First build = nightmare. Never again!

Last March I was so excited for my first build, researched the hell out of it, made sure to order quality parts that were all compatible and well reviewed.

Between then and now I had to RMA my hard drive, RMA my motherboard, install Windows 7 more then 10 times, lose patience and take my rig into a computer business that charged me $40 to click "Windows Update" and wanted me to buy new components from them instead of RMAing my current ones, as if I have hundreds of extra dollars to flush down the ****ter.

My computer is functioning, but poorly. I have to underclock the shaders to run a game. Very frequently all programs will crash on startup until I reboot. I get "Bad Pool Header" blue screens. Windows memory diagnostic detects problems with either my RAM or motherboard. I'm RMAing my video card, the fourth component to be returned, but I doubt that will solve everything.

Any advice, aside from never building a PC again?

Asus p8p67 Pro,
i5-2500k
Corsair TX750
G.Skill 2x2GB DDR3 1600
SeaGate Barracuda 1tb 7200
PNY Geforce GTX 570
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM

I do not understand your issue exactly. Your setup looks good to me! Computer take a lot of patience. Why are you RMA'ing all of those parts? Are te defective or what? Just calm down. Technology can be a real PITA sometimes and require mass amounts of patience with them.

Where all of your parts brand new or refurbished?

I would get another graphics card and change the RAM or take the DRAM clock off "Auto", manually set the DRAM clock and the timings provided by the RAM manufacturer.

I have the feeling that your board defaults to wrong settings for your RAM.

The items that we're RMA'd was because they were believed to be defective. The hard drive would not recognize despite messing endlessly with BIOS, so I bought another one and it worked fine first try.

Once windows was installed, it would crash instantly after login, and after much troubleshooting I was told to try a new motherboard, which I did and this solved the problem.

I am now RMAing the graphics card because it crashes on any game unless I underclock the shaders. Doesn't this pretty much prove it's defective? I don't see how any other component would cause a problem that would be solved by underclocking the graphics card...

Also, thanks for the tip on the RAM, that's exactly the kind of advice I'm looking for and I will try this tonight.

FlubbyDG said:

Any advice, aside from never building a PC again?

Asus p8p67 Pro,
i5-2500k
Corsair TX750
G.Skill 2x2GB DDR3 1600
SeaGate Barracuda 1tb 7200
PNY Geforce GTX 570
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM

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1) edit- removed #1, my bad

2) Before you return any more parts swap the suspected baddies out into an otherwise known good system (assuming you have access to one somehow) to see if they indeed are the problem. No sense returning part "A" when the problem is really caused by part "Z".

Its possible your shouldn't be building your own machines. Its not necessarily something for everyone. Those of us who have been building for years, decades even and have lots of spare parts and extra machines can make it seem pretty easy. We all get bad parts now and then but when you have 3-4 mb's, extra cpu's, video cards, ram, psu's etc and 2-3 other working machines it makes diagnosing problems much easier. The thing is you typically build up this kind of repository over time if you build often and especially if you build machines for friends and family. On any given year I usually build 4-5 machines, its not that much really but it means I always have parts at my disposal. Right now I have a 520w ulta psu and dvd burner in my back seat that's been there for a cpl wks because I found them on sale dirt cheap at MC and knew I'd have use for them sooner or later. Same goes for the last psu I had sitting around for 6+ months, a nice 600w silencer I couldn't pass up at $60 I eventually used in a build for a friend. Before it was used in that build it was used to test a cpl systems out to determine if the old psu's were bad.

It also makes waiting for rma replacements much easier. Your obviously spending more to have spare parts around but as long as they eventually get used and you get some or most of what you spent on them I find it worthwhile. If you do continue to build your own machines after 2-3 upgrades or rebuilds you should be much better equipped to handle getting unlucky bad parts. It would be pretty weird for all of those parts to have been bad. Maybe you got the delivery guy that likes to throw lcd's over the fence or something but hopefully if you stick with it you won't have as much bad luck. In my years of doing this its rare I have that much trouble but I do run into it now and then.

FlubbyDG said:

Also, thanks for the tip on the RAM, that's exactly the kind of advice I'm looking for and I will try this tonight.

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If you hadn't previously set your RAM speed, timings and voltage to their specifications, there is a strong likelihood that has been the culprit this entire time.

Side note - If the people that charged you $40 to click Windows Update didn't at least look to make sure that was done, I would never set foot in that place again. Ever.

Daleon said:

Its possible your shouldn't be building your own machines. Its not necessarily something for everyone. Those of us who have been building for years, decades even and have lots of spare parts and extra machines can make it seem pretty easy.

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Well excuse me Mr. Daleon did you drop out of your mothers womb with a PHD in computer engineering & a decade of experience? <kidding>

We all start somewhere I didn't know squat about building a pc either I researched just like the OP & am glad knock on wood so far other than the defective H100 & and recent OCZ 60Gb going bad my pc is smokin fast.... And thanks to those on the forum who have helped me & many others we all learn; its my new passion now.

Disclaimer: <No disrespect intended just being funny; have to address that since its the internet hence you cant see my expressions >

To the OP give it time things happen & keep researching that's why I got the Asus Sabertooth P67 came with 5-yr warranty I figured if someone will warranty something for that long there must be a quality product in play also a 5 yr cushion. Also IMHO I am not sure if 4GB is enough for the setup but someone correct me what do I know I went with 16GB so I don't have any issues. Is 4GB enough for Windows 7 & his rig? And most of the time I am using 30-42% of it but again thats just me.

Sometimes little things like a static shock to components can ruin a sensitive part, and you don't even know.

Core components that can cause several problems (roughly in order of most to least likely):
- Power supply
- Ram // HDD
- Motherboard
- Video card
- CPU

If a part is defective, it usually will exhibit the problem from the start, and changing other parts won't solve the problem. Its all about isolating which component is causing the issue. Sometimes it is a ground issue, like the motherboard might have a short by a screw that fell between it and the chassis, or the power supply might have a weak rail.

Start by isolating the parts one by one like mentionned above.. tell us what you get as a result.

Yes, the lack of other systems and components to test is really making it hard for me, and is ultimately the reason I took it in to somewhere. I can understand how accumulating other stuff can make it easier, and it might not be worth it to try and just build one system (I'm doubting I will do this again).

The RAM settings, when turned to auto, show the correct timing and frequency (1600 and 6-6-9-24 or something like that). If Auto is already setting it correctly, would it really make a difference to do this manually? I tried it, in any case, and didn't notice a difference.

I did, however, switch the graphics card to a much older Nvidia 9600 GT, and once the drivers were installed, the problem of games crashing the system stopped completely, so I'm pretty sure the GPU as bad.

My question from before still stands: If games crash the system, despite all Windows 7 & driver tweaking, and is solved by underclocking the GPU shaders, would there really be anything besides the GPU that causes this?

What is the exact model # of your RAM? Few (zero?) kits I've ever seen sold have 6-6-9-24 timings. I'm pretty darn sure that's causing crashes.

diaz said:

Sometimes little things like a static shock to components can ruin a sensitive part, and you don't even know.

Core components that can cause several problems (roughly in order of most to least likely):
- Power supply
- Ram // HDD
- Motherboard
- Video card
- CPU

If a part is defective, it usually will exhibit the problem from the start, and changing other parts won't solve the problem. Its all about isolating which component is causing the issue. Sometimes it is a ground issue, like the motherboard might have a short by a screw that fell between it and the chassis, or the power supply might have a weak rail.

Start by isolating the parts one by one like mentionned above.. tell us what you get as a result.

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Yup I tend to agree with you here, my first thought was ESD damage caused by him not grounding himself. Second thought would be to check for a defective power supply. Way too much flakiness here.

I had a system once that I had nothing but problems after problems, It turned out to be the wall socket. I was geting "dirty power" into 3 differnt surge protectors. I moved the comp that was constantly craching/locking up to the other side of the room and that fixed the issue.
I then built a HTPC put it into the that bad socket and that was crashing like mad, thats when I realized it was the socket.

Lots of things can cause issues, most people that build their own, have parts , they can swap to test etc. I have 3 600+w PSU all in good shape in my closet, back up if 1 goes out, testing etc.

It could be bad wall socket, bad grounding on mobo, volt rail not staying consistent from PSU, mem timing and a number of other stuff.

My first "Custom" computer was from a shop that I had them use each part I wanted and they put it together. That got me started, and after the 1year labor warranty was up i started messing with it.. I hope you get it figured out, I would def try putting a 500w battery back up surge protector on. Those usually fix any bad or inconsistent power coming from the wall socket.

My question from before still stands: If games crash the system, despite all Windows 7 & driver tweaking, and is solved by underclocking the GPU shaders, would there really be anything besides the GPU that causes this?

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it could be the card, it could be the PSU not having the rails amp needed to keep the card at stock. Have you replaced the PSU yet?

SPECOPSPC said:

Well excuse me Mr. Daleon did you drop out of your mothers womb with a PHD in computer engineering & a decade of experience? <kidding>

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Obviously. Guess you never saw Demon Seed

I would relax those timings. Try cas8 for now and see if it helps.
I would definitely consider grabbing another psu also.

I've got the "bad_pool_header" blue screen of death a couple times in the past. I was using a corsair 4gb ram kit 2 x 2gb... I swapped out the ram for some other ones I had and the problem went away. Try 1 ram stick at a time or a different set of ram and see if that stops the blue screens.

dont get uptight, my first build cost me a grand to build and then spent a year as the doorstop in my basement office till i built my second machine. getting this second machine up and running gave me the skills to revisit and repair the carnage i caused with the first build. and i still only know a little more than i did then.

FX4 said:

Yup I tend to agree with you here, my first thought was ESD damage caused by him not grounding himself. Second thought would be to check for a defective power supply. Way too much flakiness here.

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my thoughts exactly! the chances of all of those parts going bad, are so unlikely. So OP when you put the parts in did you get static shocked or static shocked any parts? if not test the psu if you have voltimeter or w/e and if not RMA if the company says theres something wrong see if theyll cover any expense you incurred from RMAing your other parts but dont tell them ahead of time the RMAing of parts or theyll just lie - how could you prove it otherwise?

Additional: Curious, did you per chance install a PCI-E 6+2 pin cable(but just the 6 pin portion in) into the ATX 8pin and or forced the entire PICE6+2 pin in it?

caddi daddi said:

dont get uptight, my first build cost me a grand to build and then spent a year as the doorstop in my basement office till i built my second machine. getting this second machine up and running gave me the skills to revisit and repair the carnage i caused with the first build. and i still only know a little more than i did then.

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yea My first build was horrid, I had cpu over heating issues, Mem issues, I killed a board with a static charge, Oh I think i ended up spending $1800 on that system total and it only used like $1200 worth of parts. Now when I get an error, it's like, ok cpu voltage, or mem timing, i can diagnose it so much faster now.

My first build I didn't put the motherboard on standoffs and couldn't figure out why nothing was happening or working when I pushed the power button

Fortunately, I put in the standoffs and everything still worked.