New Daddy PC Rebooting - No BSOD/Logs on Asus A8N-Sli Deluxe/1GBCorsair/GF7800GT-E

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 19:22

Thundercats Ho!

I've purchased some sweet PC hardware and assembled as normal, but when in graphically intense games - it reboots with no BSOD, nothing in any logs. The screen loses its signal and the system goes into a coma after which some times it will boot back up itself.

I played World of Warcraft for 5 hours on Max details to join the Battleground and the PC reboot after 5 mins, Call of Duty 2 reboots after approx 5 seconds on max settings.

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe DDR400 NF4-SLi PCI-E SATAII Dual Raid 5 2xGbE Lan NV F'Wall USB2/1394 8ch Audio

Memory: 1Gb Corsair DDR400/PC3200 128Mx64non-ECC 184 DIMM, unbuffered, CL2, PRO series, L/T Warranty

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200 32/64Bit CPU S939 "Venice" 90nm OEM

GFX: 256MB XFX PCI-E *Extreme* GF7800GT *450 Core 1.05Ghz Mem* (256bit) ViVo 2xDVI

HDD: 120Gb SATA300 Western Digital WD1200JS Caviar SE (7200rpm,8Mb) - NCQ

PSU: 500w Seasonic S12-500 SLi aPFC PSU Silent ATX2.0 2xPCI-E 4xSATA ATX12v-1.3 & ATX12v 2.01

All motherboard lights are green, all temperature and fan sensors are reading good and cool (even the GFX card temperature is way below warning threshold). Tried about 4 different CAS memory timings as I found a post regarding the same issue. Customised all BIOS/CMOS - Reset BIOS/CMOS. Installed latest BIOS update and Chipset/GFX files/drivers.

What do we think then? no BSOD - so it's not software/drivers. PSU? or Memory?

Thanks

Uni

Defcon5 · 5 Feb 2006 at 19:24

what stability tests have you done?

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 19:26

Just running MEMTEST now, could you recommend any others? Over the years I've drifted away from overclocking/benmarking.

Cheers

Defcon5 · 5 Feb 2006 at 19:29

occt, pi 32m, prime95, all the 3dmarks

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 20:51

Prime95 ran OK
OCCT ran OK
Downloading 3DMark2006 (600Mb)
Memtest ran OK for 15 minutes

I swapped out the 1Gb stick for 2x 256Mb PC3200 I had spare and it still crashed. The memory timings are on Auto, and have chosen Cas3 which is fine for the older memory.

Any ideas? could it be when GFX card is using all it's power it drains the power causing a reboot (500W PSU)?

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 20:58

As you can see, I have the ATX connecter connected, the GFX card AUX power and the Asus EZ_PLUG connected. I've tried with and without the EZ_PLUG as it says you must use it for SLi mode.

Would like to get this closed so I can ring tomorrow and ask for a new part.

Defcon5 · 5 Feb 2006 at 21:06

If thats the case it will crash in 3dmark. is anything overheating?

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 21:11

Nope, AsusProbe reports everything OK, from fans, voltages and temps.

I'll run WoW/CoD2 in Window mode and watch the GFX temp in the nVidia Console.

tedmaul · 5 Feb 2006 at 21:15

Might seem slightly obvious, but is it possible that you have the BSOD messages switched off, and that's why you're not seeing them?

I think in a fresh install of XP these messages are off by default, so if your machine crashes it'll just try to restart. You can check this by right clicking My Computer and going to Properties then:

Click the Advanced tab

In the Advanced tab window locate the Start and Recovery section and press the Settings button

When the settings window opens look for the System failure section

Remove the check mark from the Automatically Restart option.

Click OK to Exit

Now see if you can make it crash again and you may find you now get a BSOD with a msg that may help someone diagnose the fault.

Again, apologies if this is something you've already done.

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 21:16

Thanks Ted, but I did that straight after install

I wouldn't want to get into a boot loop and not be able to get the error codes

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 21:20

OK, I'm in World of Warcraft - Maxed settings and windowed mode.

Temps: CPU 40C CASE 38C GFX 50C
Voltages: 12V 11.968 5V 4.919 3.3V 3.296 VCore 1.408

I'll give CoD2 (crasher) a go.

EDIT: Only 732/1024 memory used.

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 21:31

Got it too run COD for about 3 minutes, under 800Mb of memory used, the only difference to above is the GFX Temp went up too about 60C (that I last saw)

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 21:40

CoD2 just crashed when running 1024xbleh

XUniSol · 5 Feb 2006 at 23:33

3DMark06 is spectacular!

Shame it crashed on about the 5th/6th test, I turn my head away for a second and it had gone down - didn't get to see if it had ended.

Tried disabling onboard Nvida LAN and Sound too, no luck

Olly · 6 Feb 2006 at 14:37

deffo psu or ram
have you only got one stick of mem ? or 2x512 ? it might be worth taking one out and trying it, then the other. Also try relaxing your ram timings.
have you got another PSU you could try ?
i dont think its a temp issue