8th April 2017, 3:39
It's now a solid month of operation without a single further freeze. My 6 March comment remains applicable:
It is tempting to conclude that the root cause of all those myriad freezes was the Nvidia gpu card, & indeed maybe it was [if so, WHY?]. However, there's another factor which instead might be the cause, or it might have been a combination of both. Way back on the day when i reluctantly pulled out the Tower from under my desk [sitting on a timber board which itself sat on the carpeted floor], & then removed the casing's side panel to access the interior, i was shocked to discover that everything was covered [quite thickly in places] with lint/fluff from the carpet & general airborne particles. By everything i include the cpu, the gpu... AND the power-supply.
Now, a possible thermal overload had long been one of my theories all along, but i had never been able to fully believe it as i very frequently monitor all the measured temperatures with Psensor, & its reported temps for MB, CPU & GPU were many tens of degrees below each of their OEM's spec limits, every time i checked. The PSU however was not monitored, & frankly it never crossed my mind that it might be vulnerable. Once i saw how thickly it was covered in lint, including its air inlet, i wondered if that might have been the cause of the frequent random freezes, & maybe not the GPU at all...?
I'll never know, because now that the Tower has proven to be reliable again [& now sits on top of my desk, >1m above the carpet], i'm not willing to experiment by reinstalling the Nvidia GPU & fighting all over again with its drivers [& of course thereby risking a possible new outbreak of freezes].
I am now marking this thread as SOLVED, & i'd like to thank all those who generously & patiently helped me along the way.
Quote:Tower is now still running without the Nvidia gpu card installed, & so far the integrated Intel gpu seems to be doing quite ok [although the Cairo-Dock does occasionally exhibit high frequency "trembles" now, which did not occur with Nvidia]. Other than that, graphically it seems to be quite sweet
It is tempting to conclude that the root cause of all those myriad freezes was the Nvidia gpu card, & indeed maybe it was [if so, WHY?]. However, there's another factor which instead might be the cause, or it might have been a combination of both. Way back on the day when i reluctantly pulled out the Tower from under my desk [sitting on a timber board which itself sat on the carpeted floor], & then removed the casing's side panel to access the interior, i was shocked to discover that everything was covered [quite thickly in places] with lint/fluff from the carpet & general airborne particles. By everything i include the cpu, the gpu... AND the power-supply.
Now, a possible thermal overload had long been one of my theories all along, but i had never been able to fully believe it as i very frequently monitor all the measured temperatures with Psensor, & its reported temps for MB, CPU & GPU were many tens of degrees below each of their OEM's spec limits, every time i checked. The PSU however was not monitored, & frankly it never crossed my mind that it might be vulnerable. Once i saw how thickly it was covered in lint, including its air inlet, i wondered if that might have been the cause of the frequent random freezes, & maybe not the GPU at all...?
I'll never know, because now that the Tower has proven to be reliable again [& now sits on top of my desk, >1m above the carpet], i'm not willing to experiment by reinstalling the Nvidia GPU & fighting all over again with its drivers [& of course thereby risking a possible new outbreak of freezes].
I am now marking this thread as SOLVED, & i'd like to thank all those who generously & patiently helped me along the way.