• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Electrical problems (Shorts)

T

The_Eye

n00b
Joined
Jun 30, 2008
Messages
8
First of all hi to you all,
I'm new here but I read you since a long time, expecially on case-modding.
I'm here to you for help and I hope you ahve some ideas on my problem that is running me mad.

I'm here after 12 days of testing, so there are really few things that I can do more but anyway, let's start (this will be a long one):

My PC is in sig, the case it's a CM Stacker 832.
Originally all was seated in an Enermax Case (old one, miditower with a flower-like side window and all was going well except for hig temperatures (main reason for case-switch).

Unmounted carefully all the stuff down to pieces, prepared the Stacker, extracted mobo-tray, electrically grounded myself.

Carefully put the standoffs in place (9 of them in right positions), seated the backplate for the Striker.
Assembled all the things correctly (from optical drives to floppy, HDs, boards, etc).
Fired up the system and started to have random lockups.
Random means: inside the OS (Genuine Vista Enterprise x64), during OS loading, in BIOS, at POST screen (with ROG logo) or while entering the BIOS screen ("Entering setup..." stays on forever).
So i thought to RAMs: tested with Memtest, last version and on another PC. All is good.
Reseated the CPU and HSF.
Tested the PSU, exchanged with a spare one, same behaviour.
Test VGAs, one at a time, tried even wih a third one (6600GT), no way.
Tried with and without Audio card, no dice.
Checked without optical drives, without floppy, with only one HD (all three of them tested on other machines), all useless....

Then I assembled all the stuff out of the tray, on the mobo box (cardboard I think), full components... ALL WORKS GREAT!!!
So I thought "there should be a short!", yep but where?

I tried the impossible, assembled/unassembled almost 50 times (really), put insulated washers above the mobo holes, underneath the hole, even two per hole (one above one under).
I taped with insulated tape (rubber one) the backplate opening of the tray, I tried without the backplate itself.
I checked every single inch of the tray where it could touch the mobo without success...
I started weird tries: with PSU inside the case frame and mobo on the tray pulled out, with PSU ouside and tray inside, with both outside, with drives inside and outside the case.

Actually I have this set-up: mobo with boards (full system) on the tray placed on the desk, drives on the same desk, psu on a CPU box: system hangs.
If I put the system out of the tray and on the mobo box all is good (14 hours of prime, playing games, working and surfing the web, looking movies, listening music, etc...).
If I put the system inside the old Enermax case all is good again (same as above).
If I put it back inside the Stacker tray it hangs, somewhere, everywhere with any configuration.
Obviously I tried either laid down on the side or vertically, inside and outside the case-frame.

I tried even another mobo (P5K) inside this damn tray and "it seems to work" (not tested extensively... yes I have a life too :p).

Lastly the Striker is starting to do even weirder things inside the tray: at start it enters an "hard reset loop" with DVD blinking, Black screen, self reset and DVD starts blinking again and so on. Then it magically awakens from the loop and enters automatically the BIOS saying "chassis Intruded" (I do not have any intrusion sensor installed) so I think it sees an unpredicted high voltage somewhere around and interpretates it as a fake signal from an unpresent sensor...

Please guys, help me!
 
Wow. All I can say is ... wow. That's a serious ghost you've got in your machine. Here's a question, have you checked the IO port shield to make sure none of the grounding tabs are going into the port when you install it? Try putting the motherboard into the case without the IO shield in place, and only use one or 2 screws to install it, and test again. At least you might be able to eliminate a single screw hole this way that's got an exposed trace in the screw hole.

Another possibility is that you have a cold solder joint or broken trace somewhere near a screw hole and when you tighten that screw up it flexes the motherboard ever so slightly and just enough to cause a poor signal path. My advice is probably to RMA the board and say it doesn't work. Sometimes it's just not something you did, or can do anything about.
 
Thank you for the kind reply.
Yes, as I stated in the first post, I already tried to start up the system without the backplate (I/O shield). The one where USB, 1394, LANs are.
 
The_Eye said:
...I tried without the backplate itself.
Click to expand...

So you did. Must have skipped over it without realizing what you said. Only other thing I can think of is heating... if the board is flexed ever so slightly it might affect the mating of the power regulator and northbridge heatsinks.
 
Thanks again.
Let's say one more thing: CPU cooler is the CM GeminII, so it's a large one and the board, when unscrewed from the older case, has been visibly curved by the heavy-weight load.
Anyway it COULD BE a good hint only if I didn't tried the board back in the old case where, secured with full 9 screws, it works flawlessly with only the major issue of heat.
As you probably know Nvidia's nFroce 780i SLI is a hot one and the fanless heatpipe layout of the Striker 2 makes it run considerably hot (in the range of 60°C idle, 70-75°C loaded) and testing inside or outside the tray I always obtain the same temperatures. I do have higher temperatures but in the old Enermax case, where system is stable but dangerously hot (so I decided to buy a full alu case with good ventilation as the Stacker is supposed to be).

The only visible difference between the two cases is that Enermax has brass standoffs, Stacker has aluminum ones (if it does matters...)

I know this problem could sound impossible but these are the facts and they are driving me mad
 
Sounds like a good theory. You could try screwing in stand offs outside of the case with a screw on each hold and see when/if it breaks. If not, it could be board flexing, versus a screw shorting something, which I really doubt.

Sounds like a fun trouble shooting problem :)
 
Yep I can try, and probably I will (in minutes...), but again I don't see the point because I tried to screw the board with two insulating washers per-hole: one between board and screw, one between standoff and board. So it should be completely insulated from standoffs that way...
 
Ok, briefly tried on the standoffs+screws on the mobo box (so no tray involved this time).
First boot: reset loop with BIOS asserting chassis (???) has been intruded or "previously tempered"... the OS booted normally, tried Prime for about 5 to 7 minutes with no issues other than the X-Fi not recognized (it saw a "Multimedia Audio Controller" but wasn't able to properly initialize it).
Second boot: normal boot, again no audio available.
Tried to reseat the X-Fi.
Third boot: reset loop (this time longer), chassis intruded, BIOS reads CPU temp as -9°C (negative!), MoBo temp as -1°C (negative too!), reads no fan activity (but all fan were spinning correctly), Voltage Monitor states that +3.3V was way over 4V, +5V higher that 7V and 12V in the range of 16V...
Fourth boot: all normal, BIOS reads all correct data.
Tested another audio card reseating.
Fifth boot: same as third boot (weird data and behaviour).

I'm starting to consider RMAing the board.... ideas?
 
I'll try to bring back the mobo to the shop to let them have some test on it, maybe is a matter of voltage regulators.
I'm not so sure sure anymore the case is the main problem...
 
FYI, in case you are interested the mobo resulted faulty (either it was from the beginning or it resulted because of those electrical issues) and has been submitted for RMA.
 
I hope that does the trick... that sounds like a nasty situation. Good luck!
 
Problem solved, new mobo (P5K Premium P35), all is good now. It was clearly the ground line inside the Striker...
 
Glad you got it sorted out. :) Electrical problems with circuit boards are a pain to troubleshoot. I usually decide on RMA after about 2 hrs of troubleshooting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top