Sluggish computer - New computer build?

One of my youtubers asked me a question. He is running his os off of one 5900 rpm 2 tb drive. He has lots of driver issues. I think its the windows drivers that is messing his computer up.

No, this is a new system, my first acutally, that I just built a week and a half ago.


this is what he sent me.

Here's my system set up:

Silverstone Strider 1200 Watt Power Supply
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula Motherboard
AMD Phenom II Black Edition 3.3Ghz
Radeon HD 6950
3X 2TB Seagate HD 5900 RPM
8GB Corsair Dominator GT 1866Mhz DDR3
And all the fans and etc that go with it

I have two six pin connecters connected but they aren't two seperate cables, they're just split from the same cable. The two seperate ones that came with the power supply both have a label that say +12v5 while the single cable with two split 6 pin heads just says +12v4. Not sure if that means both heads have that or just together they have that power, hoping you could help me with that. Overall, my system is just acting surprisingly sluggish and I have no idea why. I've searched online and have done most of what I've read to no avial. The majority of the time it'll run perfectly fine but when having several windows open or having a game up the display driver will randomly crash. The screen will go blue 1 to 5 times then it'll be fine for 15 to 20 minutes, then do it again! While it does it far less often when just on the desktop it happens there to. I've also noticed recently that things are just opening slowly, the mouse pointer will sometimes skip across the screen as if the CPU is under heavy load while it's only at 20% - 30% load. Nothings overheating, voltages look alright in the BIOS. I remember seeing something about a Kernal error might signify a problem but I can't find out where to find it if it is a problem. As I write this my mouse is slowly skipping around and my keyboard is severely delayed with my keystrokes as if it's under a heavy load when all I have open is firefox and a few tabs, the CPU load is only .5% as well! And now it's back to normal...help!

Yeah, I'm looking at buying a SSD to run my OS from and use the rest for storage. I haven't put it in raid since I've spent most of the last week and a half trying to solve this problem. I just uninstalled the ATI control GUI (kept the drivers of course) and things seem to be running slightly better, but still noticeably sluggish for no reason. Whenever I restart my computer it keeps telling me there are more updates that need to be done to windows. I've already installed all the updates that are required three times in a row but now it's asking me to install service packs and updates for the actually OS which it wasn't before. Maybe this will fix some problems...

Install driver updates (most importantly chipset drivers) for your motherboard from Asus: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/.../#download

Uninstall your current graphics card drivers and install Catalyst 11.7 from AMD [amd.com].

First off as we have talked about in lots of other thread I am sure you have seen is that 5x00rpm drives are not ideal for operating systems. They work but its just not idea. Especially for a gaming machine like that. He would be better off getting a 3rd drive, even just a standard 120gb 7200rpm drive for less than $50 to install his operating system on.

I agree with you that it sounds like the guy did not know what he was doing and is probably missing drivers or something. After getting a new HD or SSD (Back up is critical here as these things fail like mad) I would reinstal windows fresh. Before he does this go to ASUS website and download all the newest drivers and install ALL of them (Once formatted fresh). (Yes there will be some stuff he doesnt actually need but in this case lets make sure the hardware is all good by installing them) Do Chipset first, then GPU, then network etc.

Power. Obviously money is not a problem if this guy just bought a $250 power supply that is more than 2x or 3x what he actually needs. In this case I say ya go for the SSD. Modern video cards with a power consumption over 75 Watts (This one)usually include a combination of six-pin (75W) or eight-pin (150W) sockets that connect directly to the power supply. Not sure what this card uses but it should be noted on the Power supply and in the gpu manual Fill all the plugs it has.

Get him to join up here so he can post directly too.

OH WOW o-o, he bought the ssd already. Jeez, so quick to spend money..

SSD sounds good on paper but I am not sold on the concept yet. I stick with either 7,200 RPMs or 10,000 RPMs SATA II. Tweak the OS to run at the max without OC anything. On either S-C, D-C or Q-C system. make sure your OS does read the full 8GB of RAM. Most don't under Windows 7 U-64-BT. Make sure your not OP in 32-bit on 64-bit under Power management under the BIOS.

LOL at 1200 watt PSU...Why?

Have him run Slim Drivers to find all his driver updates. It's free.

http://www.driverupdate.net/


Run CCleaner too both the cleaner and the registry fix until clean.

Are you sure it's not faulty ram? Sounds to me like your ram (maybe even mobo) is faulty/not installed correctly and your machine is heavily relying on a HDD for pagefiling. It may not be the answer to your problem, but it could be one thing to check.

I also think the video driver is at fault.

Is there an interrupt conflict between the video card and something else? I'd try enabling or disabling the video interrupt in the BIOS and try changing any other video-related BIOS settings.

Is a bad SATA connection or cable causing the the hard disk to operate in non-DMA mode?

While that Corsair is junk memory and there are blue screens, I don't think it's the cause of the slowness. That's not to say the memory shouldn't be thoroughly tested for other reasons.

The hard disk being green is not the cause of slowness.

Quote from larrymoencurly : I also think the video driver is at fault. Is there an interrupt conflict between the video card and something else? I'd try enabling or disabling the video interrupt in the BIOS and try changing any other video-related BIOS settings. Is a bad SATA connection or cable causing the the hard disk to operate in non-DMA mode? While that Corsair is junk memory and there are blue screens, I don't think it's the cause of the slowness. That's not to say the memory shouldn't be thoroughly tested for other reasons. The hard disk being green is not the cause of slowness.

I'll tell him to run memtest and driver sweep his whole comp and reinstall drivers.

Driver sweep? Sure, if you never plan to install another service pack...

Quote from redmaxx : Driver sweep? Sure, if you never plan to install another service pack...

Driver sweep his AMD drivers for the gpu.

Quote from APhamX : Driver sweep his AMD drivers for the gpu.

Yep. Surefire way to prevent future SP installation.

I Have this same mb but different CPU. I was having these same issues when i first built it and finally narrowed it down to the memory. I have never had a mb that was so picky with memory. I went through 4 sets before I found something that would play nice with it. That included some of the recommended memory. I finaly found a set of gskill that it liked and it has been going strong over a year now. Check the memory seating first because this mb can be deceiving the way it clicks in. Then run memory test if it passes reboot and test again. If you need the model number of the memory I ended up using let me know and I will find it for you.

Quote from madadd : I Have this same mb but different CPU. I was having these same issues when i first built it and finally narrowed it down to the memory. I have never had a mb that was so picky with memory. I went through 4 sets before I found something that would play nice with it. That included some of the recommended memory. I finaly found a set of gskill that it liked and it has been going strong over a year now. Check the memory seating first because this mb can be deceiving the way it clicks in. Then run memory test if it passes reboot and test again. If you need the model number of the memory I ended up using let me know and I will find it for you.

New message -
It's still doing it. It really doesn't seem to have a reason to. Everything is up to date, everything is getting enough power, everything is "working", and everything seems to be doing what it needs to do. It doesn't matter whether I'm opening Firefox, the main menu, or playing a game, all seems fair game to cause a display driver crash. USB mouse is back to normal now though.

I can't seem to know if he's trolling or not :l. I told him to run memtest, check if mem is compatible and asked if he even installed the OS on the ssd.