my screen saver should start. This is kinda my first resort because I don't feel like registering on any forums dedicated to this sorta stuff just to make a few posts and never come back. Yeah, I'm really fuckin' lazy. If it helps, I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with 4GB of RAM and an Intel i5-2500k CPU and a Radeon HD 6950 graphics card. MSI P67a-c43 mobo, Antec EA650 PSU.
Yeah, the temperature is fine. The highest I've ever seen it go is 57. After looking into it some more I've determined that it just seems to not want to wake up from S3 sleep mode, leaving me with powering off completely as the only option, and then waking from hibernation after rebooting from the BIOS. I'm not overclocking so I don't know why that message pops up. I can avoid it by using S1 sleep mode or just disabling sleep/hibernation altogether, but I'd rather fix the problem than avoid it...
The most common cause of PC failure is too low voltage on the memory. ESPECIALLY if you get performance memory. Look up what voltage the memory you got requires from the manufacturer, then go into the BIOS setup and make sure the ram voltage is AT LEAST that value, if not one click higher. Overclocking the system will also require that you raise the ram voltage or it WILL fail.
I figured it out, finally. The RAM I was using had compatibility issues with my motherboard. Put some compatible shit in there and this thing runs flawlessly now.
