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I'm beyond frustrated at this point in time. I have had major hardware failures for years now, and have always chalked it up to bad luck. I've built dozens of systems for others that have stood the test of time, yet I've had to rebuild my main system from scratch around once a year. Motherboard failures, power supply failures, video cards, and stacks and stacks of hard drives. Thank god for my file server backup. While I realize that some hardware failures have been caused by faulty equipment (mostly the motherboard and the video cards... RMA city...) the sheer number of failures is simply infuriating. I'm really starting to suspect a systemic cause, but I'm at a loss of how to go about determining what it is without wasting more money on "guinea pig" parts.
I just had one disk in my stripe fail while in the midst of playing Diablo 3. The game stuttered for a moment, an odd grinding sound came from the speakers, and returned to normal. This happened repeatedly on and off getting progressively worse until a complete lockup occurred culminating in a BSOD and a disk failure on the next POST. CPU cores held steady at 58 degrees avg, and my GPU was at 55 at the time. I'm including this description in case this is an odd presentation of a hard drive failure. I have encountered this phenomenon with failed main drives before be they in an array or stand alone.
So, I'm replacing the hard drives and the only components that weren't replaced in the last build. The power supply, my UPS, and the SATA backplane in my case. I'm really down to 3 possible culprits here:
1). The power supply could have been faulty, and causing a bunch of these failed devices, especially the hard drives. However, the power supply has been replaced at least twice before in this rash of hardware failures, so I'm hesitant to solidly blame the psu.
2). I've had this UPS for several years now. It has been yelling at me recently that the battery is dead. I've had this battery backup at least as long as most of these issues. I have a stronger feeling about that being the weak link than the psu, but I'm unsure if that could really be the cause.
3) I have a dedicated power line to my main computer station direct from my breaker. Only my main desktop and its peripherals are connected to it. I have tested the voltage and the ground before, and it seems to be alright. The UPS was supposed to indicate when a power issue was detected. If the UPS is also not functioning correctly, however, perhaps there is an issue with the power line after all?
With all of that information, what else should I be looking for? How else can I test my power line, and do any of my symptoms and precautions make any sense? If anyone has any kind of idea as to what could be happening, or what can be done, I'd gladly consider it.
I'm tired of the computers I build for everyone else lasting for years, yet mine disintegrate like sand castles. I recently estimated having spent a good $8000 in hardware in the last 4 years alone. I wish I had built an $8000 machine in one shot instead.
Thanks in advance.
I just had one disk in my stripe fail while in the midst of playing Diablo 3. The game stuttered for a moment, an odd grinding sound came from the speakers, and returned to normal. This happened repeatedly on and off getting progressively worse until a complete lockup occurred culminating in a BSOD and a disk failure on the next POST. CPU cores held steady at 58 degrees avg, and my GPU was at 55 at the time. I'm including this description in case this is an odd presentation of a hard drive failure. I have encountered this phenomenon with failed main drives before be they in an array or stand alone.
So, I'm replacing the hard drives and the only components that weren't replaced in the last build. The power supply, my UPS, and the SATA backplane in my case. I'm really down to 3 possible culprits here:
1). The power supply could have been faulty, and causing a bunch of these failed devices, especially the hard drives. However, the power supply has been replaced at least twice before in this rash of hardware failures, so I'm hesitant to solidly blame the psu.
2). I've had this UPS for several years now. It has been yelling at me recently that the battery is dead. I've had this battery backup at least as long as most of these issues. I have a stronger feeling about that being the weak link than the psu, but I'm unsure if that could really be the cause.
3) I have a dedicated power line to my main computer station direct from my breaker. Only my main desktop and its peripherals are connected to it. I have tested the voltage and the ground before, and it seems to be alright. The UPS was supposed to indicate when a power issue was detected. If the UPS is also not functioning correctly, however, perhaps there is an issue with the power line after all?
With all of that information, what else should I be looking for? How else can I test my power line, and do any of my symptoms and precautions make any sense? If anyone has any kind of idea as to what could be happening, or what can be done, I'd gladly consider it.
I'm tired of the computers I build for everyone else lasting for years, yet mine disintegrate like sand castles. I recently estimated having spent a good $8000 in hardware in the last 4 years alone. I wish I had built an $8000 machine in one shot instead.
Thanks in advance.
