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HELP: Huge computer problems

sportwarrior

sportwarrior

Limp Gawd
2FA
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
311
Alright, so I've been building computers for a good 10-12 years now. I've been through 4 rigs and various upgrades. Never have I had as many problems as I'm having now. I don't even know where to begin.

I build a new rig last August (as seen in my sig). It ran perfectly for a few months. Then I started to notice some hiccups. Games like DoW2 would kick to desktop and then back into the game. That persisted for a month or two. Then games started stuttering. Even Red Alert 3, something that should be easily handled by my hardware, was pausing every few seconds. Then games started freezing. I stopped playing out of frustration and because school was starting to get hectic. Not long after, though, I noticed that only 4 gigs of my 6 gigs of RAM were registering in the BIOS. Through testing I determined that all the sticks are fine, but I could not get my rig to recognize all 6 gigs at once. According to Windows, 2 of the 6 gigs were always "reserved for hardware."

I tried a few solutions... reseating and reshuffling the sticks, reseating the CPU, and began running diagnostics. Everything was fine until I ran some stress tests on the CPU. 2-4 of the cores were always failing the tests. 1-2 would fail right away, and 3-4 total would be down within a few hours of the beginning of the test. I had no time to really try and fix anything, so I just let the rig sit for a while, only using it for papers and web browsing.

Eventually my computer only started detecting 2 gigs of RAM. I had to throttle down the RAM speed to get 4 gigs detected again. A few days later the same thing happened, and I had to throttle down the speed even further to 1066 just to get the sticks detected.

And now my computer is almost unusable. Firefox hangs when loading flash. MKV videos won't even play properly. My computer grinds to a halt when I'm trying to browse My Computer, surf the web, and watch a video at the same time.

I have no idea where to start. I don't have spare parts to swap in and out, so I don't really know how to diagnose issues. Initially I thought my motherboard was going south with the RAM problem, but with these issues getting progressively worse my gut tells me this is either a CPU problem or a PSU problem. I just can't figure out why things are going so badly.

Can anyone please please give me any advice or help or a direction to run in? I'm borderline frantic here. I'm tempted to run out and pick up a PSU for testing purposes, but I don't know if that really is even the most likely problem. Would that be a good place to start?
 
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Your earlier tests alongside the issue of all your RAM not being read does sound like a CPU issue.
 
Yeah. The good news is I've got a no questions asked replacement warranty with MicoCenter. The bad news is MC is like an hour away. Guess I have to make the trek this week before I leave for Europe.

So is it not worth trying another PSU? That didn't seem likely except for the fact that things just keep getting progressively worse and worse. Seemed like that might be indicative of a failing PSU, but I guess I'm way off.
 
It's always worth trying the PSU IMO. So if you want to, go for it. It certainly can't hurt and there is a possibility that I may be wrong.
 
Alright, so I've been in Europe for the past month and a half and only just recently had a chance to do anything with this problem. I replaced the processor with a brand new i7 960 and the same problem persists... I was able to get the ram bumped back up to 1600, but it still is only detecting 4 gigs in the bios. Windows detects 6 but says only 4 are usable. Not sure what the next step is. PSU?
 
Ugh. Something I was afraid of from the start.

Any suggestions on a decent replacement board? I supposed I can get up around $200, but I don't need anything that's going to set speed records. Just something rock solid with some mild OC ability.
 
Looks rock solid. Same price on Amazon, too. A little more than I'd have liked to spend, but in this position I suppose I don't have much of a choice. Any other options out there?
 
@sportwarrior: Has the CPU heatsink been reseated or bumped recently? Some of this conversation reminds me of a past article put out on [H] where about half the RAM of a test system was being detected and other misc issues were occurring, and the root cause was discovered that the CPU heatsink was clamped/screwed down too tightly.
(Haven't found the article yet to link to.)
 
PTNL said:
@sportwarrior: Has the CPU heatsink been reseated or bumped recently? Some of this conversation reminds me of a past article put out on [H] where about half the RAM of a test system was being detected and other misc issues were occurring, and the root cause was discovered that the CPU heatsink was clamped/screwed down too tightly.
(Haven't found the article yet to link to.)
Click to expand...

Strange. I didn't think that was possible.
 
450 said:
Strange. I didn't think that was possible.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I didn't think it was possible either. I think it was Kyle that wrote the article, or at least updated it with the solution. Still can't find the article, but I believe it involved a water cooler block. The OP isn't using water cooling in his/her sig, but I guess an aftermarket cooler could still be tightened down too much.
 
Yeah, I reseated the 930 several times, and then obviously this 960 sort of counts as a reseating. I'll try one more time with a looser seating, but The original problem happened after months of proper functioning. I might try taking out the CM V8 I have in now and just using the stock cooler to see what happens.
 
I know sinks with tight retention and no back plate can cause major issues.
 
The V8 does have a back plate, and it almost certainly isn't too tight. I'll loosen it up a bit just to be sure, but the last seating of the 930 was pretty loose for troubleshooting reasons and the same problem was occurring...
 
Had these exact same issues. Changed motherboards, problem disappeared. YMMV though.

Edit: I had your exact board as well.
 
saedrin said:
Had these exact same issues. Changed motherboards, problem disappeared. YMMV though.

Edit: I had your exact board as well.
Click to expand...

Ugh. I turned it on again today and it was back to detecting 2gigs of RAM. Had to dial everything back again. The fact that you had the same exact board just really kinda puts a nail in the coffin, I guess. I'll try and get some funds together to jump on that ASUS board.
 
Just an update. Went ahead and bought the ASUS. Should be getting here on Tuesday via Amazon. Was tempted to go evga since that's really all I've ever used, but the ASUS' three year warranty won me over. Plus the color scheme. Kinda badass.
 
Well... that didn't quite work either. The old board definitely wasn't running as well as this one... the BIOS now detects the full 6 gigs, but Windows is still only using four. I have run memtest on the sticks individually and everything seemed to check out. I'll give it another go.
 
I'm using 64-bit Windows 7.

I just ran Memtest86 all night. 8 passes, 0 errors. The thing is Memtest only detected 4 gigs of ram as well. I'm gonna reseat the chips and rearrange them to see if that does anything, but this is sort of weird.
 
Update:

I removed the 3rd chip or ram, leaving chips 1 and 2, and tested with a single pass of memtest successfully. Then I replaced chip 2 with chip 3, again successfully testing a single pass. Both times 4 gigs were detected.

Now here's a new bit of info. Before taking out the 3rd chip (aka when all 3 chips were still seated) I checked the BIOS and discovered that only 4 gigs were being detected. I know for certain when I first turned on the computer with the new MB in place that the BIOS was detecting 6. So after testing the two configurations of 4 gigs, I reseated chip 2 in the proper 3rd slot. Now memtest is detecting 6 gigs. I'm running a memtest and have not yet completed the first pass, so I'm not sure how long it will run stable.

What could be causing this considering all chips passed memtest? Still some sort of fault in the ram? Could it be the PSU?

I found this post on another forum. I haven't even touched any overclocking settings, and it's odd to me that any default settings would result in only 4 gigs of the 6 total being detected. I'm gonna try messing around with some of the settings anyway. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
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If you're not running the latest BIOS version, then reading through the change history of the BIOS may be worthwhile.
 
Just thumbed through the revision history and saw that a couple of the updates improved memory compatibility. after a few more passes in memtest I'm gonna go check out my board's current BIOS version and run an update to see where that gets me. I have a hard time believing that will solve a problem that has occurred with fairly common ram on two different boards, but it's definitely worth a shot... assuming, of course, that my board's BIOS isn't a recent version...
 
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