Completely Stumped by my neighbor's comp...

A

AznAnarchy99

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 18, 2005
Messages
1,187
first off specs are..

Intel 3.2E
ECS PT800-A
Corsair Value Ram 512
ATI Radeon 9600 XT
some phillips sound card
PowMax 400 watt psu

ok this is my neighbors comp. When i first built it for him everything ran fine until the 3rd day. Everygame he played would freeze after a few minutes of playing... cs1.6... war3... cs source... all of the steam games... First it was limited to those games.. and as of late its been starting in other games, Call of Duty.. even when watching videos or running nothing but ventrilo. The comp would just freeze.. no noise no nothing.. only way is to turn it off from the back. Ive tried everything with it, reformat, drivers, i even put my x800 in to see if it was the card, and it even froze with my x800. At first i thought it might have been the psu.. i bought another psu, antec, and the same thing happened... Im thinking memory or motherboard.. does anyone have any suggestions?
 
i had a problem like that, it ended up being the ram. run memtest for a day and see. even if its not the symptoms of failing ram its worth a shot.
 
Although, you tested the PSU. I'd still have him get a different PSU, before that one blows killing everything.

As for memory, download memtest and run it for a while.
 
I noticed you already mentioned memtest. Memtest86+ has a CD ISO you can download.
 
memtest said memory was perfectly fine, tried putting my memory in, still froze... its either the mobo, hd, or cpu... could it be the cpu? it idles at 50 but i dont know what it peaks at..Asus has the utility but would that work on a ECS?
 
If you ever see a "Free Mainboard" with a CPU combo, odds are they're giving away an ECS w/it. Check for leaky caps and what not, but I'd just replace it. You can make a very nice step up and grab an MSI PT880-NeoFISR board for about $65 shipped from Zipzoomfly or similar at the Egg.

 
replaced the psu with a 350 antec already... but i also bought the same cpu/mobo combo and sold the mobo and the guy told me it worked fine.. cpu temps would be much easier to fix = (
 
make sure the cpu fan/heatsink isn't on backward.........i've done it myself....and it will produce the symptoms you describe...
 
UPDATE

tried adding a ATI Silencer 2, didnt work
Tried using different thermal paste and refitting the heatsink.. didnt work

ive tried almost everything...

When i check the CPU in BIOS right after it freezes it reads 50 - 55C

anymore suggestions?
 
oh yea, ran Mem test, came back fine, even replaced the stick with my stick and it still froze
 
you have the same mobo or one with same socket? swap cpu's. sounds like you've ruled out a lot, but not the cpu. changing hs/fan and verifying temp doesn't rule it out completely.
 
AznAnarchy99 said:
UPDATE

tried adding a ATI Silencer 2, didnt work
Tried using different thermal paste and refitting the heatsink.. didnt work

ive tried almost everything...

When i check the CPU in BIOS right after it freezes it reads 50 - 55C

anymore suggestions?
Click to expand...

edit.....was thinking you had an AMD processor....

Have you tried a new Hard drive...just had one do the same thing.....new hard drive...problem gone......Also...try running with out the sound card......I actually had one with a network card that had similiar issues....temp went up comp locked up.
 
XSNiper said:
Reinstall your drivers, check for viruses.
Click to expand...

reformatted a while back, solved nothing

Quote:
Originally Posted by AznAnarchy99
UPDATE

tried adding a ATI Silencer 2, didnt work
Tried using different thermal paste and refitting the heatsink.. didnt work

ive tried almost everything...

When i check the CPU in BIOS right after it freezes it reads 50 - 55C

anymore suggestions?
Click to expand...

edit.....was thinking you had an AMD processor....

Have you tried a new Hard drive...just had one do the same thing.....new hard drive...problem gone......Also...try running with out the sound card......I actually had one with a network card that had similiar issues....temp went up comp locked up.
Click to expand...

i had the system without a sound card before and it didnt work, hard will take alot of work.. reformatting and all but will do later
 
back from the dead...

recently tried another format. Worked for a few mins during game, then system rebooted itself, and sent a windows error report. Came back saying it was a driver problem. Tried playing another game and crashed, this time error message came during boot, It was like hardware failure, call hardware vendor. Im begining to think that this is a problem with the cheap ECS mobo..
 
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