Incredibly frustrating system.

[joemadeus]

This post is long, but I really can't figure this out and I think I've tried everything. I built this machine back in June, and I haven't ever been able to use it for gaming. Every time I start something that leans on the video card at all it freezes; I've never been able to get more than 1/2 way through the first scene on 3DMark05. Some symptoms, in no particular order:
* It's not related to temperature. It fails just as often now that the ambient is around 65f as it did in the middle of summer, when the ambient was 95f. The CPU temperature never rises above 65c, which is just fine for a Pentium M chip.
* It's more or less random. Sometimes I can play Rome:Total War for three hours straight, sometimes I'm hitting the reset button five minutes in (and if it fails within five minutes, it KEEPS failing within five minutes every time I restart -- except if it goes for three hours straight. 'Bimodal' is the word of the day.)
* I sometimes get colored, vertical lines at the top of the screen; sometimes not.
* The machine keeps playing the final 'frame' of whatever music, sound, etc. was playing when the machine froze.
* I can't up the FSB speed, even by 1MHz. The moment I try it freezes the machine and resets the BIOS to default settings.
* The laser in my optical mouse is no longer lit (USB model)

System:
* Pentium 4 mobile #760, 2.0GHz, no overclocking with a ThermalTake Volcano 10 heatsink (all copper) and an 80mm fan
* AOpen i915GMm-HFS motherboard (desktop; see http://usa.aopen.com/Products/mb/i915gmm-hfs.htm )
* OCZ DDR-II RAM, 1Gb @ PC4200, stock 3-3-3-8 timings (see http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_el_ddr_pc_4200_platinum )
* Gigabyte 6600GT video card in the PCIe 16x slot; stock cooler and no overclocking (see http://www.giga-byte.com/VGA/Products/Products_GV-NX66T128D.htm )
* Antec Phantom-350 power supply (350w, 30A on +5v, 16A and 18A on 12v1& 12v2, see http://www.antec.com/specs/Phantom350_spe.html )
* Two Hitachi/IBM SATA-II 7.2k drives, 80Gb/-
* Sony DVD-R+/- drive (DRW26A, I think?)
* Hauppage PVR-150 (see http://www.hauppage.com/pages/products/data_pvr150.html )
* X-Qpack case (why I put this system in this absolutely terrible case is beyond me)
* Running W2k, SP4 w/DX 9.0c. I can send a DXDiag (or anything else, for that matter), if you like.

The vid card is PCIe, so sideband messaging and fast writes don't come into play. Case temps never get above 35C; CPU temps never get above 65Cand I'm not sure about the GPU temp. I have a thermistor stuck in the vent side of the cooler and it never goes above 50C.

Some things I've tried, none of which have worked. Except for the NB heatsink install, I reverted to the previous setting after each:
* Installed these graphics drivers, using drivercleaner properly between each install: 67.03, 71.89, 77.72, 77.76, 80.40 (Guru3D's 80.40 is the currently installed version)
* Swapped in a new ATI X700, using drivercleaner to remove the old NVidia video drivers, then installed the latest ATI drivers from their site
* Put in a 420w power supply with (supposedly) 35A on its single 12v rail
* Replaced the stock, crummy northbridge heatsink with a Swiftech sink (see http://www.swiftnets.com/products/mcx159-CU.asp )
* Upped the nb voltage to 1.5
* Downed the multiplier and FSB speed
* Undervolted the CPU (overvolting isn't possible with this mb/bios)
* Enabled/disabled speedstep (mobile chip in a desktop form factor)
* Tried various mb BIOS revisions
* Ran memtest86 four times, no problems
* Ran the Hitachi drive fitness test, no problems
* Reinstalled the CPU heatsink/fan assembly
* Removed the case cover and put a 14" house fan, aimed downwards, on top of the system
* In Rome:Total War, changed the prefs so the game doesn't lean so hard on the video card (it fails just as often with the 'light' GPU settings as it does with everything turned up to its most intense.)
* Updated from windows media 7 to 9 to 10
* Forced pixel shader 1.4 and vertex shader 1.1
* Updated the VGA BIOS (just came out on Friday)
* Used the 'high performance' settings for DX and OpenGL filtering
* Forced wait while blitting
* Conducted an exorcism.

The 6600GT doesn't have a PCIe connector on it; I wonder if the mb is delivering enough power to it. Then again, I'm pretty much out of clues. I've also sent the motherboard back to AOpen, where they supposedly fixed a few things and sent it back (I'm still unclear on what they changed.) This is incredibly frustrating. Suggestions?


-j

 

[Sniper_Merc]

Sounds power related to me, try another power supply, something 400 watt or above.

 

[joemadeus]

Sounds power related to me, try another power supply, something 400 watt or above.

How high would you go? I tried a 420w but that thing failed, too (failed faster, actually, but that psu was pretty bad.)


-j

 

[QuimZ]

First of all, sorry to hear you've been toughing it out like this since June.

The first thing I'd do is get a solid power supply in that box and see what happens. Try something like those Silverstone 520w PSU's for SFF systems, they use them in the falcon fragbox. It might cost more but it's got some amps to it, and it should last you a long time.

I'm not familiar with that Antec 350w you're running, but I have an Antec Smartpower 2 350w that didn't like the BFG 6600GT i had it hooked up to. Every once in a while the card would slow itself down because it wasn't getting enough power, but I had 3 hd's, 2 opticals, 3 fans, cold cathodes and everything else hooked up to it at the same time, so that could have been my problem. I did have it freeze up on me under heavy load a few times, while I was gaming.

If that doesn't work, I'd start disecting that sucker.

 

[BigBadBiologist]

65C is pretty hot for a P-M CPU, but I think your mobo may be flakey as this review of your mobo points out the same thing:
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=pm915&page=5

They also seem to have FSB adjustment issues.

At first this seemed to be a power supply issue, but I think you may have just gotten a crappy mobo. I would try a PCI video card and see if your system still freaks out.

 

[joemadeus]

65C is pretty hot for a P-M CPU, but I think your mobo may be flakey as this review of your mobo points out the same thing:
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=pm915&page=5

They also seem to have FSB adjustment issues.

At first this seemed to be a power supply issue, but I think you may have just gotten a crappy mobo. I would try a PCI video card and see if your system still freaks out.

That article is one of the ones that made me want one of the mobos At the time it looked like the performance was good, but used less than a third of the power and generated a lot less heat than the other P4s. Since I had been running a noisy machine forever, the idea of a quiet, low power machine that I could still use to play games was really attractive. It's definitely quiet, it just doesn't play games (yet.)

One of the first things I did when I got this mb is toss the stock heatsink and mod a thermaltake, all copper heat sink to fit. The temps I see are around 40C at idle, and around 62C when running Prime95. These are about on-par with what I've read on the SilentPCReview & AOpen forums, when someone has put a good quality heatsink on there (the temps are obscene when running with the stock heatsink.) I'm pretty sure that the temp sensor is different from those that you see in the Prescotts et al. I mean, this thing dissapates 35W when running full-tilt; compare that to 85W for a 640 and 115W for a 650+ -- how could it get that hot, for so many people, including those that have modded Zalman 7000B's to fit? I'm pretty sure this is measuring on-die (versus on heat spreader?) temps.

I also suspect a bad mb -- but I can't rule out the psu. So many people have suggested the power supply that I have to try reducing the power load and retesting. The PCI video card is a good idea, too. If I can't get it running with reduced load I think it's time to RMA the board (again.)

Thanks, bigbad -- much appreciated.


-j

 

[joemadeus]

I just opened it up and disconnected the second hard drive, the cdrom, the card reader, the front temperature display (lcd) and the rear fan (120mm), and removed the tv tuner card, and got exactly the same result. I don't think it's the power supply.

I called AOpen and their cross-shipping a new board to me. Let's hope this one works.

Thanks, everyone, for your input. We'll see how the new board goes (when it arrives.)


-'later,
-j