Recommendation for Troubleshooting

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LordNightwinter

n00b
Joined
May 15, 2006
Messages
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Greetings and Salutations on my first [H]ard|Forum post. Need a little help.

I have a PC that I built (essentially) out of scraps.
Specs:
P4 1.8 Prescott (Dynatron heatsink/fan)
L4VXA2 MBD by ECS Elitegroup
Corsair Valueselect VS512MB400 x2 1gig of 400mhz ram
3 HDD's (80,40,200, one of them on an ATA133 card)
Sapphiretech Radeon 9800 Atlantis
1 DVD Drive
Power Up! 400w Power Supply
all in an X-Dreamer2 case.

The problem I am having is that hmonitor and MBM5 are both reporting low voltage and high heat on the pc. For the voltage I tried disconnecting all non-essential devices and throwing a lower grade of ram in it but that didn't help much. I tried another PSU I had laying around but I think that one is fried. Not sure on it though, that may be the overheating problem. But after a while the CPU goes up to 74 degrees. I'm about to yank the heatsink off and apply some new thermal grease but does anyone have any other thoughts?
 
You could be getting bogus data from MBM. Is the machine running fine? 70c is scorching hot for a CPU. Prescotts are known to run hot though but I thought they started at a higher frequency than 1.8 ghz.
 
No it's not running fine. I get random reboots, complete black screen and when I do get a dump it's random. I've never gotten the same dll/driver/file twice from the debugger. Sometimes it can't even tell me what file. I was sure it was the ram but now I'm not so sure because I used a known good stick in it and got the same problem.

I'm having my ram RMA'd anyway just in case but I still get high temps, low voltage and restarts galore. It can't even play diablo 2 without rebooting and that my friends is sad. Woe to me if I start playing Doom3 or Oblivion.

I'm not truely sure if it's the processor, power supply or something else. But I have another PC that's been doing the same temp-wise and black screen reboot. I've ruled out viruses and such because it's a clean rebuild with a full scan and diagnostics.
 
never trust software voltage reading - check them with a multimeter. As for high temperature - try touching the heatsink.. you'll easily feel the difference between 70 C and lets say 50 C. I might be some bad readings.. but it won't hurt to reseat the HSF and reapply some decent thermal paste..
 
I would agree with the others on the temp readings and the board being off. Are the pcs sitting in a cabinet or anything or are they out in the open? Have you always had reboots or is it something that just started. Any big storms lately or maybe something with the power in your house?
 
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