johnnysanz3
Posts: 10 +0
This will be long, I will try to post as much information as I can.
Computer Specs:
Motherboard: ASRock X38TurboTwins
PSU: Silverstone ST70F 700W
Processor: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 4850
RAM: 8GB (G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333)x2
OS: Vista Ultimate 64-bit
Case: 1 big fan, 3 smaller fans, aluminum
The Main Problem:
The problem as it currently stands is that it restarts and freezes randomly. It has done this since I built it. It didn't bother me because it wasn't really all that often that it did it, I admit it was stupid of me to not fix it though.
I had never found a pattern, or a way to force the errors to happen. It was completely random (at least to me).
Recently I started playing some video games more often, L4D, Aion. And I finally found a way to kind of force it to restart or freeze. In the game Aion, it happens everytime I play it, sometimes it takes 20min to a couple hours but I know it will eventually happen while playing this game. In other games, like L4D it has only happened once in all the times I play. It still happens every once in a while just doing other stuff in Windows randomly.
Testing so Far:
I started monitoring while playing Aion to see anything weird. Hottest my GPU got was 80C, I turned up some fans and got it down to low 70's C. The voltages were all really close except for +12.0v which was at 12.56 while not playing a game and during play it goes down to 12.4s.
I couldn't pick up anything in particular that caused the freeze or restart.
I ran Prime95, a CPU/MEM stress test for a couple hours and got no errors. The CPU got its warmest during this, getting to 65C. The mobo temp was around 50C.
I unchecked the "Automatically restart" option in Vista hoping it would give me an error message before restarting/freezing but I still didn't get any.
I checked the event logs and only got errors saying "Previous system shutdown was unexpected".
I reset my motherboard to see if I screwed anything up settings memory timings manually and such. After I did this, the game worked for 5 straight hours until I went to bed that night and didn't freeze that night at all. It's came back though. I really thought I had it fixed after this.
I have 4 sticks of RAM and tried switching these in and out. Somehow doing this I made the restarting in Aion quicker after I start playing. Now it happens withing a minute or two into the game. This game is the only thing I can do to force this error to happen, even though it still does it doing anything else, but a lot less often and more random.
I tried moving the GPU to the other PCI express slot, same problems.
Other Problems that may/may not be related:
My monitor has always randomly not found a signal from the PC. Sometimes I would have to turn it on and off a few times till monitor recognized it.
Most of the time when I have to turn the computer off by holding the power button down, when I turn it back on, it starts up for a few seconds, turns off, than a few seconds later turns back on normally.
Maybe my installation?
Since all these problems have been pretty much from the start, I will write some goofy things in my Case. Note though that this case worked fine with my old computer parts in it:
My mobo is only held on by 2 screws, and a post on my case is missing in the one corner of my mobo, making the mobo kind of flimsy there.
My CPU is mounted pretty snug, but during mounting the one corner clip/button that you push down broke off, but its pushed down I am pretty sure and is snug on the mobo.
I have a case fan that has a power cord kind of glued together with some black stuff that sometimes turns on and off because the wire is probably not fully connected in that gooey stuff.
The motherboard has some capacitors leaning slightly but I couldn't find any evidence of black or bulging capacitors, or anything out of the ordinary.
Everything else is pretty normal in the case. At least as much as I can tell, all this new stuff I got was new to me, like the power supply connectors and everything, it was a pretty big upgrade from my old stuff that used older connectors and stuff like that.
My newbie ideas
If I knew more, I probably would have an idea to fix it by now, other than what I tried here, I'm trying to avoid buying a
ton of parts if its not the problem, I don't really have any backup parts to try out otherwise I would have tried them out, and I don't really know anybody that has backup stuff I can try.
The PSU: maybe Power supply is messed up so randomly it screws up.
The motherboard: seems like it could cause these types of problems. It was kind of a cheap one.
The GPU: I kept thinking this one especially once I got that one game to always cause the error. Plus with the monitor not detecting a signal sometimes on boot, but would the vid card cause these problems when I'm not doing anything game related?
Windows Vista: I haven't tried a reinstall yet because I have a bunch of videos and stuff with nowhere to back them up, once I find a solution to that I will probably try this. But the problems still say hardware to me, but I can be wrong.
I'm getting close to biting the bullet and buying new parts, I was thinking a new case first, since my old one is falling apart, and then maybe new mobo cause this was a cheap one, what you guys think? My psu I thought was a pretty good one...I hope its not that.
Was thinking, should I just throw this off a cliff and start over? =)
UPDATE 14AUG2009:
Ran memtest86+ for 4 passes, 0 errors
Ram prime95 stress test for a couple hours, no errors
Installed my computer in a new case, properly this time:
*GPU temp dropped 20-25 degrees C! It was only in the 70s before anyway under game load, but now it is around 50C during game play
*CPU dropped 10 degrees as well to 49C during gameplay
After putting everything in the new case I booted up and went to the game where I can usually force this error to happen (freeze/restart). It was freezing or restarting within 1 minute of playing, but I played for an hour this time, and then it restarted, and I went to bed. Temps weren't hot, voltages were good. At least according to my motherboard monitor that came with mobo..I'll make sure to check with another program to be sure.
Next step I am going to reinstall windows just to rule that out, plus it's a free test that doesn't require me buying a part to replace.
If that is not it, I am thinking PSU(even though numbers look fine on monitors)/Mobo/GPU/CPU(even though prime95 stress test ran 2 hours no errors)
Computer Specs:
Motherboard: ASRock X38TurboTwins
PSU: Silverstone ST70F 700W
Processor: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 4850
RAM: 8GB (G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333)x2
OS: Vista Ultimate 64-bit
Case: 1 big fan, 3 smaller fans, aluminum
The Main Problem:
The problem as it currently stands is that it restarts and freezes randomly. It has done this since I built it. It didn't bother me because it wasn't really all that often that it did it, I admit it was stupid of me to not fix it though.
I had never found a pattern, or a way to force the errors to happen. It was completely random (at least to me).
Recently I started playing some video games more often, L4D, Aion. And I finally found a way to kind of force it to restart or freeze. In the game Aion, it happens everytime I play it, sometimes it takes 20min to a couple hours but I know it will eventually happen while playing this game. In other games, like L4D it has only happened once in all the times I play. It still happens every once in a while just doing other stuff in Windows randomly.
Testing so Far:
I started monitoring while playing Aion to see anything weird. Hottest my GPU got was 80C, I turned up some fans and got it down to low 70's C. The voltages were all really close except for +12.0v which was at 12.56 while not playing a game and during play it goes down to 12.4s.
I couldn't pick up anything in particular that caused the freeze or restart.
I ran Prime95, a CPU/MEM stress test for a couple hours and got no errors. The CPU got its warmest during this, getting to 65C. The mobo temp was around 50C.
I unchecked the "Automatically restart" option in Vista hoping it would give me an error message before restarting/freezing but I still didn't get any.
I checked the event logs and only got errors saying "Previous system shutdown was unexpected".
I reset my motherboard to see if I screwed anything up settings memory timings manually and such. After I did this, the game worked for 5 straight hours until I went to bed that night and didn't freeze that night at all. It's came back though. I really thought I had it fixed after this.
I have 4 sticks of RAM and tried switching these in and out. Somehow doing this I made the restarting in Aion quicker after I start playing. Now it happens withing a minute or two into the game. This game is the only thing I can do to force this error to happen, even though it still does it doing anything else, but a lot less often and more random.
I tried moving the GPU to the other PCI express slot, same problems.
Other Problems that may/may not be related:
My monitor has always randomly not found a signal from the PC. Sometimes I would have to turn it on and off a few times till monitor recognized it.
Most of the time when I have to turn the computer off by holding the power button down, when I turn it back on, it starts up for a few seconds, turns off, than a few seconds later turns back on normally.
Maybe my installation?
Since all these problems have been pretty much from the start, I will write some goofy things in my Case. Note though that this case worked fine with my old computer parts in it:
My mobo is only held on by 2 screws, and a post on my case is missing in the one corner of my mobo, making the mobo kind of flimsy there.
My CPU is mounted pretty snug, but during mounting the one corner clip/button that you push down broke off, but its pushed down I am pretty sure and is snug on the mobo.
I have a case fan that has a power cord kind of glued together with some black stuff that sometimes turns on and off because the wire is probably not fully connected in that gooey stuff.
The motherboard has some capacitors leaning slightly but I couldn't find any evidence of black or bulging capacitors, or anything out of the ordinary.
Everything else is pretty normal in the case. At least as much as I can tell, all this new stuff I got was new to me, like the power supply connectors and everything, it was a pretty big upgrade from my old stuff that used older connectors and stuff like that.
My newbie ideas
If I knew more, I probably would have an idea to fix it by now, other than what I tried here, I'm trying to avoid buying a
ton of parts if its not the problem, I don't really have any backup parts to try out otherwise I would have tried them out, and I don't really know anybody that has backup stuff I can try.
The PSU: maybe Power supply is messed up so randomly it screws up.
The motherboard: seems like it could cause these types of problems. It was kind of a cheap one.
The GPU: I kept thinking this one especially once I got that one game to always cause the error. Plus with the monitor not detecting a signal sometimes on boot, but would the vid card cause these problems when I'm not doing anything game related?
Windows Vista: I haven't tried a reinstall yet because I have a bunch of videos and stuff with nowhere to back them up, once I find a solution to that I will probably try this. But the problems still say hardware to me, but I can be wrong.
I'm getting close to biting the bullet and buying new parts, I was thinking a new case first, since my old one is falling apart, and then maybe new mobo cause this was a cheap one, what you guys think? My psu I thought was a pretty good one...I hope its not that.
Was thinking, should I just throw this off a cliff and start over? =)
UPDATE 14AUG2009:
Ran memtest86+ for 4 passes, 0 errors
Ram prime95 stress test for a couple hours, no errors
Installed my computer in a new case, properly this time:
*GPU temp dropped 20-25 degrees C! It was only in the 70s before anyway under game load, but now it is around 50C during game play
*CPU dropped 10 degrees as well to 49C during gameplay
After putting everything in the new case I booted up and went to the game where I can usually force this error to happen (freeze/restart). It was freezing or restarting within 1 minute of playing, but I played for an hour this time, and then it restarted, and I went to bed. Temps weren't hot, voltages were good. At least according to my motherboard monitor that came with mobo..I'll make sure to check with another program to be sure.
Next step I am going to reinstall windows just to rule that out, plus it's a free test that doesn't require me buying a part to replace.
If that is not it, I am thinking PSU(even though numbers look fine on monitors)/Mobo/GPU/CPU(even though prime95 stress test ran 2 hours no errors)
