defective motherboard??!!!?!?!

[Miklad]

SO, bought the overclocked Phenom II 955 BE @ 3.8ghz a couple of months ago. Didn't think the rise in temperature was worth the slight performance increase so changed the profile in bios to stock settings.
But, just this past week the computer will SOMETIMES not load past the windows loading screen. It won't freeze or anything, but the HD activity LED on my case will come on for a few seconds then go off for a few seconds and I won't hear any whirring coming from the HD. But if I leave it for a bit it loads up fine. Sometimes this happens randomly even when everything has loaded up properly, I'll just be browsing the web and the HD light will do the same thing as above and my windows dies, but i can still move around the mouse cursor.
I've ran memory tests for hours, no error. Although stopping one of the tests I did made it lock up and the HD light thing mentioned above happened and my system crashed. Primed it for about 7 hours, no error and not overheating.
Rang OCUK on friday who said it could be a faulty motherboard and wants me to send back everything I got in the bundle. Does this sound like it could be a motherboard problem? Sending it all back would be a monumental pain in the bum as I've stupidly not kept any of the original boxes so I've got no idea how to securely package the lot up for posting.
The HD light thing made me think it could be a HD or windows registry problem, but I don't really know how to check for erros in such things.
Might be worth noting the RAM that came with the bundle is the Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 1600C9DHX, not the OCZ amd stuff as advertised (The corsair stuff is apparently better??). The HD is a WD Cavier Black 640gb.
Also, sorry if this isn't in the right section. I didn't really know where to start the thread...
Thanks for any input.

 

[josey99]

Why do they think thats a mobo fault???

I've seen hdd's doing this on an underpowered system which sudgests something on the psu, not the mobo, has gone south.

Problem with prebuilt systems is there normaly equiped with just enough watts and ampage. This causes issues if the psu can't take the strain.

Problem with this is your diagnostic options are limited because of the warantee. ( one of the many reasons why I will never buy a prebuild )

If you want to test the hdd for consistancy, run chkdsk. Open my computer, right click the hdd and click on properties. In the resulting pop up, click the tools tab at the top and click the check now button under error checking. In the resulting pop up from that, check the two box's and ok it all. It will tell you it's unable to check the drive untill you reboot. Then just reboot the system and it will test the hdd on the next boot, before windows. Please note this test will take quite some time.

One other point of testing on the hdd. You should be able to download a tool from western digital that will perform s.m.a.r.t. tests on the drive. This will perform far more detailed checks on the drive than chkdsk.

All in all though m8, I think your looking at a psu fault, not hdd or mobo.

 

[coupe69]

I take it you've tried re-installing windows?

 

[Miklad]

Hmmm, to be honest the last thing I thought it could be was the PSU. It's not really a pre-built system just an overclocked bundle. All that came in that was a the mobo, cpu, xigmatek fan and RAM. The PSU is a Corsair HX 750W ATX. I've only heard good things about it...
I did do a chkdisk the other day and nothing came up. And I hadn't had chance to reinstall windows as i've already taken is somewhere to dismantle it all so i can box it up and send it back. I guess I just want OCUK to check the bundle to see if any of the parts are faulty as soon as possible.