My bros pc starting acting up. Said it would just shut off randomly when gaming. I told him might be the video, mem, or possibly the hdd.
So we switch out the video card. On boot, we get a SMART error on his boot drive.
I had another partition with windows on it for em so he could be back up quick, so we just switch the boot order, back up.
Plays a game to check, so far so good.
Figure its the hdd, put the other card back. Next day it starts crashing again. I think maybe because we still left the bad hdd in for backing up but if windows tried to access it or some crap, etc.
SO we take it out totally, good for a day. Now he noticed its reporting only 6gb and not 8.I open it up, 4th slot mem is ice cold. Reseat the mem, 8gb detected. This time he wakes up and it was shut down, so not necessarily gaming related.
We try some memory i had laying around, no post. We put his back in, 2 pieces. it posts. we mix his with mine, no post.
We take mine back out and leave his 2 in, oddly not posting. remove and reseat, and now it posts again.

So I think we can rule out the video card here. Maybe it just doesnt like the memory i have but its corsair , same as his. We may try so lower end 1gb sticks later. But again we had an issue with mem not reporting and they were cold.

So im leaning towards bad memory and/or mobo/slots?
I told em if hes board we can label the memory 1,2,3,4 and then make a list on paper of each slot and see which fails where, cuz looks like 2 diff slots might not be detecting properly, but unsure if the same mem sticks.

He said he may opt to just get a new prebuilt pc, in which case I get dibs on his psu and antec case...

corsair memory lately is crap. mainly the low price memory. (with the green label on it)
ordered 4 2gb modules and two wouldn't allow me to install xp at all, the other two worked bu I pulled them and used crucial and sent back the corsair.

lots of complaints if you google corsair memory problems.

If RAM is good, check for overheating problems.

Also check for mice.

Ill have to corner if its memory or not, but thats what I'm leaning towards.

Mice eh? Ill assume the rodent kind. We have had a couple running around lately, but none in the bedrooms, just mainly around the birdcage eating the seeds.
But I didnt see any damage, but maybe I should scrutinize the wires eh?

I guess computer problems run in the family. Running a different OS install from your drive is not great. His hardware (especially MB) are not identical to your hardware when the OS install was made on your drive.

Does the computer run fine if he doesn't game? Have you watched CPU / Northbridge / Southbridge temps?

Guess I didnt explain. the other OS install is from his set up.
Months ago he had booted and bios just decided to pick a diff drive to boot from, guess the main one just didnt detect that boot, so he reinstalled on it. Later I checked it and saw it was bottom of order so I put it back. every few months it would do that, randomly toggle one off, so he kinda bounced between them.

Hadnt checked temps yet. he has good kooling in there. stock heatsink but no oc, unblocked fans, antec 900 case so them big ass fans are spinning.
he said normally only when gaming but a handful of times outside of gaming. I just found it odd that an hdd failed in conjunction with random mem not detected/cold and gaming freezing it. yea, I think hes been around me too much.
its my bro in law. ha

You should only have one HDD that is set active. The HDD order in the BIOS changing is a pain, but with only one HDD set to active (and no other drives have an OS installed), the computer won't boot. Mixing RAM these days doesn't work well. Even same brand and model line bought at different times can conflict. Manufacturers sometimes change PCB and/or chips during a models life.