Computer sporadically stops responding?

@ Archean

Where can i find the QVL listing RAM compatibility?

Also, i want to stick with Nvidia because i plan on doing SLI with two Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX gpu's eventually. I was thinking that since they are Nvidia the compatibility for my GPU's would be best. Also, they are the boards i'm most familiar with seeing as every mobo i've ever had has been from them.

My budget is meager. I make maybe 380-440 dollars per paycheck every two weeks and i spend 100 on car insurance a month and 40 on my cellphone a month, plus i owe someone in my family about 2 grand for a car they helped me buy so i put some aside for them every month. On top of that i have gas expenses since i try and get together with my friends every week who live about an hour away, and on top of that i buy food and i have the unfortunate habit of buying cigarettes so i maybe have 200 dollars a month if that. And it normally doesnt last long. If i buy a new power supply, it wont be cheap since i do intend to eventually do SLI. I was thinking if i buy another one it would be 750w or maybe 800 depending on what the manufacturer has to offer.

Also you make it sound like Asus is a bad choice lol. why so?

I was using Enermax as an example only.

According to CPUZ, your +12V is +8.31V, because of XFX not listing 680i LT SLI (Which I believe is an excellent board) as compatible with the Q9400 or rather the other way around and the ACPI and all, I was thinking may be the CPUZ reading is wrong ... I doubt that though.
You can follow my instruction and test it, don't buy a PSU tester that most probably will be used only once, get a multi meter, it will come handy again in the house.

If you were to sell your Q9400 and buy another CPU with the money, I can't see how you be spending lot of cash? A Q6600 is a very good CPU for that board and it's not that expensive these days, but you have to get it from flebay or some place like that.

You can wait for XFX, they might say, it is OK to run the Q9400 with such and such settings, or the pdf is out dated .... they built the board.

May be the Ultra just went bad on it's own!

it is quite possible the LSP Ultra went bad on it's own. I was reading a lot of reviews on it, and people have had soooo many bad right out of the box. Some did not even come with the cable that powers the mobo. I asked XFX what their recommendation for a CPU would be so we shall see what they say. Also, i have no idea wat flebay is lol. Right this second my keyboard has stopped functioning so i am using the on screen keyboard. first the enter key stopped working then the h key and then everything. its still lit up though? im hoping it is not from my constant pounding of ctrl alt delete ... this sucks so bad. btw where would i sell the q9400? im never using ebay just so you know. i had bad experiences there before.

certin keys stop responding periodcally. PSU problem? thnk my PSU mght just be gettn worse.

@whenallelsefa1l
I am unsure it can be a keyboard issue provided this same keyboard works ok at other times on with another PC.

Well Asus is very picky about which RAM can work on their boards right out of the box, so it works this way, you choose the Asus motherboard model/type which you intend to purchase, go on their site and check out the selected model's specs etc. along with that you should be able to find a QVL list (usually in PDF), which lists the memory which is supported. Please, note that if the RAM is not listed it doesn't mean it won't work, rather it is a case where you may need to tweak voltage/other settings in BIOS to make it work stably.

@Sharam
If this motherboard has such a bad reputation, I wouldn't recommend selling Q9400 just to find out that Q6600 is doing the same thing. So safer option IMO would be to go for a new motherboard and new PSU.

well to be honest with you the processor has worked great in this computer up until my PSU has started doing this. I mean, the voltage from my PSU i'm sure was running fine up until 2 months ago when my computer started doing this periodic lockup thing. The PSU has a really bad reputation as i've recently read in reviews, unfortunately when i was looking to purchase the PSU in the past all of the reviews on the front page were 4 and 5 star reviews, given the fact the people reviewing the PSU had just installed it out of the box and were like "Wow runs great! blah blah blah" as opposed to waiting a few months to review it. I was going to see if i could return it to Tiger-Direct, but unfortunately it looks like the PSU box is the ONE box that went missing out of all the packaging i have kept from my purchases, and returns to them are unable to be done without original packaging.

The keyboard is working okay now, and it worked on my sister's computer, so i'm pretty sure it is due to the PSU. I think a new PSU is really all i need. I get my paycheck friday, hopefully it will be in excess of 450 dollars so that i can purchase a new one ASAP.


As for the Asus QVL, their website makes their product inaccessible to view further than the thumbnail after search, and it seems they have AWFUL support service, so i may just go with another brand. What exactly would you recommend? I am, after all, very satisfied with my computer except for this issue that has recently popped up, and if there is anything that is Slot 775 SLI ready and has support for the Q9400 CPU i have, i'd like to know about it =)

Well bit oddly but I could only find one SLI ready motherboard for LGA775 socket processors at newegg and it is Asus and nForce 750i SLI ready ........ and it doesn't support DDR2-1066.

At Tiger Direct, this Biostar seems to be reasonable option as well, in specs its says 'CrossFire X' ready, but I think it should work ok with nVidia cards as well.

680i LT SLI is a great motherboard as old as it is, When 680i was released, there were no 45nm CPUs, there were no Q9xxx, Intel, to stop Nvidia from making chipsets for Intel based motherboards or to hurt their rep, did not disclose important needed info to Nvidia, this was mainly with the 45nm series when they first came out. Intel even offered huge discounts to OEMs if they bought Intel based chipset with their CPUs or other "hidden" bonuses if they did not use Nvidia for Chipset. The lawsuit had to do more with punishing AMD buyers.

Intel settles antitrust suit with FTC, admits no wrongdoing

Intel settles FTC antitrust suit, stops punishing AMD buyers

With Intel CPUs I always went Intel Chipsets as much as I like Nvidia but have built many gamer systems based on Nvidia as well and would recommend them any day. (Never used the 750i so I can't say anything bout them.)

When Intel didn't share the changes in their new CPUs or even make changes to cause incompatibilities with other chipset, other Chipset designer can't release a proper board/ BIOS to support that CPU, best they can do is guess and trial and error, this shouldn't translate to "bad reputation"

Most gamers have moved on to 780i/ 790i or knew about this, since 680i from EVGA, XFX, BFG were considered enthusiast/ gamer/ high end boards, the person buying it, usually did their homework and already knew what CPU, GPU, RAM, case and PSU he was going to get and what BIOS he was going to flash it with.

@Archean

My 680i specs say it only supports up to DDR2-800, however some bios tweaking allows to overclock to 1066. From what my buddy told me, DDR2 ram is only going to go up to 800 unless you overclock it. He could be wrong of course, i'm not laying full faith in him on everything he says since he is not an expert, but from what i've found when looking for RAM, this seems to be the case, as any RAM advertised as 1066 is only "Overclock ready" as opposed to being 1066 right out of the box. So i would imagine the 750i would allow for DDR2-1066 if overclocked.


@ Sharam

My friend says that his dad may have an old Q6600 laying around that i might be able to give me for free, or for a small price of around 50 bucks or so. So i may be in luck. I just have to wait for him to come home from boot camp in about 3 weeks.

And yeah, unfortunately i did not do my homework lol. I just bought what i thought would work good. I was just getting into computers at the time I built this one, so I'm kind of uneducated. I'm learning a lot just through you two, however, and I really appreciate all the help you have supplied me so far. Once I get paid this friday i'll buy a new PSU.

Any really good recommendations that you have would be great, I plan on doing SLI with the Nvidia EVGA Geforce 9800 GTX gpu in a few months, so I'm curious as to what size PSU i need to buy. Also, since i have the 9800 GTX, and the only one on the market right now is the 9800 GTX+, that would not cause any incompatibilities or such would it? It is still made by EVGA i believe.

Also, if I am going to be using OC'ed RAM and SLI with two large GPU's, would i need a better case than what i have now? The case i presently use is a Thermaltake SopranoRS. It keeps things cool enough right now, i listed the temps in the original post.

I'll post back in about an hour, have to jet out the door, what you say about the RAM or have been told, needs a bit of explaining. I will post about PSU as well.

still waiting on that reply.

It will be a while, hope not long ... busy ...

okay, a little update..

I bought the Corsair 750watt PSU

I'm still getting the same issue.

maybe the mobo is bad?
i'll upload the .txt document of a new scan from CPUZ in a bit, but i'm kind of confused as to why i'm getting the same problem

We need a new reading to see the changes after the new PSU, with +12V under voltage or may be over voltage in case CPUZ dropped the first digit (1), we can't say how the rest of your components are.

The CPU could have been hurt, I have a Q6600 here that goes through POST with no problems but does not allow Windows to load, and this was something like your situation that got worst.

I like to test the hardware using bootable ISO like UBUNTU or even Hirens Boot CD to run some tests. Or a quick install of XP on another drive.

You can download BurnInTest™ the trial version allows you to run 15min tests that you can do back to back, you need to change the preferences, like only select CPU first at the default 50% load then increase the load to 100%.

Let's read a new CPUZ first and go from there, since you never tweaked the BIOS, may be we need a few changes to timings and voltages.

Hope we figure it out by Noon on Monday, long drive coming up, from London, Ontario to Arlington, Virginia then to Raleigh, North Carolina stay a week and back to Lake Orion Michigan then home ... phew ... once away I do have internet access but very little time.

okay here is the new CPUZ rating. I did overclock my RAM to 1066 however, i dont know if that will throw anything off. but here it is.

as for bootable ISO's, i can't use them. I can't burn anything to disc, my computer allows installation and dvd/cd play/rips but both drives will not burn. this is a problem i've had since i updated to windows 7 and wasnt too worried about it. The drivers are up to date which confused the hell out of me. but whatever, i can't burn iso's onto a cd.

heres the CPU-Z reading after putting bios settings to default.

also, after the new power supply, it seems to be worse.

I don't understand what the hell is going on here but i feel as though the best solution is throwing this damn thing off of my balcony and pissing on it.

excuse my language, but it took me 15 minutes just to open firefox, get to this page, and type this.

What program have you tried to burn CDs or DVDs?

This is very common, we fix/ replace a major component and other problems that were hidden start poping up. Your system is getting proper power now, that is for sure. If you want to fix this once and for all, we need to take quite a few steps.

I'll take a look at the CPUZ dump and read over what we have gone through.

I have another issue now.

After running a scan of my hard drive, my computer is now telling me that my copy of windows is not genuine. What is up with that?

and the program(s) i have tried burning with are as follows: Windows Media Player, Nero, and the windows 7 backup thing.

okay nevermind about the not genuine thing, it disappeared after going into 'properties' of my computer.

What are the many steps i need to take that you were describing?

You should be able to burn?!?! Try ImgBurn.

CPUZ still reports your voltage is low on the +12V, which I know it is not since you got a new PSU.
We do need to make sure using a multi meter.
It is possible a regulator is gone on the board.

I have to read the posts again to see how many RAM and hard drive tests we have done first.
CPUZ shows your RAM is "EPP" ready (5.0-5-5-15-26-2T @ 533 MHz 2.100 Volts)
This is where you enable the "SLI Ready RAM" in the BIOS, newer board call it EPP. This will set number of timings and voltages and allows us to concentrate on other settings. Basically your RAM will be set properly from the SPD on the RAM.

In such cases, with all you have been going through, this is what I would do, you have to decide if you want to go with my way or hear other opinions.

After the above, I would test the motherboard out of the case; this is where other steps come in