Stumped...Could use some help...

A

Aielman

n00b
Joined
Sep 27, 2005
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53
I'm having a frustrating problem with a system I just put together for the wife.

It's doing completely random restarts...generally only once a day at an irregular interval, but tonight it happened 3 times within 5 minutes.

There is no real rhyme or reason to it. It's happened at complete idle, and it's happened when running low impact programs like AIM and Windows explorer. It's shut down during gaming as well. The machine just snap reboots.

It's almost like you hit the reset button...just goes down completely and then immediately posts and starts back up. No pause at all. In fact it shuts off faster than hitting the reset.

When it comes back up, there are no Windows errors in the event viewer at all. I don't think it's heat because it's an instant restart...in my experience, an overheated CPU takes at least a few seconds to cool down before it will let you restart.

I've been running the Asus tool Probe II and it shows 52C max, with my external sensor from my fan controller showing 48C. Probe also shows rock steady voltages...Vcore @ 1.34v with no fluctuation...+3.3v @ 3.41v with no fluctuation...+5.0v fluctuating between 5.11v to 5.13v...+12v fluctuating between 12.12v to 12.16v. Alerts are set to +/-5% and they've never been tripped according to the log.

I ran Memtest86+ for 8 hours, cycling through all 10 tests for 48 passes last night, with no errors. I've used Rightmark's CPUtest, RAM test, Memory Stability Test, Memory Analyzer, and Multi-Threaded Memory Test, and nada. Everything is running as it should. I'm stumped.

I'm running an e6300 on the Asus P5NSLI board with the stock cooler, a BFG Fuzion 7600GT, 2 x 1024 of OCZ Gold eXtreme XTC Edition DDR2-667, 2 SATA (36G raptor system and 320G Caviar aps) drives and using a PC Power&Cooling Turbocool 510 SLI. Everything new out of the box.

The biggest problem is that, except for tonight, it's really infrequent...only once a day either in the morning or evening...and no one type of program seems to trigger it. It's also frustrating because nothing seems to show that there is any problem...and I don't have anything to log behavior of every device it could be.

Any ideas?

peace,
Aielman
 
Do you have a UPS unit? Did you change the setting so your system doesnt reboot automatically on a BSOD?
 
No ups on this system yet...just surge suppression...and I've swapped that out twice.

peace,
Aielman
 
Have you flashed the latest BIOS?

Those are all quality parts. I can't find a weak spot so I am thinking power out of the wall too. I think every high end system should be on an UPS regardless so I have no problem recommending you get one of adequaate size and high quality for that rig.
 
Aielman said:
I'm having a frustrating problem with a system I just put together for the wife.

It's doing completely random restarts...generally only once a day at an irregular interval, but tonight it happened 3 times within 5 minutes.

There is no real rhyme or reason to it. It's happened at complete idle, and it's happened when running low impact programs like AIM and Windows explorer. It's shut down during gaming as well. The machine just snap reboots.

It's almost like you hit the reset button...just goes down completely and then immediately posts and starts back up. No pause at all. In fact it shuts off faster than hitting the reset.

When it comes back up, there are no Windows errors in the event viewer at all. I don't think it's heat because it's an instant restart...in my experience, an overheated CPU takes at least a few seconds to cool down before it will let you restart.

I've been running the Asus tool Probe II and it shows 52C max, with my external sensor from my fan controller showing 48C. Probe also shows rock steady voltages...Vcore @ 1.34v with no fluctuation...+3.3v @ 3.41v with no fluctuation...+5.0v fluctuating between 5.11v to 5.13v...+12v fluctuating between 12.12v to 12.16v. Alerts are set to +/-5% and they've never been tripped according to the log.

I ran Memtest86+ for 8 hours, cycling through all 10 tests for 48 passes last night, with no errors. I've used Rightmark's CPUtest, RAM test, Memory Stability Test, Memory Analyzer, and Multi-Threaded Memory Test, and nada. Everything is running as it should. I'm stumped.

I'm running an e6300 on the Asus P5NSLI board with the stock cooler, a BFG Fuzion 7600GT, 2 x 1024 of OCZ Gold eXtreme XTC Edition DDR2-667, 2 SATA (36G raptor system and 320G Caviar aps) drives and using a PC Power&Cooling Turbocool 510 SLI. Everything new out of the box.

The biggest problem is that, except for tonight, it's really infrequent...only once a day either in the morning or evening...and no one type of program seems to trigger it. It's also frustrating because nothing seems to show that there is any problem...and I don't have anything to log behavior of every device it could be.

Any ideas?

peace,
Aielman
Click to expand...

Look for any bulging capacitors....that could be the problem. Is the "on time" consistent beteween reboots?
 
Merc said:
Have you flashed the latest BIOS?

Those are all quality parts. I can't find a weak spot so I am thinking power out of the wall too. I think every high end system should be on an UPS regardless so I have no problem recommending you get one of adequaate size and high quality for that rig.
Click to expand...

Latest bios is on. UPS is on the way, but not installed yet.

meatycheesyboy said:
Any pieces of metal touching the case? Maybe an errand piece of metal from the i/o back plate?
Click to expand...

not that I can tell. Everything is pretty clean. There's a window in the side of the case, so all the cables are pulled back and nothing is behind the board.

Sir_Loin said:
Look for any bulging capacitors....that could be the problem. Is the "on time" consistent beteween reboots?
Click to expand...

I don't see any. The on time is completely inconsistant. Anywhere from 5 min to 25 hours.

peace,
Aielman
 
"I feel you pain". I had a very similiar problem man years back. In my case it (eventually) worked out to be the video card.
Heck it could be anything. Here are some maybe less common ideas that may help.
Is you wall outlet (really) grounded? (Many difficulties if not. Testers are cheap. HDware Store Item. more common than most would believe). Also see issues with wall outlets (loose connections typically, can masqerade thermal like symptoms)).
Is the MB properly mounted. (Does MB need to have mount holes grounded. If so are your spacers mating properly. (Ground loops, Ground plane issues (remote). Are the spacers too big creating an inconsistent short or the MB is not centered on the spacers? (** I actually had this with a friends PC, thump it and it would reboot).
Do all external PCB fit into slots properly? (Video, dram etc. no mounting issues. all fit as supposed to with no binding? (A 'crooked' video card is what led me to find my friends problem. It was not observable, it was all feel when the card was installed (binding)).
Good Luck!
 
I had a similar problem with my Athlon x2 processor; swapped out the HSF for an XP-120 and Yate Loon 120mm and voila! Problem solved.

(Oh, and I had to wipe Windows, too)

-JP :rolleyes:
 
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