- Joined
- Oct 16, 2006
So I have been upgrading 5 machines at once... Well the process has had a number of problems and some interesting finds...
I have been having issues with My media Center. Its NOW running a P5B with a X6800 processor (upgraded from a e6400 which had Bluray skipping issues).
When I upgraded I ran HWMonitor and noticed the CPU was running hot. I only ran HWMonitor to check if the CPU heat sink was fine. Well it was running 50c on idle and near 70 under prime. Im not overclocking and this is a HTPC case so I wasn't panicking or in a rush.
But what started to get my attention was that it crashed nightly. This caused some confussion. First was a release of a .NET 4.0 Security update that would lock up the machine. Turns out shutting down MyMovies and other system tray items fixed that. So I though all was fine.
Then on Monday Night I found it crashed AGAIN... I started to look a bit closer and saw HWMonitor reporting a 14v on the 12 volts. Lets just say my heart was beating and my feat was rushing to turn off the machine.
I took it too My Father (who is an electrical engineer) and plugged first into a PSU tester then when we got no errors we plugged it back into the motherboard and monitored the settings under into a digital scope that is well allot more then what we needed. We even tested another PSU!
No increase in the 12v... The problem was either a failure on the Mobo or a Failure of HWMonitor. Problem is, this was a Asus Mobo and PCProbe was not on their Download page. I searched this earlier and only found forums that suggested running triing to run the vista version in compatibility mode. I decided to download PC Probe from another site and it worked! The voltage was reported as 12.1 (which is rather exceptional).
I also found that 1 Gig was beign reserved by the Bios for god knows what! So instead of 4 gigs I only had 3 available to windows (and no this MoBo has no built in video).
Whats more I found that while Asus was not updating their software, BUT they where updating their bios. I work hard on keeping everything upto date, but with a 7th machine on its way, it gets tough! So I updated the BIOS and the X6800 vcore dropped by .1 volts and the temps dropped 5c.
But I wasn't done there. When I removed my water cooling I installed a stock intell cooler. The Water Cooling was nice, but it made the box extremely cramped and hard to work in. It just was not necessary.
I checked the Intel cooler and felt it was a bit too wobble. We have a half dozen 775 Intel Coolers so I attempted to use another one and had a 44c idle temp.
Lesson - Check for Bios Updates (even when your dont think you need too), and don't always believe HWMonitor!
I don't know WHY a e6400 and X6800 (which are both first gen Core 2 Duo's) would produce different results with different BIOS's, but hey! Im not a rookie in building computers. I have over 7 machines and am my friends local repair shop with over 20 years of building X86 machines. I might not know everything about everything, but I do feel that I know more then most (well more then the average person), and I feel I have about average knowledge of My peers on OCForums support staff.
I have been having issues with My media Center. Its NOW running a P5B with a X6800 processor (upgraded from a e6400 which had Bluray skipping issues).
When I upgraded I ran HWMonitor and noticed the CPU was running hot. I only ran HWMonitor to check if the CPU heat sink was fine. Well it was running 50c on idle and near 70 under prime. Im not overclocking and this is a HTPC case so I wasn't panicking or in a rush.
But what started to get my attention was that it crashed nightly. This caused some confussion. First was a release of a .NET 4.0 Security update that would lock up the machine. Turns out shutting down MyMovies and other system tray items fixed that. So I though all was fine.
Then on Monday Night I found it crashed AGAIN... I started to look a bit closer and saw HWMonitor reporting a 14v on the 12 volts. Lets just say my heart was beating and my feat was rushing to turn off the machine.
I took it too My Father (who is an electrical engineer) and plugged first into a PSU tester then when we got no errors we plugged it back into the motherboard and monitored the settings under into a digital scope that is well allot more then what we needed. We even tested another PSU!
No increase in the 12v... The problem was either a failure on the Mobo or a Failure of HWMonitor. Problem is, this was a Asus Mobo and PCProbe was not on their Download page. I searched this earlier and only found forums that suggested running triing to run the vista version in compatibility mode. I decided to download PC Probe from another site and it worked! The voltage was reported as 12.1 (which is rather exceptional).
I also found that 1 Gig was beign reserved by the Bios for god knows what! So instead of 4 gigs I only had 3 available to windows (and no this MoBo has no built in video).
Whats more I found that while Asus was not updating their software, BUT they where updating their bios. I work hard on keeping everything upto date, but with a 7th machine on its way, it gets tough! So I updated the BIOS and the X6800 vcore dropped by .1 volts and the temps dropped 5c.
But I wasn't done there. When I removed my water cooling I installed a stock intell cooler. The Water Cooling was nice, but it made the box extremely cramped and hard to work in. It just was not necessary.
I checked the Intel cooler and felt it was a bit too wobble. We have a half dozen 775 Intel Coolers so I attempted to use another one and had a 44c idle temp.
Lesson - Check for Bios Updates (even when your dont think you need too), and don't always believe HWMonitor!
I don't know WHY a e6400 and X6800 (which are both first gen Core 2 Duo's) would produce different results with different BIOS's, but hey! Im not a rookie in building computers. I have over 7 machines and am my friends local repair shop with over 20 years of building X86 machines. I might not know everything about everything, but I do feel that I know more then most (well more then the average person), and I feel I have about average knowledge of My peers on OCForums support staff.
. Just came off a bit...bloggish. LOL!
