Isnt the powersupply, what could it be?

R

Rabidchickens

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Sep 3, 2004
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Basically my computer at first would crash every 24 hrs or so, due to blue screen.

Then it would crash more often, but it would only reboot after the crash like 1/10 times, the rest of the time the display wouldnt display.

Then it would do the same thing but after one crash, it go to where my desktop shouldve been and just totally artifaced.. black horizontal lines everywhere.

I posted here, and someone suggested that it could be the powersupply just crapping out and messing up the voltages, so I ditched my dell PS and installed a brand new, good 430watt PS

After I install everything it boots on the first try...then when it gets pasted the windows booting screen it gives me the screen with the black horizontal lines then crashes.

So now I know its not a PS problem, i probably needed a new PS anyway, so its all good.

Im thinking its a combination of a the mobo and/or my videocard.

Mobo could be messing up the boot, explaining why most of the time it doesnt boot in one try..

Video Card being fried would explain artifacing..

What do you guys think it is?
 
well...your at hardware swap 101

u need other hardware to test with and it should be reletively easy to find the prob. g'luk
 
dont have any pci-express video cards, or p4 motherboards lol..

I suppose if i buy a video card on newegg and find out thats not the problem I can return it within 30 for a money back guarantee?
 
have you checked cpu temps? overheating is allways a factor.

OH! That reminds me about my brothers videocard. I just sent it back yesterday to newegg because it wouldn't display on startup most of the times and it would artifact and shit in windows and restart. After messing around with it for a hour trying to get it to work it wouldn't display anything at all! so i put in a old fx5200 and volia! everything starts up fine! The weird thing about it was that the card had been working perfectly for 6 months. I know that the videocard was being cooled fine because the stock heatsink was put on with thermal adhesive. It was a x1600pro 256mb ddr2 BTW.
 
Im an athelete part computer nerd, my friends barely know the difference between macs and PCs anyway, im going to try to hold off and save cash until DX10, or maybe ill look into EVGA's stepup program... I need a new card anyway.

Will a 430 Watt hold up with the new cards> Its Thermaltake, and seems like a really quality supply though
 
Could be heat from the cpu running too hot, bad memory(run memtest86), bad motherboard or bad video. Could be other things as well.

One thing I would do is take a look at the motherboard and the video cards caps. See if they are flat on the top or if they are going bad.

http://www.motherboardrepair.com/images/BE6II_bad_caps_1.jpg
http://www.motherboardrepair.com/images/msi-withbadcaps.jpg
http://www.motherboardrepair.com/images/BadCaps2.jpg

Third pic does a pretty good job showing them.
See how some of the caps are poping up at the top. That is a sign of bad caps. See if you have any bad ones on your motherboard or video card. They could cause the issue you are having.
 
well you didnt give us too much to go on here? I take it the rig is made by Dell? How old is it? It would be a good idea to check the caps. I have personally seen several Dells do this. Hope your Dell is under warranty if this is the case.

I see in the limited system specs in your sig that your graphics card is overclocked. Have you tried resetting your card to normal factory clocks.

Theres lots of stuff you could try before just rushing out and buying new hardware. Windows reformat? Run memtest? ;)
 
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