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Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...
Carol Haynes:
Oh well new system up and running ... what a nightmare it has been ...
The mobo temperature sensors are really bizarre. Yesterday it said my CP was 29C - pretty good - but my mobo board temperature was 52C !! I was really worried about that until I tool the cover off and touched the heatsinks on all the chips and none were even warm!!! It was 27C during POST after being unplugged all night in an unheated room. Obviously the sensor isn't working properly.
I was particularly worried because I installed a fresh copy of windows and it kept freezing and behaving oddly. Suspecting memory I ran MEMTEST86+ and it came up with no problems. It seems to be partly that GEFORCE cards don't like running in VGA mode without drivers combined with the chipset not liking the drivers for my WiFi interface.
Having removed the WiFi card (and plugged into the router with a LAN cable) and installed all the latest nVidia drivers for the motherboard and video everything seems to be stable now so I will prbably trash the installation and start again with a fresh install with the latest drivers and leave installing the WiFi card until the end and after I get a full installation backup.
One oddity - I installed the nVidia WDM drivers and most of the devices associated fired up without problem but the "WDM capture" device says it can't start. Anyone encountered this and know how to fix it?
I send back the Graphics card I ordered because the fan was absoultely massive and took up one of 3 PCI slots - instead I have bought two BFG GeForce 7300 GT OC which I am running in SLi mode. Haven't really done much to test them yet but they look good. Strange thing though the nVidia drivers I downloaded from the website installed without problem but the ones that came on their own driver CD wouldn't install - they just kept saying 'can't find and compatible hardware' !!! Strange - not a problem though as I would have updated to the latest drivers anyway. Another odd thing is that SLI on these cards doesn't require the SLi bridge connector (this took a phone call to the US to establish) as there are no edge connectors on the board. It is definitely running in SLi mode though as it instantly recognised the cards and asked me to enable SLi when the computer started up.
Final setup (without all the usual USB nonsense that I have reinstalled yet) ...
Antec NeoHE 550W Modular ATX2.0 PSU
Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard - Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (Socket 939)
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
2 x WD Caviar PATA 160 Gb
Seagate 400Gb USB drive
Plextor DVD+-R/RW
Pioneer DVD+-R/RW(DL)
2 x BFG GeForce 7300 GT OC 256MB (PCI-Express)
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1100 Freeview TV Tuner
Creative Audigy ZS 2 Pro
? Netgear Wifi ? Bummer if I can't get this to work!
Carol Haynes:
I ran MEMTEST+ for hours and memory probs started to appear - which would explain all the oddities.
I have now removed the Corsair memory and put in my old Crucial DDR 2700 memory while I RMA the Corsair stuff. Ran MEMTEST+ over night and the Corsair is rock solid.
System now flying along and seems stable.
Strange glitch with my Wireless PCI card seems to have been fixed by swapping cards around the PCI slots - lets hope it stays that way!
cranioscopical:
System now flying along and seems stable.
--- End quote ---
Well done!
Hope the new box satisfies you for as long as possible :up:
Carol Haynes:
:D
dk70:
What happens - check Corsair support forums if you get suspicious of something http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=c4b93e2c95c9a819c36169604b1a8d8d&f=128
Memtest must pass but in itself is not enough to prove 100% stability, not under any circumstance. Try Prime95 Blend test for many hours, set it to use 1gb so you can still compute. Prime95 is much more sensitive to timings, will tricker error where Memtest crunches on. Relevant if you overclock, tweak or ram is only 99% happy with motherboard or the other way around.
When I first ran test on newly bought Corsair ram they failed no matter how much I screamed. Could not figure it out, had read Memtest guides etc. Was sure timings were SPD, no mistakes. Went to Corsair and found others had same experience and a few had found solution. Use correct voltage! Corsair state voltage to be 2.7-2.8v - will encourage an increase if any problems. They also did that with my ram. Wrong. They use many different chips in their sticks, see http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44365 and it just happens that the one used in mine will not work properly with more than 2.6, may be 2.65. 2.7v and it fails even Memtest. List does not includes all chips btw, only those "inquired". Well, lowering voltage cured all problems and made Corsair investigate - weeks later they kept repeating standard reply of increasing voltage though. The opposite is true to other sticks with exact same Corsair model name - all depends on characteristics of chip used. Version number plus serial number identify chip.
My ram was of course misread by bios, timings all wrong. Make sure you get 2-3-3-6 as result of SPD/Auto. If not set them manually, as with voltage this is sometimes required.
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