major issues with whole system, need advice

[CURTO]

hey guys so over the last month and its picked up a bit this week, my computer has been ****ting its self. first of all ive had enough of ati as their software and drivers make getting eyefinity/crossfire to work properly a major pain for me. i realise nvidia also has their own issues but tbh i just think nvidia have got their **** more organised than amd. next is my cpu/mobo/ram seem to be dying. my cpu used to be stable at 4ghz, then 3.8, then 3.6 and now its not stable at any overclock so im currently all stock settings. i also have a gut feeling my mobo is dying.

the whole system is roughly 2 years old now and ive been waiting and waiting for ivy bridge after reading about it a year ago. im pretty experienced with dealing with problems like this by either coming to you guys or figuring it out my self, but honestly i just dont think theres a root cause for all these problems im having. the gpus seem to be stuffing up and im not sure if thats because of a mix of software and hardware or just hardware alone. theyre only gpu WCed so the rest of the card is exposed, however ive got a pretty ****ing good airflow system in my case so i doubt theyd be overheating, but i may be wrong. this is why i also dont think anything on the mobo would be overheating either.

my drives seem fine, theyre less than a year old and SMART hasnt said anything about them being wrong and neither has intel storage matrix or whatever the **** u call it. sound card is like 3 years old and stick banging, seems to be ok at least. i havent been experiencing any unusual behaviour with it anyways. my psu gets pretty hot in one section of the back of it and the fan never changes speed. ive had a problem with one of these psu's before and had to get an rma on it. i only have it because its dirt cheap since its only meant for my case. i have no idea how much wattage my comp uses and i dont know how efficient my psu is anymore. i plan to get a wattage wall plug reader to check this, but yeah it may also be possible the psu is dying.

tl;dr im having a lot of problems with my computer and there could be various problems with all the parts

i dont really know what to do. if i do anything its gonna cost money, a lot.. i have a feeling if i wait for ivy bridge and even the gtx 600s/700s/whatever theyre gonna psycho expensive. provided my 5870s worked nicely in crossfire i dont think id need to upgrade at all, but they just dont co operate. they also struggle with **** in eyefinity because i dont think 2gb is enough for 5760x1200. i have no idea how i managed this when i only had one 5870. do you guys think i should just go with sandy bridge or wait for ivy? also any thoughts/advice on anything else ive said would be heaps heaps appreciated cause im really feeling down about my setup atm.

thanks guys

 

[Diggrr]

Random problems usually come back to the power supply, especially if it's a dodgey one to begin with.
I'd unplug it from the motherboard and harddrives, start it using the jumper trick, and test the 12v (yellow to black) 5v (red to black) and 3.3v (orange to black) using a multimeter. I don't trust software to report correct voltages.

 

[CURTO]

Random problems usually come back to the power supply, especially if it's a dodgey one to begin with.
I'd unplug it from the motherboard and harddrives, start it using the jumper trick, and test the 12v (yellow to black) 5v (red to black) and 3.3v (orange to black) using a multimeter. I don't trust software to report correct voltages.

this all on the big mobo cable yeah?

 

[Diggrr]

Yes. You have access to all those colors on the one main connector. SATA cables have all 4, but can be hard to probe the connector to get a reading.
The green wire should be jumpered to any black wire to start the power supply. I usually turn off the back switch, place the jumper, then use the switch to turn it off and on.
Just a simple piece of wire is all that's needed for a jumper. Paper clips work good.

 

[CURTO]

Yes. You have access to all those colors on the one main connector. SATA cables have all 4, but can be hard to probe the connector to get a reading.
The green wire should be jumpered to a black wire to start the power supply. I usually turn off the back switch, place the jumper, then use the switch to turn it off and on.

you reckon i could use the multimeter to jump it or is time to get a paper clip out?

 

[Diggrr]

get a paper clip. You'll need the meter doing the readings while the jumper (clip) is in place on the green/black, because that's the only way to turn on the power supply without the motherboard.

 

[CURTO]

get a paper clip. You'll need the meter doing the readings while the jumper (clip) is in place on the green/black, because that's the only way to turn on the power supply without the motherboard.

*facepalm* just realised i totally didnt even read your 2nd post properly about the paper clip lol, my bad. ok here i go, ill let you know what readings i get

 

[CURTO]

ok yellow to black is 12.16v
red to black is 5.12v
orange to black is 3.376
hmmm that last one is 0.46 off which is heaps higher than the other two. would that be a problem?

 

[Diggrr]

Nope, that actually sounds pretty healthy.

Since you think the cooling in your case is good, have you run memtest86 to make sure your ram is good?
That's what I'd do next.

One more thing, make sure your card edge contacts (memory and graphics cards) are nice and clean. You can use a pencil eraser to clean them. You live pretty close to the ocean...

 

[CURTO]

Nope, that actually sounds pretty healthy.

Since you think the cooling in your case is good, have you run memtest86 to make sure your ram is good?
That's what I'd do next.

thats a good idea, i will do. is there a particular number of runs i should do or is one fine?

 

[Diggrr]

No, bad ram usually shows up in the first few minutes.

 

[Diggrr]

...maybe two cycles just to be sure.

 

[Diggrr]

Well I've gotta get some sleep bud, It's 4:30 in the morning here and the coffee's not doing it's job anymore.
Hope you find the problem!

 

[CURTO]

Well I've gotta get some sleep bud, It's 4:30 in the morning here and the coffee's not doing it's job anymore.
Hope you find the problem!

no worries dude, just starting the 3rd run now since the 2nd run gave me a nasty screen full of red errors haha. ill put a pic up when its done, thanks for the help so far

EDIT: ok i got 8 errors during the 2nd run and 2 more errors during the 3rd run. not sure what they mean specifically but im sure it means bad news. also, im guessing the next step is to test each ram stick individually to see which ones are stuffed and then the next step would be replacing them, correct?

 

[Diggrr]

Intermittent errors suck the worst. It could be a ram chip going bad, dirty edge contact (living seaside as you do), or I've had one that needed a little bump in voltage to continue life.

Clean the edges of all your ram with a pencil eraser (clean off the swarf with a clean towel) and try 3 passes.
If it errors, try bumping your voltage a tad bit (like 1.5 to 1.55) and try 3 more.
After that, I'd say try each stick to sort the bad one.
If it remains with random failures, then I'd start to blame the motherboard or CPU (controller). Trying the same test in a mate's system would be an option too to help narrow it down.

Hope you get it figured out!

 

[FX4]

Diggrr is giving you good advice. My attention would be exactly where he is looking. Memory and Power. One thing to keep in mind is while voltage could be good you could have dirty DC power being pumped into the board which will cause all kinds of strange issues. You need an O'scope to see that. It's far cheaper to just go buy a new power supply. Bad MB voltage regulators can also cause all kinds of weird problems too.

 

[CURTO]

i know you got me to check the voltages manually but should the software pick up such different values? speedfan also reads these voltages. they seem kinda low



also yes, i will work on the ram and hopefully it will end up working fine. if not, new ram it is (its dirt cheap these days so i really dont mind).

should i do a prime95 test overnight to see if my cpu is truly stable at stock clocks? id imagine it is, but im willing to try anything. also, is there any other way of testing gpus besides a stress tester?

 

[Neuromancer]

Ugh dodgy RAM that sucks. Great advice in this thread overall

As to teh software reading of voltages that is due to them being software registers, however it can also be due to load.

Testing a PSU for supplied voltages is fine in the method mentioned above but testing when the system is under load may tell another story completely. Test on 4pin peripheral cable for 12v and 5v while system is running. I will bet that they read lower than they did when you just had the psu running with no load

 

[Diggrr]

You can use 3D Mark to benchmark the cards, not exactly a stress test, but it's not easy on them.

As for the voltages, while the computer is running, you can test one of the drive connectors for 12 and 5 volts to make sure the power supply isn't dropping voltage when it's more loaded.
Your board doesn't have test points that make it easy...but I really don't trust software beyond a temperature guesstimate or fan speeds.

**HA! he beat me to it!

 

[CURTO]

You can use 3D Mark to benchmark the cards, not exactly a stress test, but it's not easy on them.

As for the voltages, while the computer is running, you can test one of the drive connectors for 12 and 5 volts to make sure the power supply isn't dropping voltage when it's more loaded.
Your board doesn't have test points that make it easy...but I really don't trust software beyond a temperature guesstimate or fan speeds.

**HA! he beat me to it!

ok well heres my updated plan guys, atm ive set all the bios **** to what i believe is adequate and ive dropped the ram to 1500mhz and raised the voltage to 1.54. im gonna do a massive prime test which should (i think) also let me know if the ram is unstable as well. so if they both check out ill run memtest again with the current settings i have. if that goes well then i will try 3dmark on the cards a couple times and see what happens. if the ram fails again ill do memtest one module at a time and see if one of them is bugged and then invest in new ram. like you said its gonna be hard to test the psu while **** is running so for the mean time im gonna assume its working ok. what do you guys think?