Help, i keep killing motherboards!!!!

superfly · 7 Feb 2008 at 16:00

to cut the story short, over the last year i have got through 4(maybe 5) motherboards!

First i got through a gigabyte p35, that was rma-ed and found to be faulty and i got a new one, then a few weeks later, same thing, it just spun up the fans, reset and then just spun the fans full speed, but no post (i went through all the resetting cmos, components etc until i was blue in the face) so i thought, ok gigabyte dosnt like my hardware which as the time was:-

ocz 2gb reaper 1066 - max voltage i put them too was 2.35v
e6750 - max voltage was 1.4/temps never above 53@load
ocz 600w
8800gts 320 overclocked(but 100 stable)
antec 800 gamer thing, i forget its name , but loads of good cooling.

the e6750 had a overclock fsb wall of 419, so ~3.3ghtz wasnt too impressive. but nore was it too over the top.(same with voltages - see above) the temps were also good, 53 on cpu and chipsets never got above 50 either

then i got a msi p35 platinum, same settings as above, Orthosed fine for 12hrs+ then one day it would just crash, and never come back to life. swapped for another, 1 month laster same fate!! :O

now i thought id really try and fix this once and for all, so i got the following to eradicate the issues:-

e8400
kept the ocz reaper(but rmaed them too just to be safe)
also got a gigabyte gx38-ds4

put it all together, worked perfectly first time, started tinkering, very happy, got over 4.2 on the e8400 temps got to around 60 max after 12hrs. all looked good, until last sunday i just shut it down, no blue screen, no crashes nothing wrong what so ever, and then monday morning, nothing, dead, no power at all, not even a twitching fan!!

so i just presumed, it was my psu due to the lack of any power at all, so i bought a corsair hx520w, got it today, and still no life!!!

this is really ******* me off now, i had a dfi board on a 939 amd x2 4000 (i think) and that was overclocked and very stable for over a year until i thought id try my hand a intel!

so i have just taken the machine apart for about the 50th time in a year, and eliminate anything, and just leave it with the cpu and cooler in and just try to get some life out of it, but still nothing!

HELP?!?!

could it be some weird static or short curcuit that im getting from my case? the board sits on its little metal screw hole things and theres nothing that i can see that could short it? i just dont understand why they all keep diying?

(

thefishdude · 7 Feb 2008 at 16:05

that is prett bad to go through athat many boards hmmm if it was me i would be looking at what was *** same between them and from what i can make out you had the same ram in all of them but to me that seems unlikley to cause the board to break. and you had the same power supply, to me a power supply seems more likely to break board by doing someting dodgy like voltage spykes ???

what was yoru old power supply ?

Munkeh · 7 Feb 2008 at 16:08

Sounds like your PSU was killing boards. See if you have the same problems with your new PSU.

superfly · 7 Feb 2008 at 16:17

thefishdude said:
that is prett bad to go through athat many boards hmmm if it was me i would be looking at what was *** same between them and from what i can make out you had the same ram in all of them but to me that seems unlikley to cause the board to break. and you had the same power supply, to me a power supply seems more likely to break board by doing someting dodgy like voltage spykes ???

what was yoru old power supply ?

the old psu was a OCZ 600 Gamextreme, which i thought was a pretty good make/model? the was some buzzing noise coming from somewhere when a ran ATI tools artifact scan(which obviously loaded the system voltage to almost max for my system) but then again it could have just been the heatpipes on my vid card?

i think i agree about it being the power supply, faults with those i guess could cause quite major failiures, especially when overclocking, also sometimes i would just leave the pc on over night at stock speeds to test things and it would reboot randomly.

On the memory side i did run memtest 86 for 24hrs without errors even when overclocked to 1200! 55515

thanks for your reply. i guess ill have to rma this board and then in the future i may be lucky with my new powersupply?

superfly · 7 Feb 2008 at 16:18

Munkeh said:
Sounds like your PSU was killing boards. See if you have the same problems with your new PSU.

yeah, this new corsair powersuppy was obviously ordered after the failiure of the system, so from now on it will be clearer to see if the issues have gone, thanks.

drunkenmonkey · 7 Feb 2008 at 21:46

this is the problem when you overclock components you are stressing them!

something is gonna give sooner or later!

Aod · 7 Feb 2008 at 22:02

you could have very dodgy household electrics which are causing fluctuations in your old psu, which is now unable to smooth the spikes.

PSU's use caps and diodes which can and do fail, and when they do the result can be spectacular, or very subtle. you might be getting voltage fluctuations that over time are just killing the power-regs on your motherboard.

superfly · 8 Feb 2008 at 17:26

Aod said:
you could have very dodgy household electrics which are causing fluctuations in your old psu, which is now unable to smooth the spikes.

PSU's use caps and diodes which can and do fail, and when they do the result can be spectacular, or very subtle. you might be getting voltage fluctuations that over time are just killing the power-regs on your motherboard.

true, although its a 4 year old flat, but yes they could be dodgy, but every crash i had was either a freeze up or bsod, so there was still power there. nothing else in the house has failed and i have 2 other pcs, but i dont have a surge protected power gang, its just a normal one, maybe i should get one incase??

the mobo has been rma-ed now so it will give me chance to get new power cables and a surge protector while i wait.

thanks for the reply

superfly · 8 Feb 2008 at 17:30

drunkenmonkey said:
this is the problem when you overclock components you are stressing them!

something is gonna give sooner or later!

i just wish it was later rather than 2 weeks old lol like my trusty amd xp 1.0gig->1.4gig those were the good days, but that caught on fire so... :cool:

this is the chance we take i guess, but im either really moronic or unlucky or it was indeed my psu??

think ill leave it at stock for now on, my e8400@3gig should be fast enough for browsing the web lol but i do play games sometimes and thats i guess where i was trying to get the edge.