Dead computer

gavinpoo

gavinpoo

gavinpoo

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Joined
25 Sep 2003
Posts
433
Location
Derbyshire
My computer has been flawless for the last year or so but the last couple of days I've been having some problems. The display has been becoming corrupted and after a short while it would freeze or turn itself off. I tried turning it back on and the fans would spin up briefly then stop again and the power light would flash slowly. The only way to attempt a restart then would be to disconnect from the mains for a while.

Having a Zalman heatpipe thingy on the 9800 Pro I thought it was possible it could've come loose and with the recent weather was causing it to overheat. So, I borrowed a friends video card and tried it out earlier tonight and it started up initially but after a few minutes it froze, however there was no corruption, and when I try to turn it on now it does exactly the same as with the original card.

I managed to run memtest earlier and it returned no errors. Also, the CPU temperature is fine at about 40 degrees.

So, does anyone have any ideas what could be the problem and how to test other possibilities? The full spec is:

MSI Neo2 Platinum
Athlon64 3500+
1GB PC3200 Corsair (can't remember exactly which)
74GB Raptor
250GB Samsung
350W Q-Technology PSU
 
It isn't a Q-TEC. :p When I bought it (a couple of years ago) I read up and it seemed to get good reviews. Made especially sure that it wasn't the same thing as a Q-TEC after reading numerous horror stories on here.

Anyway, I took the old PSU out and the bit that connects to the board had 3 blackened pins so I've ordered a 430W Seasonic just to be on the safe side.

I managed to get a screen grab. Never knew dodgy power supplies could do this...

http://www.gavinpoo.f2s.com/BROKEN.JPG
 
gavinpoo said:
Anyway, I took the old PSU out and the bit that connects to the board had 3 blackened pins so I've ordered a 430W Seasonic just to be on the safe side.

I managed to get a screen grab. Never knew dodgy power supplies could do this...

http://www.gavinpoo.f2s.com/BROKEN.JPG
Click to expand...

@1 - Good man, quality PSU is worth the spend.

@2 - A dodgy power supply can have the most weird and wonderful effects - although that particular one is new on me.

M
 
I fancy a psu with the detachable cables, you only need to have the ones you require to power components, saves space in the case and lets the air flow cleanly.
 
Dont try anymore GPU's in there if i were you, sounds to me like a dodgy PSU is frying your graphics cards, i think thats why your mates card degraded over a short space of time. Cheap PSU's can go all over the place with ampage over the rails so i've heard, i know Q-technology is better than Q-TEC but its still cheap, and if they fail they have equally disasterous effects!
 
It certainly wasn't cheap when I bought it, think it was about £80, although that was a fair while ago. Didn't have any problems with corruption when I used my mates graphics card, the system just locked up. Put his card back in his PC and used it for a few hours that night and had absolutely no issues, so apparently no damage to his card. Unfortunately couldn't try my card in his PC as it's a Shuttle and there was no way it would fit in with the Zalman heatpipe on it.

Will just have to be patient till the new PSU makes its way here so I can reassess the damage!
 
I may have been a bit hasty ( was late last night), i had a similar problem with my 9600XT on my old rig. Booting up had some really bizarre graphic corruption and would just die in windows, within about ten minutes it was just rebooting in a cycle, would sometimes get further into loadings Windows than other times but still crash instantly rebooting. For the life of me i couldn't figure it out!

In the end i uninstaled the catalyst drivers, and reinstalled them (in safe mode as it was the only way i could boot stable) It booted up ok but still with some visual corruption. then after a few hours went as suddenly as it appeared. Stilll not 100% on what happened! Dunno if that is the same situation though?
 
ajm said:
It did wreck the card even after changing the psu it was the same.
Click to expand...

That's not what I wanted to hear. Would be a great excuse for an upgrade if I didn't have car insurance due this month :(

Thinking back, I remember having this corruption with the card just after I first fitted the Zalman. I took it all off, cleaned it up and fitted it again and everything has been fine till now, just put it down to some rogue Arctic Silver. I can't remember if that caused it to shut down before POST or only when Windows was booting/running.

Don't know much about the thermal properties of the Silver stuff. Does it turn more liquid when heated and therefore is it possible it could've run from between the radiators and dripped on the card?

Just clutching at straws now...
 
gavinpoo said:
Don't know much about the thermal properties of the Silver stuff. Does it turn more liquid when heated and therefore is it possible it could've run from between the radiators and dripped on the card?

Just clutching at straws now...
Click to expand...

Would have to be very hot to become liquid, then again how much did you put on your graphics chip when installing the Zalman... if the same as CPU then no chance really that it would spill over, even if it did get hot enough. You tried your drivers? If nothing else just to rule it out
 
Used as little as possible on the Zalman and was extremely careful when fitting it (the second time).

Haven't tried drivers as it's failing to even reach POST on occasion. Press the power button, the fans spin for about a second then everything stops and the power light flashes.

Should get the new PSU tomorrow. I'll try drivers and reseating the heatsink if I'm still having trouble. If that all fails then it's credit card out time. :(
 
hmmm... it all sounds so familiar... the probs i mentioned about my 9600xt were very much like this, even failing to POST a few times, and still had a bit of coruption after the drivers were re-installed. But like i said just went all of a sudden after a few hours. I'm guessing you have already taken out and reseated the card?

I do remember taking out everything though, RAM, GPU and sound card and power plug out of my MOBO , but that was out of desperation, cant do any harm eh!?!

If not then PSU, and seeing as your awaiting one things should be sweet!
 
That's not what I wanted to hear. Would be a great excuse for an upgrade
Click to expand...
I were in the same boat but i thought the full pc was dead so shelled out on new bits but stayed with agp because i thought my card was ok.When all new stuff was built i then found the graphics card was faulty too so had to find a new agp card.If i had known i would have went the PCI-Express route.

Hope yours turns out to be just the psu.
 
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