Is My Mobo Dying?

R

Raze1

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 13, 2002
Messages
100
- My old rig (see sig) started stuttering, i'd freeze with and w/out sound loop in games (l4d).

- This progressed to worse including freezes and hangups and freeups during just websurfing. For example, i'd browse a forum and everything including the cursor would freeze for 2-10 seconds, then resume. This would sometimes resume forever, otherdays i'd be fine.

- I ran av/updated all drivers/etc and nothing improved.

- I thought I narrowed it down to either the 750TX PSU not giving consistent juice...or my brand new 4890. I took out the 4890 and swapped back in the old 380W antec PSU. The stuttering is still there with the onboard HD3300. (yes i uninstalled and reinstalled cats)

- Also, my video card or ram use is acting up now which is a new problem. I can barely watch youtube videos smoothly and bootup time takes forever. Also, copying a small file (100mb or so) from 1 partition to another partition takes 18+ minutes! (I only have 1 HDD). So great my RAM is acting up too? Should I buy new SATA cables?

- Moreover, now a new problem has surfaced which involves my DVD drive (WTF?). Basically, out of no where it'll start clicking and clicking and eventually the drive letter disappears from my computer. I tried to fix that by swapping SATA plugs on my mobo and diff SATA power plugs and neither changes anything. Either i boot up windows with it never showing up, or it does, then eventually disappears (as if it disabled AND uninstalled itself).

I reallyyyy don't wanna reinstall windows but my HW is all generally new (less than 1 year) and I don't wanna RMA my vidcard and PSU if I'm not 100% certain its HW failure.

Any ideas?

- I'm realllyyyyyyyy putting off reformatting windows but is this my last resort? I don't see any busted capacitors on the mobo so I have no idea what to do next other than reformat.
 
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wow, idk what to say..have you tried running a mem test for the ram? if not you prob should..also not sure about the dvd burner..maybe its just dying..dont think the psu is bad..or the motherboard..try swapping out ram if you can aswell see what happens..or pull out a stick and use it with 1 then try the other see if one is defective if you dont have another set of ram to test
 
How can I test the HDD w/out a spare one? Everything is so slow, even audio in winamp soundsa TAD sluggish. I've just about thrown in the towel on this one.

Also, there's a molex plug on the mobo near the cpu and near where a vid card would go, but I never plugged it in. My mobo still boots w/it plugged in or not and the manual says its to power the on board video card. I figured it wouldn't boot without it but it does, and plugging it in or not (tried several molexes) doesn't do anything. I thought that was odd.
13-138-130-04.jpg

U can see the molex below the big copper heatsink. It's labeled JATXPWR1 but like I said nothing is different with it plugged in or not.
 
Well I took off the case, swapped the 4890 back in and also the 750tx psu, reseated all the plugs and everything is working normally now. I just played L4D2 demo flawlessly. I guess the ram or something was loose. That 4890 sure is f'ing heavy and only held on by 2 screws....perhaps I need to buy a piece of wood to support the weight or something.
 
That card keeper looks good, but I don't think it'll fit with the huge capacitor near the top of my 4890

sapphire_radeon_hd_4890_vapor_x.jpg
 
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