Ongoing PC (Hardware) issues - please help!

[aces]

Hi folks,

I've been having some on-going issues with my PC and would really appreciate some advice on where to go next. I've installed RAM, GFX card, sound card myself before but am a noob when it comes to the rest of it - like motherboards! Please read the below and if you can help me with any of the questions at the bottom, i'd be extremely grateful!


Bit of background information:

I've had this PC for 3 years. Last month it stopped working and the screen went all distorted and purple with blotches. Unusable. I assumed it was the GFX card and as I was due an upgrade anyway, ordered a new one. I replaced my 3 year old nVidia 768MB Geforce 8800GTX with a new ATI RAEDON 6850 1GB.

Of course things are never that simple and the problem remained, except now the PC wouldn't even boot up, just made a loud beeping noise. I had 4 1GB sticks of RAM at that time, so by removing/re-seating sticks I used trial and error to narrow the problem down to one of the actual slots that the RAM fits in to. Now I was down to 3 GB RAM, so I ordered some 2GB sticks, bringing me up to 6GB. It could be 8, but as mentioned one of the slots is buggered. I've no idea if that can be fixed!

Another thing is that the sound has never been great and I've always had problems with headsets/mics. Can't have speakers AND headset plugged in at once, have to swap them as needed, plus I haven't been able to get a mic to work in years. Bought a new sound card and 5.1 speaker system a while ago but they are crap too and infact in the last month the sound is worse than ever. I bought two new headsets, one fancy 'fatality' jobby that plugs into the ports on the sound card, which doesn't work. And then a USB one, thinking that would bypass the soundcard - it doesn't work either.

The performance of the PC isn't great at the moment, it grinds a fair bit and struggles on occasion. The Windows 7 test thing you can do under My Computer gives a mark over 7.0 for most things, but 5.8 for disk speed. I'm hoping an overdue re-format will freshen up the speed a bit, but I just want a PC that runs new games with decent FPS and that has working sound and voicecomms.


Moving on, these are my current specs:

Windows 7 64BIT
Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600 QUAD CORE
Processor Speed 10,640 MHz
6GB RAM
ATI RAEDON 6850 1GB

Motherboard Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Motherboard Model: P5N32-E SLI PLUS

CPU Family: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz Model 15, Stepping 11
CPU Speed: 2400 MHz
CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel

Available Memory Slots: 1
Total Memory Slots: 4
Dual Channel Support: N.A.

Creative SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme
Creative Inspire T6100 5.1 Speakers&Sub

The type of RAM I have is

2GB, 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-6400 memory module
CT25664AA800

* Module Size: 2GB
* Package: 240-pin DIMM
* Feature: DDR2 PC2-6400
* Specs: DDR2 PC2-6400 • CL=6 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR2-800 • 1.8V • 256Meg x 64 •

Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-6400, DDR2 PC2-8500, DDR2 PC2-5300 with a maximum of 2GB per slot.


Questions:

1. Is there a way to fix the broken RAM slot? Or will I need a new motherboard?
2. Is my current motherboard good enough for modern day gaming? I mean, is it good enough to handle my new gfx card, as I haven't been that impressed so far.
3. I'm thinking my solution to the never ending sound problems is to buy a good sound card, but I'm worried it wouldn't make a difference. Something seems really screwed up somewhere and I'm wondering if it has something to do with my motherboard, or onboard sound interfering in some way, or something like that? Any ideas?
4. Is my CPU good enough?
5. Would you recommend I abandon this PC, take out the gfx card and RAM, buy new components and try and build a PC myself (i'm a noob when it comes to this). Or do you reckon I could upgrade this one easy enough?

Really appreciate any help or advice!

Thanks
Aces

 

[trents]

You didn't tell us anything about the PSU. Make? Model? Wattage?

 

[aces]

Sorry. The PSU is ATRIX. Model 650T. 650 W.

 

[EarthDog]

1. How do you know you have a broken ram slot? Ram normally wouldnt show artifacting like that.
2. Your motherbaord is a bit older, yes, but it should still handle GPU's just fine.
3. Try disabling your onbaord sound and see if the problems persist.
4. CPU is dated, but just fine. May want to overclock it.
5. I would get a new system.

Here is the thing:

A. Your PSU, I have never heard of and that makes me nervous thats its junk. Never buy a cheaply made PSU (see link in sig, but I suggest Corsair PSU)
B. The way you are situating your ram is not optimal. That board is dual core. So you should either have 2 or 4 sticks of memory, not 3.
C. As far as the windows score (WEI) its useless. Disregard.
D. I cant have speakers and heaphones plugged in at the same time either. This is normal AFAIK...

What I would do is this: Only use the 2x2GB sticks you have. Reformat your PC and start from the top. In the meantime, I would also buy a better PSU.

 

[aces]

1. How do you know you have a broken ram slot? Ram normally wouldnt show artifacting like that.
2. Your motherbaord is a bit older, yes, but it should still handle GPU's just fine.
3. Try disabling your onbaord sound and see if the problems persist.
4. CPU is dated, but just fine. May want to overclock it.
5. I would get a new system.

Here is the thing:

A. Your PSU, I have never heard of and that makes me nervous thats its junk. Never buy a cheaply made PSU (see link in sig, but I suggest Corsair PSU)
B. The way you are situating your ram is not optimal. That board is dual core. So you should either have 2 or 4 sticks of memory, not 3.
C. As far as the windows score (WEI) its useless. Disregard.
D. I cant have speakers and heaphones plugged in at the same time either. This is normal AFAIK...

What I would do is this: Only use the 2x2GB sticks you have. Reformat your PC and start from the top. In the meantime, I would also buy a better PSU.

Thanks for your reply Earthdog.

1. The PC won't boot up if I have RAM in that slot. I've tried both 1GB and 2GB sticks, and it just makes a beeping noise.
3. Mind telling me how I do that?
5. That's kinda a last resort. Although it's something i'm considering, keeping the GPU, RAM and monitor.

A. You're probably right. I bought the PC (new) off an Ebay shop over 3 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if they used a junk PSU unfortunately. Is that easy enough to replace, and does it affect the performance of the PC in a big way? I'd be open to ordering a new one tonight, even.

D. Yeah I could put up with that, but it's the fact that I play online games and my mic never works, and I've tried loads of headsets! Up until a week ago the headphones at least worked, now they don't. The sound quality is terrible too, something just doesn't seem right with the whole thing.

Cheers!

 

[EarthDog]

When you have ram in that slot, do you have the other 3 populated? Meaning have you tried it with all 4?

There should be an option in your bios to disable the onboard sound (may say AC97 or something of the like).

It wont cause performance issues really, generally it works or it doesnt.

SOunds like the onbaord sound is going bad I guess... But question, you mention Xfi extreme gamer but are talking about onbaord? Can you clarify?

 

[aces]

I have the Creative SoundBlaster X-FI Xtreme as my sound card. I was mentioning the onboard sound because I fear it is interfering with it or something and just wanted to know if I could turn it off. That way i'll know if my soundcard is borked.

If I look under Control Panel > Hardware and Sound, the only options I have are Adjust System Volume, Change System Sounds and Manage Audio Devices. Manage Audio Devices gives me only these options:



Just doesn't seem right to me... Also, even when I have the speakers out and the headphones in, they still say "not plugged in." And the speakers are loud enough at 3-5%. Any louder it's uncomfortable. I'd hate to hear what it would sound like at even 50%...!

With regards the RAM, yeah I've tried it with all 4. Will try it again here shortly, but it just beeps.

 

[aces]

OK, so I downloaded what I thought were the drivers for my card (PCI Express X-Fi Xtreme Audio).

"Setup is unable to detect a supported product on your system." (Despite the fact I currently have the speakers on listening to music...).

I removed the card and the model number is SB0770. I can't find that model number here http://support.creative.com/kb/showarticle.aspx?sid=61105 so I'm now thinking the damn thing isn't even supported on Windows 7. :

 

[EarthDog]

X-Fi Xtreme Audio? Try this one: http://support.creative.com/Product...SET=prodfaq:PRODFAQ_16770,VARSET=CategoryID:1 You need to disable your onboard audio from your BIOS, not the control panel. Are you sure you have everything plugged in to the Xfi card and not the onboard? Properly?

Just go back to 2x2GB for ram, sell the other sticks.

EDIT: Looking at your control panel screenshot above, it appears you have the onboard enabled as on mine I believe it says XFi on it...

 

[aces]

X-Fi Xtreme Audio? Try this one: http://support.creative.com/Product...SET=prodfaq:PRODFAQ_16770,VARSET=CategoryID:1 You need to disable your onboard audio from your BIOS, not the control panel. Are you sure you have everything plugged in to the Xfi card and not the onboard? Properly?

Just go back to 2x2GB for ram, sell the other sticks.

EDIT: Looking at your control panel screenshot above, it appears you have the onboard enabled as on mine I believe it says XFi on it...

Thanks, I'll take your advice about the RAM.

Yeah that's the driver I tried. Says it can't detect a supported product on your system.



And yeah, the 3 leads from my speakers/sub are all plugged into the ports on the back of my Xfi card.

 

[EarthDog]

What does your device manager say?

Also, please disable onboard sound then try that install again.

 

[aces]

Device manager:



Dunno what the ATI thing is.. :O

I went into BIOS > Advanced > Onboard Device Configuration > Serial ATA COnfiguration > HD Audio and changed it from 'Auto' to 'Disabled'. It hasn't made a difference though. I tried installing the driver and got the same error as above. And device manager looks the same for sound.

 

[EarthDog]

Try reseating your Xfi sound card. Its not recognizing it in the bios it seems...The ATI HD Audio device is from your GPU. It has audio pass through I would imagine.

 

[trents]

Thanks, I'll take your advice about the RAM.

Yeah that's the driver I tried. Says it can't detect a supported product on your system.



And yeah, the 3 leads from my speakers/sub are all plugged into the ports on the back of my Xfi card.

I ran into this problem with a system I built for a friend recently. The SB driver would not recognize the Audigy 2 card I put in the system unless the Windows certified driver was left in place. I kept removing it because it only had drivers for the output but not the mic ports. I found that if I left the MS Windows certified driver in place and installed the SB driver over top of it everything was just fine. At the same time I also isntalled Win7 SP 1. Not sure if SP1 was required but it all seemed to work after I did those two things.

 

[aces]

Sorry for the really late reply. Tried re-seating, makes no difference. Maybe I need a new card. I just wanted to thank you guys for your replies.

Cheers.