- Joined
- Dec 15, 2006
Hello all, first time writing in here. Sorry if this story is a little long, I just want to be able to set out all the details in case something jumps out at someone. I just yesterday built myself a new computer with the following:
Motherboard: ASUS P5NSLI NF570 SLI 775 (retail)
Graphics: EVGA 7600GT (bought 2 for SLI) (retail)
CPU: INTEL|C2D E6300 1.86G 775 2M (retail)
Memory: CORSAIR TWIN 2X2048-6400 (retail)
C drive: 320G Seagate Sata2 7K 16M (oem)
Media: DVD_BURN Sony/NEC Octair 7170A-0S RAM (oem)
Case: 8bay Antec case (400w PSU) (retail)
Fans: Stock Intel fan, 4.5in rear scaled speed (have it on high) case fan, side 3in case fan blowing directly at videocard and north bridge.
So I hooked it all up, powered it up - nothing happened. A little concerned, I checked my connections and found I forgot to plug in the 4pin plug by the cpu. Fixed that, and everything started nicely. Went into bios, booted from my XP cd, installed XP SP1 and then went on from there.
The computer is wonderfully fast (I upgraded from a dinosaur OCd AMD Duron) and there weren't any errors starting up, but about 30 minutes into using it (specifically I think when I installed PowerDVD and started using the OEM Sony/NEC dvd) as I accessed the program to start a movie the computer just randomly restarted without any blue screen, just as if I hit the reset button. Since then I have had it restart several times while using video intensive programs such as a dvd movie, or a Divx movie (when I tried to drag and drop an 800mb file onto it).
Now I will say some of those original restarts might have been due to Windows' automatic error restart, but I have turned that off now. Also today I went ahead and installed my old 120gb IDE harddrive to access my old files and my Creative Live 24bit soundcard, so they are part of my system but obviously not part of the problem.
I have tried to force it to reboot with both 3dmark05 and 06 (free versions) but neither program will make it reboot. It does just fine. CPU temps never get above 48*C at 100% load when running a simple in-windows memory test (which ran fine for 2 hours without incident scanning all but about 100 allocated mb of my 2 gigs). From what I can tell, the mobo temp is about 35*.
I have not touched the voltages, since I haven't overclocked before I wanted components that could be overclocked decently when I was informed enough to do it.
I've done quite a bit of googling to try to figure this out: I have seen this has been happening with this board for some other people, sometimes perhaps due to the heat of the chipset, hence my 3in fan. A couple people have concluded it was a bad PSU (and I will have to upgrade to at least 500w for a dual 7600 setup anyhow so that wouldn't be as bad), and somewhere else in these forums someone found a similar situation to be their videocard.
The one thing that I can consistently KNOW will fail: first scene of Oblivion. I bought that today figuring if there was anything that could consistently tax the system enough to fail, it would be that. I am able to get into the game, watch the intro scene, all the way into the cell where gameplay begins. But if I start to move around in the cell (i.e. move the mouse and use keyboard commands to change my view to down the hall towards my jailer), within about 5 seconds (it hasn't happened exactly the same time, once in a second, 3 other times in about 3 or 5) the system just reboots without warning. I was able to punch the vase on the table once before it crashed. I think it crashes for some reason when I turn around to look down the corridor.
I've checked the Windows error messages for application or system errors - there are none listed at these reboot times. It is as if the system doesn't even know it happened.
So, any ideas? I think I have all the details there. My questions are:
Does it matter that I am running corsair 800mhz on a mobo that is supposed to have 667? 3dMark told me that it is running at 800mhz for windows, so I don't think so but maybe I do need to up the voltage to make it stable?
Could the GPU be bad? How can I verify that?
Could the PSU be bad, and how do I verify that?
Could the dvd drive or perhaps the IDE controller be the problem, since it is being used in most of the crash situations?
I want to do as much as possible myself to save cost. If I need to RMA anything I want to do it before time runs out from Newegg. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer!
Motherboard: ASUS P5NSLI NF570 SLI 775 (retail)
Graphics: EVGA 7600GT (bought 2 for SLI) (retail)
CPU: INTEL|C2D E6300 1.86G 775 2M (retail)
Memory: CORSAIR TWIN 2X2048-6400 (retail)
C drive: 320G Seagate Sata2 7K 16M (oem)
Media: DVD_BURN Sony/NEC Octair 7170A-0S RAM (oem)
Case: 8bay Antec case (400w PSU) (retail)
Fans: Stock Intel fan, 4.5in rear scaled speed (have it on high) case fan, side 3in case fan blowing directly at videocard and north bridge.
So I hooked it all up, powered it up - nothing happened. A little concerned, I checked my connections and found I forgot to plug in the 4pin plug by the cpu. Fixed that, and everything started nicely. Went into bios, booted from my XP cd, installed XP SP1 and then went on from there.
The computer is wonderfully fast (I upgraded from a dinosaur OCd AMD Duron) and there weren't any errors starting up, but about 30 minutes into using it (specifically I think when I installed PowerDVD and started using the OEM Sony/NEC dvd) as I accessed the program to start a movie the computer just randomly restarted without any blue screen, just as if I hit the reset button. Since then I have had it restart several times while using video intensive programs such as a dvd movie, or a Divx movie (when I tried to drag and drop an 800mb file onto it).
Now I will say some of those original restarts might have been due to Windows' automatic error restart, but I have turned that off now. Also today I went ahead and installed my old 120gb IDE harddrive to access my old files and my Creative Live 24bit soundcard, so they are part of my system but obviously not part of the problem.
I have tried to force it to reboot with both 3dmark05 and 06 (free versions) but neither program will make it reboot. It does just fine. CPU temps never get above 48*C at 100% load when running a simple in-windows memory test (which ran fine for 2 hours without incident scanning all but about 100 allocated mb of my 2 gigs). From what I can tell, the mobo temp is about 35*.
I have not touched the voltages, since I haven't overclocked before I wanted components that could be overclocked decently when I was informed enough to do it.
I've done quite a bit of googling to try to figure this out: I have seen this has been happening with this board for some other people, sometimes perhaps due to the heat of the chipset, hence my 3in fan. A couple people have concluded it was a bad PSU (and I will have to upgrade to at least 500w for a dual 7600 setup anyhow so that wouldn't be as bad), and somewhere else in these forums someone found a similar situation to be their videocard.
The one thing that I can consistently KNOW will fail: first scene of Oblivion. I bought that today figuring if there was anything that could consistently tax the system enough to fail, it would be that. I am able to get into the game, watch the intro scene, all the way into the cell where gameplay begins. But if I start to move around in the cell (i.e. move the mouse and use keyboard commands to change my view to down the hall towards my jailer), within about 5 seconds (it hasn't happened exactly the same time, once in a second, 3 other times in about 3 or 5) the system just reboots without warning. I was able to punch the vase on the table once before it crashed. I think it crashes for some reason when I turn around to look down the corridor.
I've checked the Windows error messages for application or system errors - there are none listed at these reboot times. It is as if the system doesn't even know it happened.
So, any ideas? I think I have all the details there. My questions are:
Does it matter that I am running corsair 800mhz on a mobo that is supposed to have 667? 3dMark told me that it is running at 800mhz for windows, so I don't think so but maybe I do need to up the voltage to make it stable?
Could the GPU be bad? How can I verify that?
Could the PSU be bad, and how do I verify that?
Could the dvd drive or perhaps the IDE controller be the problem, since it is being used in most of the crash situations?
I want to do as much as possible myself to save cost. If I need to RMA anything I want to do it before time runs out from Newegg. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer!
