joker97: If you bought everything from a single supplier take it back because it has to be one of their parts!

If from different suppliers i wonder if someone smart can help you confirm the fault being the gpu ... Plug into different computer?

It's all from Computer lounge, I'm in Whangarei so I don't really want to ship it all to Auckland, I'll run a bit of stress testing over the next couple of days and see how it goes, it never crashed while gaming or photo editing/ exporting just after startup, it seemed like it was as soon as a particular bit of software booted but I couldn't monitor it fast enough

Milutiche:

 

Interesting, I just wish I knew how to trouble shoot this kind of stuff and not just try things based on other users experience, like use event viewer or something,

 

Event Viewer wont help much, if it freezes/restarts it wont be able to log anything usefull in event viewer

Trouble shooting is just experience (knowing common faults) and part swapping.
The process is simple. Start with a clean install. KEEP ALL THE CRAP OFF IT till you know its stable.
Make one change at a time. Monitor stability

Start swapping parts with known good parts: thats a bit hard for most home users, as you wont have a stash of spare parts to swap out

Or process of elimination, start uninstalling software & see if its then stable ( as per comment above). Roll back drivers , try new drivers
You have to be very methodical, 1 step at a time , 1 thing at a time.

If you send it back, chances are they will wipe & reload (unless an obvious vid card fault etc)
Before sending it back to retailer, you should test it on a clean Win install : Clean, no other software.

1101:

 

Milutiche:

 

Interesting, I just wish I knew how to trouble shoot this kind of stuff and not just try things based on other users experience, like use event viewer or something,

 

 

Event Viewer wont help much, if it freezes/restarts it wont be able to log anything usefull in event viewer

 

Trouble shooting is just experience (knowing common faults) and part swapping.
The process is simple. Start with a clean install. KEEP ALL THE CRAP OFF IT till you know its stable.
Make one change at a time. Monitor stability

 

Start swapping parts with known good parts: thats a bit hard for most home users, as you wont have a stash of spare parts to swap out

 

Or process of elimination, start uninstalling software & see if its then stable ( as per comment above). Roll back drivers , try new drivers
You have to be very methodical, 1 step at a time , 1 thing at a time.

 

If you send it back, chances are they will wipe & reload (unless an obvious vid card fault etc)
Before sending it back to retailer, you should test it on a clean Win install : Clean, no other software.

 

 

 

I went through the whole windows re-install process and as painful as it it I think I'm on top of it, I get the feeling there was a problem with either the video drivers or msi afterburner, I could have put the video card in my old PC but i'm 99% certain I would've seen no fault, I don't think it was a ram issue, from experience that would normally lead to a bsod. 

I ran a bit of BF4 Last night and have had no issues, I'll try to keep on top of the spftware I install. 

whats the best way to back up the OS so if I do have issues in the future I can just roll back to a previous version (restore didn't work in this situation)