Dream PC is a real nightmare... Help Required!

[johns]

Also, I just noticed that your video card is an ASUS.
I now REALLY think you have ASUS restockers
that some kid fried and sent back. I've been in this
situation myself ( once ), and fought the RMA wars
and threatening letters, and I will NEVER do
business with the following companies again:
ASUS ( or any of their fly-by-nights )
XFS ( I think nearly 50% of their product is restock )
LG or NEC ( cheap noisy crap )
MAXTOR ( cheap early failure due to heat )
SEAGATE ( screaming noisy )
WD Caviar ( very short life )

I have nearly 100% success building systems
using products from the following:
GIGABYTE
HITACHI
SONY
ANTEC
BFG, eVGA,

johns

 

[Andrew Bailey]

Some more results from my testing...

(side panel removed, one hdd, XPHome at idle doing nothing)

GFX Card 1: 62degrees with auto fan control, 52degrees with 100% fan
GFX Card 1: Personal best 1min 26secs into 3DMark06 test 2 from cold before
freeze
GFX Card 1: Personal best 3min approx single player BF2142 before freeze
GFX Card 1: Personal best Able to fly until activation times out but
dissapointing fps in FSX

Now comes the interesting bit, I HAVE NOW SWAPPED THE GFX CARDS so I'm now
testing with the other 8800 (this IS going to be an SLI rig... one day)

GFX Card 2: 54degrees with auto fan control, 46degrees with 100% fan
GFX Card 2: Personal best Screen blanked followed by BSOD when entering test
1
GFX Card 2: Personal best Screen blanked followed by BSOD when spawning
GFX Card 2: Personal best Froze on front end option window (due to 3D
aircraft preview) in FSX

Damn... when I saw that this card was running 10degrees cooler I thought
that the fault would lie with a defective GFX Card 1 but it would seem my
hopes where premature as GFX Card 2 crashes as soon as any 3D rendering
routines are called.

I tried uninstalling RivaTuner, NTune and the NVidia display divers and
reinstalled the 97.92 drivers but to no avail.

I will swap the cards back to make sure that GFX Card 1 still works. Am I
right in thinking that a fresh install of XPHome may get GFX Card 2 working
as Windows identifies each component (possibly through some hardware serial
number?) during install?

Thanks for your help

Andy (a bit worried)

 

[Mike T.]

Some more results from my testing...

(side panel removed, one hdd, XPHome at idle doing nothing)

GFX Card 1: 62degrees with auto fan control, 52degrees with 100% fan
GFX Card 1: Personal best 1min 26secs into 3DMark06 test 2 from cold
before freeze
GFX Card 1: Personal best 3min approx single player BF2142 before freeze
GFX Card 1: Personal best Able to fly until activation times out but
dissapointing fps in FSX

Now comes the interesting bit, I HAVE NOW SWAPPED THE GFX CARDS so I'm now
testing with the other 8800 (this IS going to be an SLI rig... one day)

GFX Card 2: 54degrees with auto fan control, 46degrees with 100% fan
GFX Card 2: Personal best Screen blanked followed by BSOD when entering
test 1
GFX Card 2: Personal best Screen blanked followed by BSOD when spawning
GFX Card 2: Personal best Froze on front end option window (due to 3D
aircraft preview) in FSX

Damn... when I saw that this card was running 10degrees cooler I thought
that the fault would lie with a defective GFX Card 1 but it would seem my
hopes where premature as GFX Card 2 crashes as soon as any 3D rendering
routines are called.

I tried uninstalling RivaTuner, NTune and the NVidia display divers and
reinstalled the 97.92 drivers but to no avail.

I will swap the cards back to make sure that GFX Card 1 still works. Am I
right in thinking that a fresh install of XPHome may get GFX Card 2
working as Windows identifies each component (possibly through some
hardware serial number?) during install?

Thanks for your help

Andy (a bit worried)

You should be a bit worried. You have a hardware problem. It is a bad PSU,
a bad mainboard, or TWO bad video cards. It could be a combination of any
or all of the above, also. As your symptom changed by swapping identical
model video cards (tested one at a time), I'm leaning toward bad video card
AND bad (motherboard, power supply, or both). -Dave

 

[Andrew Bailey]

Some more results from my testing...

(side panel removed, one hdd, XPHome at idle doing nothing)

GFX Card 1: 62degrees with auto fan control, 52degrees with 100% fan
GFX Card 1: Personal best 1min 26secs into 3DMark06 test 2 from cold
before freeze
GFX Card 1: Personal best 3min approx single player BF2142 before freeze
GFX Card 1: Personal best Able to fly until activation times out but
dissapointing fps in FSX

Now comes the interesting bit, I HAVE NOW SWAPPED THE GFX CARDS so I'm now
testing with the other 8800 (this IS going to be an SLI rig... one day)

GFX Card 2: 54degrees with auto fan control, 46degrees with 100% fan
GFX Card 2: Personal best Screen blanked followed by BSOD when entering
test 1
GFX Card 2: Personal best Screen blanked followed by BSOD when spawning
GFX Card 2: Personal best Froze on front end option window (due to 3D
aircraft preview) in FSX

Damn... when I saw that this card was running 10degrees cooler I thought
that the fault would lie with a defective GFX Card 1 but it would seem my
hopes where premature as GFX Card 2 crashes as soon as any 3D rendering
routines are called.

I tried uninstalling RivaTuner, NTune and the NVidia display divers and
reinstalled the 97.92 drivers but to no avail.

I will swap the cards back to make sure that GFX Card 1 still works. Am I
right in thinking that a fresh install of XPHome may get GFX Card 2
working as Windows identifies each component (possibly through some
hardware serial number?) during install?

Thanks for your help

Andy (a bit worried)

Edit/Update: Just put GFX Card 1 back and it all works as before so now the
big question is... is it worth a fresh install of windows with GFX Card 2
installed to see if that resolves this additional issue (side quest... lol)?

 

[Chris Hill]

Edit/Update: Just put GFX Card 1 back and it all works as before so now the
big question is... is it worth a fresh install of windows with GFX Card 2
installed to see if that resolves this additional issue (side quest... lol)?

Nope. Sounds like time to throw more money at the problem. You have
something bad, and since you're the builder, you will have to pony up
for parts to test with.

 

[Mike T.]

Nope. Sounds like time to throw more money at the problem. You have
something bad, and since you're the builder, you will have to pony up
for parts to test with.

I think I've told him that a couple times already. But I'll clarify, based
on his recent posts. Both video cards APPEAR to be bad. However, you
probably have a HARDWARE problem (besides a video card) that is causing one
of them to appear bad. As video card 1 is working a little better (but
still ****ed up), the logical next step would be to buy a really
high-quality name-brand power supply to replace your current power supply
and test again with GFX Card 1.

I think, eventually, you will find that video card 2 is bad, video card 1 is
POSSIBLY bad, and either your motherboard or power supply or BOTH are also
bad.

At this point, I'm optimistic in stating that I hope you are dealing with
just a bad power supply and JUST 1 bad video card. Forget about
software/drivers. You have a hardware problem, so you need to concentrate
on solving your hardware problem(s) before you start dinking around with
bios/drivers/software again.

I'd strongly recommend you buy a Seasonic brand power supply, one of the
energy plus series, as your next step in trying to work these issues
ut. -Dave

 

[Andrew Bailey]

I think I've told him that a couple times already. But I'll clarify,
based on his recent posts. Both video cards APPEAR to be bad. However,
you probably have a HARDWARE problem (besides a video card) that is
causing one of them to appear bad. As video card 1 is working a little
better (but still ****ed up), the logical next step would be to buy a
really high-quality name-brand power supply to replace your current power
supply and test again with GFX Card 1.

I think, eventually, you will find that video card 2 is bad, video card 1
is POSSIBLY bad, and either your motherboard or power supply or BOTH are
also bad.

At this point, I'm optimistic in stating that I hope you are dealing with
just a bad power supply and JUST 1 bad video card. Forget about
software/drivers. You have a hardware problem, so you need to concentrate
on solving your hardware problem(s) before you start dinking around with
bios/drivers/software again.

I'd strongly recommend you buy a Seasonic brand power supply, one of the
energy plus series, as your next step in trying to work these issues
t. -Dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your input, I suspect you may be right (esp bad card 2) but I
need to be 100% sure that a part is defective before I RMA it/them... I
don't want to cry wolf.

Obviously (and I totally agree with you) the best way to determine if a part
is defective would be to replace it with another but could be costly. I
surprised that you don't have confidence in the Coolermaster PSU, it's rated
at 850W, is SLI certified, has 4 PCIE power cables and cost £140... I'm very
reluctant to spend a similar amount just to test the PSU theory.

I'll carry on testing for now (the gfx cards have a 28 day DOA and 3 years
RTB warranty) as I don't want to jump the gun and act prematurely.

Thanks for all your help and I'll post back here if I make any progress.

Cheers

Andy

 

[Mike T.]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your input, I suspect you may be right (esp bad card 2) but I
need to be 100% sure that a part is defective before I RMA it/them... I
don't want to cry wolf.

Obviously (and I totally agree with you) the best way to determine if a
part is defective would be to replace it with another but could be costly.
I surprised that you don't have confidence in the Coolermaster PSU, it's
rated at 850W, is SLI certified, has 4 PCIE power cables and cost £140...
I'm very reluctant to spend a similar amount just to test the PSU theory.

(snip)

I've seen mixed expert opinions on cooler master PSUs ranging from (can't
buy better at any price) to (avoid at all costs). But whether the experts
are right or not (and which experts you choose to believe), ALL PSU
manufacturers put out duds now and then. Given your symptoms, if it was my
system displaying the same symptoms, my FIRST step would be to replace the
power supply. This would be a bit easier for me, as I always have a spare
power supply on hand to test with, but . . .

You do NOT need a ultra-expensive power supply to run your system, and you
do NOT need a ultra-expensive power supply to test your system with.
Something in the range of 500W by fortron, seasonic or enermax (and there
are many other good brands also) will do just fine, and any of those should
cost less than half of what you spent on the cooler master unit.

I don't think it would be premature at all to return GFX card number 2.
BSOD when that card is installed (but not the other one) clearly points to
that card being defective, probably a video RAM problem on the video card.

Unfortunately, that's not your only hardware problem. If the system won't
run stable with the non-BSOD video card installed, then you are looking at
RAM, mainboard or PSU. Most likely suspects, in order:
1) Power supply (95%)
2) Mainboard (3%)
3) RAM (2%)
But I thought I'd read that the RAM was thoroughly tested. So that ups the
power supply to 97% status. IMHO

It's not that I don't have confidence in cooler master. It's that I don't
have confidence in the power supply of ANY system that is displaying your
symptoms. (and I DO NOT CARE who manufactured the power supply!!!) I've
seen thousands of systems with similar symptoms and darned near all of them
boiled down to bad PSUs. The very few that didn't, were bad mainboards or
bad RAM. -Dave

 

[Andrew Bailey]

(snip)

I've seen mixed expert opinions on cooler master PSUs ranging from (can't
buy better at any price) to (avoid at all costs). But whether the experts
are right or not (and which experts you choose to believe), ALL PSU
manufacturers put out duds now and then. Given your symptoms, if it was
my system displaying the same symptoms, my FIRST step would be to replace
the power supply. This would be a bit easier for me, as I always have a
spare power supply on hand to test with, but . . .

You do NOT need a ultra-expensive power supply to run your system, and you
do NOT need a ultra-expensive power supply to test your system with.
Something in the range of 500W by fortron, seasonic or enermax (and there
are many other good brands also) will do just fine, and any of those
should cost less than half of what you spent on the cooler master unit.

I don't think it would be premature at all to return GFX card number 2.
BSOD when that card is installed (but not the other one) clearly points to
that card being defective, probably a video RAM problem on the video card.

Unfortunately, that's not your only hardware problem. If the system won't
run stable with the non-BSOD video card installed, then you are looking at
RAM, mainboard or PSU. Most likely suspects, in order:
1) Power supply (95%)
2) Mainboard (3%)
3) RAM (2%)
But I thought I'd read that the RAM was thoroughly tested. So that ups
the power supply to 97% status. IMHO

It's not that I don't have confidence in cooler master. It's that I don't
have confidence in the power supply of ANY system that is displaying your
symptoms. (and I DO NOT CARE who manufactured the power supply!!!) I've
seen thousands of systems with similar symptoms and darned near all of
them boiled down to bad PSUs. The very few that didn't, were bad
mainboards or bad RAM. -Dave

UPDATE...

I think my suspicions may be right, using RivaTuner to underclock the 8800
back to reference frequencies I have for the first time completed the
3Dmark06 benchmark with a reasonable score of 9861.

Flight Sim X seems stable but still slow however, BF2142 now crashes but I
think that may be due to the new patch and me forcing it to run in my native
screen res.

I'll do some more testing but so far this is a real breakthrough, once I'm
sure it's stable I'll re-test the other card under the same configuration.

I'll keep ya posted

Andy

 

[Andrew Bailey]

(snip)

I've seen mixed expert opinions on cooler master PSUs ranging from (can't
buy better at any price) to (avoid at all costs). But whether the experts
are right or not (and which experts you choose to believe), ALL PSU
manufacturers put out duds now and then. Given your symptoms, if it was
my system displaying the same symptoms, my FIRST step would be to replace
the power supply. This would be a bit easier for me, as I always have a
spare power supply on hand to test with, but . . .

You do NOT need a ultra-expensive power supply to run your system, and you
do NOT need a ultra-expensive power supply to test your system with.
Something in the range of 500W by fortron, seasonic or enermax (and there
are many other good brands also) will do just fine, and any of those
should cost less than half of what you spent on the cooler master unit.

I don't think it would be premature at all to return GFX card number 2.
BSOD when that card is installed (but not the other one) clearly points to
that card being defective, probably a video RAM problem on the video card.

Unfortunately, that's not your only hardware problem. If the system won't
run stable with the non-BSOD video card installed, then you are looking at
RAM, mainboard or PSU. Most likely suspects, in order:
1) Power supply (95%)
2) Mainboard (3%)
3) RAM (2%)
But I thought I'd read that the RAM was thoroughly tested. So that ups
the power supply to 97% status. IMHO

It's not that I don't have confidence in cooler master. It's that I don't
have confidence in the power supply of ANY system that is displaying your
symptoms. (and I DO NOT CARE who manufactured the power supply!!!) I've
seen thousands of systems with similar symptoms and darned near all of
them boiled down to bad PSUs. The very few that didn't, were bad
mainboards or bad RAM. -Dave

Sorry about the post order, I was cut&pasting from the forum I'm running the
same thread on...

http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?showtopic=1824




Hi Guys,

Just to clarify, I don't think this issue has anything to do with the CPU
overheating. I reseated the Zalman Aero Flower cooler using Akasa 450 Silver
based thermal paste (Its fan exhausts to the the rear of the case and
directly into the rear 120 fan), the side panel is removed and I've just
installed a top 80mm case blower fan which blows in front of the Aero
Flower. At idle the CPU is 33 degrees C.

My latest thoughts are that the issue is a combination of GPU heat and beta
drivers...

In the past when I have overclocked the FX5950Ultra in this rig I have
encountered similar BSOD and crashes which occur when the GPU gives up, the
thing is that these crashes are affected by the temp of the GPU which
increases when you increase the clock and mem frequencies and this might be
what's happening here...

Symptoms all point to some sort of overheating of the GPU but investigation
of temps seem within limits.

I believe that it is a driver issue. Out of curiosity I checked the
frequencies of a reference card from NVidia here and it would seem the
defaults are 575/900 and my Asus 8800GTX 768 is running at 650/1045.

When I tried to click the "Custom clock frequencies" radio button to enable
the sliders (in the NTune performance part of the NVidia control panel) it
indicated a positive selection but did not extinguish the default radio
button or enable the sliders (think buggy driver). Thinking that the "Find
Optimal" button may reduce the frequencies I clicked it and saw the usual
progress bar for a second before the screen went white and the pc froze.

I had a look in RivaTuner but couldn't find any overrides for the GPU
frequencies, anyone know of a prog that will?

As I said above, I've seen these types of BSOD before whilst overclocking my
FX5950Ultra and they too have the appearance of a heat failure but because
you are aware of what you have done you throttle back to resolve the
stability issue.

It will be interesting to see if our Vista brothers and sisters are having
any luck with those new drivers that have just been released.

Andy

 

[Mike T.]

UPDATE...

I think my suspicions may be right, using RivaTuner to underclock the 8800
back to reference frequencies I have for the first time completed the
3Dmark06 benchmark with a reasonable score of 9861.

Flight Sim X seems stable but still slow however, BF2142 now crashes but I
think that may be due to the new patch and me forcing it to run in my
native screen res.

I'll do some more testing but so far this is a real breakthrough, once I'm
sure it's stable I'll re-test the other card under the same configuration.

I'll keep ya posted

Andy

Not so fast, andy. Underclocking a video card could have a couple of
effects on the system. First, it would cause the GPU to run slightly
cooler. Second, it would cause a decrease in current draw from the PSU to
power the vid card. If underclocking the video card helps, you are back
where you started . . . unknown hardware problem(s), most likely a weak
power supply. -Dave

 

[Andrew Bailey]

UPDATE...

GFX Card 1 is now stable and able to run 3DMark06, FSX and BF2142
(singleplayer is unstable (prob due to patch) but multiplayer is fine)...
even with the side panel in place!!!

This is another milestone and if this were to be a single gfx card system it
would almost be job done.

I have now swapped gfx cards and the good news is that with reference
frequencies and 100% fan gfx card 2 works, it's not quite stable yet but it
works.

I'm gonna run the system with gfx card 2 in place to burn it in and then
retest.

Andy