• 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.

Help needed: What else could be causing these random crashes?

C

chockomonkey

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Oct 11, 2003
Messages
8,439
I've done my best to isolate this problem, and was led to believe it was the motherboard, so i RMA'd it. Had stability for 2 weeks, and now issues return. The notes from the RMA were ambiguous, i'm not really sure if they replaced it or just tested it for 24 hours and then gave the same board back... anyway, now i want some more eyes on this problem, maybe i'm completely missing something.

here's the hardware in question:

BIOSTAR A780L3L AM3 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
PowerColor AX5770 1GBD5-H Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W
AMD Athlon II X2 250 Regor 3.0GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 1333 F3-10666CL9S-4GBRL

here's the problem:

Random instability. I'll set up the bios and it'll run fine for X amount of time. X is always variable. Post RMA, it worked for 2 weeks straight, then started crashing (sometimes it throws up a BSOD (always a different one), sometimes the video just goes squirley and it freezes, sometimes it will just go to a black screen and freezes).

When it crashes, it loses any ability to function until you completely reset the CMOS. I mean that if you just try to reset the bios setting or just try to turn it off and turn it back on, you'll will most certainly get a crash within 5 minutes, and it will likely even crash in the bios or while trying to boot up. But if you clear the CMOS, then you have more stability for another X amount of time.

What i've tried:

I swapped each hardware component one at a time. I had this computer and another known working one, so this was pretty easy. I removed the GPU and let it use its onboard. I swapped the ram out with the other computer's. I swapped the CPU's. Then i swapped the PSU's. I even threw in a new HDD and re-installed windows to rule that out.

So the ONLY original item left in the computer which continued to crash was the motherboard, which is why i sent it in for RMA.

As i said in the opening paragraph, i'm not sure if they gave me the same one back or not. I have an email out to them inquiring.

But i'm also asking you guys if i've missed anything crucial in trying to isolate this crashing problem. I hope i haven't just overlooked something obvious and caused a bunch of headache, but you never know until someone points it out.

Thanks for your time, [H], dunno what I'd do without y'all.
 
Last edited:
I think you've got it nailed: It could be just bad luck on your end and you got a bad mobo. With that said, just to be clear:

Even with every single part other than the mobo replaced at the same time, the PC still crashes correct? Key word is "same time".
 
^^ yes indeed. I didn't put any of the parts back in the crashing computer after testing them in the working one.

So before i RMA'd, the crashing computer was still crashing with different ram, hdd, psu, cpu, and gpu (onboard instead of card) all at the same time.

I must have been unlucky! (or, biostar gave me back the same board because they tested it for 24 hours and it didn't crash in that amount of time)
 
What happened when you used your current parts with the other motherboard? Did the PC work fine then?
 
Yea, to speed up the process i had both computers running at the same time. (so that i could see the crash move to the other computer with the component i most recently swapped)

So the cpu, ram, gpu, and psu that i removed from the crashing computer were working just fine together with the mobo and hdd from the test computer.
 
How long were you running the PCs for before your main PC started crashing?
 
Umm, longer than 10 mintues, less than an hour likely. I'd start skyrim on both computers and let the camera rotate around the character while i'd go do other stuff. I did all this testing over like 2 evening.

So i'd return to the room, notice my main pc had frozen. turn everything off and swap another part out--rinse and repeat--until i ran out of parts to swap. During this whole process i never had one of the LONG spurts of stability.
 
chockomonkey said:
So i'd return to the room, notice my main pc had frozen. turn everything off and swap another part out--rinse and repeat--until i ran out of parts to swap. During this whole process i never had one of the LONG spurts of stability.
Click to expand...
Try a different motherboard then.
 
finally got a response from biostar, all they did was update the bios, reset the cmos, and then test for 24-hours. I guessed they missed the part where it would work fine for awhile :( Sooo annoying.

For checking the battery voltage, is there a certain voltage that all mobo's use or will i have to look into the manual for what voltage this battery should be for this mobo?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top