I hope this post isn't too long, but I'm trying not to leave out anything. Well, here's the original spec of my rig: -
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 @ 3Ghz (9 x 335Mhz, 1.25V)
Gigabyte P35C_DS3R Rev 1.1 (F2 Bios)
2 x 1Gb Patriot PC6400 RAM @ 670MHz (2.1V)
Western Digital 5000AAKS 500Gb SATA2 HDD
Powercolor ATI Radeon X1950XT 256Mb @ 625Mhz/1560Mhz
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler
Samsung SH-S203BEBN SATA DVDRW
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Music
Corsair HX 520W Modular PSU
All in a Lian-Li PC7 PLUS II case.
The day after I first switched it on, it would power up, then down, then up again from a cold boot. I checked all the leads, but they were connected properly and nothing else seemed wrong, so I put it down to a quirk of the motherboard.
Everything was fine, until I reformatted my hard drive for a non-related software problem (I thought I'd be real clever by removing all the "duplicate" files from my system partition). When I tried to load my first game, I got a message telling me the graphics card was overheating. The fan wasn't spinning, but as soon as I gave it a nudge it started spinning again. From then on, I had to push the fan to get it spinning; it spun on the first power up from a cold boot, but it didn't spin on the second power up like it used to. I checked all the leads and reinstalled the Catalyst 7.9 drivers, but only reseating the card would get the fan spinning after the power up-down-up sequence. And that only lasted until the next cold boot.
Then last Thursday, I turn on the PC to see a blue screen after loading Windows (not a BSOD, but that nasty pale blue XP loves), followed by a BSOD attributed to ati2dvag.exe. So I decided to try a rollback to 7.8, which may have worked, had I been able to see anything. On rebooting the PC, there was no signal going to the monitor. The red LED next to the PCI-E power connector flashed on, and the fan would now spin on the second power up, but I saw nothing. The PC seemed to work fine otherwise - I managed to shortcut my way into foobar and make some use of my £1000 MP3 player. Leaving it for the night didn't solve the problem, so I got an X1650 Pro 512Mb to tide me over. When I first installed the X1650, the PC booted straight away - two problems solved then! Not quite ... the next day it powered up, then down, then up again.
Over the weekend, I got the X1950XT out, and cleaned it with compressed air. I tried all 8 combinations of power lead, DVI port and PCI slot on the power supply. Only one worked, and when I rebooted the PC, I got no signal again. But I got two different bios beep codes - three times I heard one long beep and two short beeps (which indicates a graphics card error according to the motherboard manual), and the other times I heard a succession of rapid beeps for about two seconds, which would point to a power error. Except I never saw a "Fail" in system voltages section of the bios, even when the graphics card fan was playing up.
So, what's going on? I have no spare equipment (hence buying the X1650) so I can't try the power supply/motherboard with another PC, although I would buy another power supply if I absolutely had to. Is there anything obvious I may have missed? I'm confident at least one of these three parts is duff, but I don't know which one, or if it is only one. Any help is appreciated!
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 @ 3Ghz (9 x 335Mhz, 1.25V)
Gigabyte P35C_DS3R Rev 1.1 (F2 Bios)
2 x 1Gb Patriot PC6400 RAM @ 670MHz (2.1V)
Western Digital 5000AAKS 500Gb SATA2 HDD
Powercolor ATI Radeon X1950XT 256Mb @ 625Mhz/1560Mhz
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler
Samsung SH-S203BEBN SATA DVDRW
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Music
Corsair HX 520W Modular PSU
All in a Lian-Li PC7 PLUS II case.
The day after I first switched it on, it would power up, then down, then up again from a cold boot. I checked all the leads, but they were connected properly and nothing else seemed wrong, so I put it down to a quirk of the motherboard.
Everything was fine, until I reformatted my hard drive for a non-related software problem (I thought I'd be real clever by removing all the "duplicate" files from my system partition). When I tried to load my first game, I got a message telling me the graphics card was overheating. The fan wasn't spinning, but as soon as I gave it a nudge it started spinning again. From then on, I had to push the fan to get it spinning; it spun on the first power up from a cold boot, but it didn't spin on the second power up like it used to. I checked all the leads and reinstalled the Catalyst 7.9 drivers, but only reseating the card would get the fan spinning after the power up-down-up sequence. And that only lasted until the next cold boot.
Then last Thursday, I turn on the PC to see a blue screen after loading Windows (not a BSOD, but that nasty pale blue XP loves), followed by a BSOD attributed to ati2dvag.exe. So I decided to try a rollback to 7.8, which may have worked, had I been able to see anything. On rebooting the PC, there was no signal going to the monitor. The red LED next to the PCI-E power connector flashed on, and the fan would now spin on the second power up, but I saw nothing. The PC seemed to work fine otherwise - I managed to shortcut my way into foobar and make some use of my £1000 MP3 player. Leaving it for the night didn't solve the problem, so I got an X1650 Pro 512Mb to tide me over. When I first installed the X1650, the PC booted straight away - two problems solved then! Not quite ... the next day it powered up, then down, then up again.
Over the weekend, I got the X1950XT out, and cleaned it with compressed air. I tried all 8 combinations of power lead, DVI port and PCI slot on the power supply. Only one worked, and when I rebooted the PC, I got no signal again. But I got two different bios beep codes - three times I heard one long beep and two short beeps (which indicates a graphics card error according to the motherboard manual), and the other times I heard a succession of rapid beeps for about two seconds, which would point to a power error. Except I never saw a "Fail" in system voltages section of the bios, even when the graphics card fan was playing up.
So, what's going on? I have no spare equipment (hence buying the X1650) so I can't try the power supply/motherboard with another PC, although I would buy another power supply if I absolutely had to. Is there anything obvious I may have missed? I'm confident at least one of these three parts is duff, but I don't know which one, or if it is only one. Any help is appreciated!
