After years of going good. BAM!! - Help please?

Buchanan0204 · 5 May 2011 at 23:51

Well, after nearly two years of going without a hitch. My pc has finally decided to start playing up.

It all started last week when I installed two new WD Green 2TB drives and a Startech two port sata card.

I started getting blue screens. However I was convinced this was nothing to do with my new hardware.

Around 10 minutes my pc just cut out when I was doing some video editing... however it's cut out before when just browsing, so it may not necesarrily be connected to high cpu usage.

I have a Q6600 overclocked to 3.6Ghz. However, this has been overclocked to 3.6 for a long time now and has never caused an issue. Never blue screened, been stressed for hours, months of games and photoshopping etc. I doubt this is the issue, however I'm just letting everyone know.

I ran a program called "bluescreenview" which I always use to read my dump files. Here are the results.

I checked out the one I highlighted and it appeared to be a sound card problem. I then updated my drivers as you do and it made no difference. I'm not sure about the other.

I just had a thought. My PSU is a 4 year old Thermaltake Toughpower 750W. It's definitely a solid PSU and has been for a while now. Perhaps adding the extra drives pushed it over the edge?

So the contenders for the bluescreen/cutouts are

1.Faulty PSU/Not enough power
2. Dodgy sound card
3. dodgy hard drives/dodgy sata card
4. something else I haven't thought of.

My system specs are as follows:

[email protected]
4GB DDR2 1066Mhz Corsair Dominator
Asus Maximus Formula
Sapphire HD6970 (real one)
Vertex 2E 60GB x2
WD Green 2TB x2
Blu ray Rom x1
5-1 card reader Akasa
Asus Xonar DS PCI
Startech PCI-e raid controller

Things I've tried

1. Updated all drivers
2. Ran memtest 86+
3. gave it a kick

Things still to try:

1. reinstall windows
2. remove newly installed hdd's + raid controller
3. test psu with a 30 quid tester
4. remove overclock on cpu
5. kick it harder

I have't reinstalled windows or reverted to my backup. Well because it's inconvenient and I can't see that being the issue.

I don't want to remove the HDD's as I'm using them now as movie storage for the HTPC and the cutouts/bluescreens aren't frequent enough for me to hang around and wait and see if you know what I mean.

So I'm calling upon the help of the clever clogs of the forums... Help! Please

AtaRo · 6 May 2011 at 00:14

Test with a good known PSU first and dont waste your money on that psu tester cause it can't tell if the psu is overheating or has high ripple on its rails etc.,
it might be usefull to quickly test a psu if it powers up, check voltage is within range but thats it, it will not be able to check intermittent psu problem.

Buchanan0204 · 6 May 2011 at 00:21

AtaRo said:
Test with a good known PSU first and dont waste your money on that psu tester cause it can't tell if the psu is overheating or has high ripple on its rails etc.,
it might be usefull to quickly test a psu if it powers up, check voltage is within range but thats it, it will not be able to check intermittent psu problem.

I'm pretty reluctant to test a new PSU until I'm definite that it's the cause of my problems. I would think 750w would be plenty to power my system. I ran it through one of those usage calculators and it came out at around 600w. So well within my range.

It's a non modular PSU, and I have the cables all routed everywhere to keep it tidy. Literally took me 3 hours+ to get it tidy with all my components and drives.

AtaRo · 6 May 2011 at 00:28

Save yout o/c settings and try running at stock speed.

Trusty · 6 May 2011 at 05:45

Does sound like it could be a problem with bios settings. Like above, run everything at default, if it still occurs, then it could be a hardware problem.

ThomasTheTankEngine · 6 May 2011 at 11:26

Buchanan0204 said:
I'm pretty reluctant to test a new PSU until I'm definite that it's the cause of my problems. I would think 750w would be plenty to power my system. I ran it through one of those usage calculators and it came out at around 600w. So well within my range.

It's a non modular PSU, and I have the cables all routed everywhere to keep it tidy. Literally took me 3 hours+ to get it tidy with all my components and drives.

Would be much easier to pull the soundcard and test it without that first.

Quite possible a soundcard driver update, or a windows update has borked something and will need fixing with a future update.

Set the bios to default, pull the soundcard and see if you get the same problems. If you do, start removing the new hardware. Then reinstall them one piece at a time (1 disk, then remove that, try the other, then remove both, and try the sata card on its own).

Buchanan0204 · 6 May 2011 at 23:50

jimbob27 said:
Would be much easier to pull the soundcard and test it without that first.

Quite possible a soundcard driver update, or a windows update has borked something and will need fixing with a future update.

Set the bios to default, pull the soundcard and see if you get the same problems. If you do, start removing the new hardware. Then reinstall them one piece at a time (1 disk, then remove that, try the other, then remove both, and try the sata card on its own).

Well. This of course is the sensible course of action. However, I was kinda hoping someone would recognise these symptoms or dump files and give me a definite answer (wishful thinking I know) However, I don't fancy going without sound for two-three days and If I disconnect my new drives. I'll be movieless. However, needs must I suppose.

Cheers

Joey1988 · 7 May 2011 at 00:08

Tried the obvious system restore to a time before it started happening ?

Personally I'd do what others have said - turn off the overclock and see what happens, at least then you will know the PSU is the problem as you mentioned yourself.

blackn3r · 7 May 2011 at 00:22

Do you not have the original SupremeFX II card that came with the mobo?

Buchanan0204 · 7 May 2011 at 00:58

blackn3r said:
Do you not have the original SupremeFX II card that came with the mobo?

It went pop around 6 months ago, hence the upgrade. It's a shame, I liked the cool led logo on it.

Buchanan0204 · 7 May 2011 at 01:00

Joey1988 said:
Tried the obvious system restore to a time before it started happening ?

Personally I'd do what others have said - turn off the overclock and see what happens, at least then you will know the PSU is the problem as you mentioned yourself.

I've got it disabled unfortunately.

Buchanan0204 · 7 May 2011 at 01:01

Another thing to mention. The "ati display driver stopped responding" message appears quite a lot these days. It's not overclocked either. My last HD 3870 did this as well. It's definitely the last ATI card I buy. This is the 3rd or 4th card I've had issues with. Never had a proper Nvidia card before... will definitely be venturing into their world next time however.