My dying PC

[PK|Cerro]

Well my PC is on its last legs - has been for ages. It now seems to lock up randomly or whenever something demanding is executed. I reckon its the CPU since its been making crackly noises in the sound whenever I put the CPU understress. Doubt its my memory as I haven't seen any BSODs and I recently replaced one of my ram chips because it was fault and rebooting my PC.

Aside from rebuilding this hunk of junk, which I will probably try before binning the PC - anyone got any ideas. I know, if its hardware its unlikely much can be done besides replacing it (in which case, it will be a new PC) but if anyone has any bright ideas for a work around until I can be assed building a new pc... pls do pass them on!

[PK|Argaf]

Run something like speedfan to see what sort of tempuratures your having in your system, it will also report fan speeds.

Run a full memory error checker to see if there are any errors on all your memory.

Run a hard drive error check on all your hard drives.

Ensure Windows/AntiVirus/AntiSpyware are uptodate and run a full scan.

[PK|Cerro]

Always use MBM5 - had heat problems with my PC ever since i built it, replacing the cooler didn't help much (did a little but i think the contact isn't very good). Actually when i first built my PC temps were OK (high but ok) then they slowly started to climb and alarms started to go off. So I replaced the cooler and didn't do much, so just disabled the alarms (PC is over 3/4 yrs old anyway!). Case temps are fine though, got about 5 fans in it.

I've used sysmem for an hour or two on it and no error come up (ever since i replaced one of the chips) so i know the ram is still good.

HD - 1 of the older Maxtors I use in my raid array sometimes doesn't boot, it might be the actual array bios drivers - updating them went a long way to fixing that but still that disk sometimes doesn't boot up when its a cold day. But if it was the disk i'd be experencing more than lock ups and the raid probably wouldn't tolerate it.

Windows is all up to date and I got norton enterprise running all the time, having said that it did pick up a few viruses in old programs that I was copying to my external maxtor drive for backup. Might be worth a check but again - i would expect a virus to do more than just lock my pc up when it comes under high loads.



Looking at a replacement the E4300 looks like a nice little CPU with massive OC potential, people seem to be easily squeezing 3Ghz out of it using stock coolers. Think that would do until Quad cores become more widely available and cheap.

[PK|Argaf]

Sounds like temp is the problem so, same as an old issue of mine where the cpu or bridging chipset would hit very high temps and either lock or cause reboot.

Try resiteing the cooler, clean with meths and redo the thermal paste, can you manually change the speed of the fan (mines currenly 1200 rpm with my vapochill and that's overclocked by 5% - goes up to over 2400 rpm if I want to seriously overclock) also make sure your case fans are configured to draw air through the case and over the cpu fan, cos if they're all extracting air and none blowing air in you will have issues, ditto if they're all blowing air into with none extracting you get really bad heat buildup.

The HD problem is probably a power supplu/spin up issue, if the drive does not spin up quick enough it won't boot, if you do a soft/quick hard power cycle when this occurs that would fix it (as I'm sure you know) - I have the same issue with my drive array too.

[PK|Lemming]

can u get amidiag ??

i used to have an eval copy, but the disc broke moving house

i remember it being really good for hardware analysis, cpu ram hdd's etc

try what argaf said & reseat your cooler on the cpu, see if that resolves the heat problems

[PK|Cerro]

tried a shite load of things, reseated the cooler and reattached the lose cooler on the chipset controller but to no avail... i'm now certain its the chipset melting, because when i taped the heatsink down to it, the PC lasted longer before dying but it still died.

I could rebuild I suppose, next thing to try. But beyond that i'm consigning the PC to death by hammer. Well parts of it anyway... New PC is already spec'd and its not looking too pricey either.

[PK|Colonel Ames]

I had this problem with my last setup.
I had to replace the CPU and mobo. that crackling was caused my the microphone. try and get hold of a Hardware Diag CD like Lemsip said. that will take forever to run on the machine but will tell you everything you need to know about the state of your H/W.

[PK|Default PlayR]

Likes ames said, or you could put your penis in the cd-drive...yeah try that!!

[PK|Cerro]

Mobo needs replaced...

Which means taking the PC to bits and buying an old mobo which is now obsolete. More hassle than its worth, might as well replace the whole thing.

[PK|Colonel Ames]

Mobo needs replaced...

Which means taking the PC to bits and buying an old mobo which is now obsolete. More hassle than its worth, might as well replace the whole thing.I Must say i'm not quite seeing your logic there Cerro

[PK|Cerro]

Mobo is a socket Intel 478 - in other words older CPUs only. New ones are Socket 775 - new CPUs are dual/quad core, higher cache, more effient, less heat, 64bit, higher bus speeds. Also add in that the new chipsets are far better for overclocking and provide many more features. Then take into the account of the change from DDR to DDR2 and AGP to PCI-Express.

Any old 478 board I buy would last 6 months tops because it can't upgrade any other components and has limited OC potential. So the £50 or so that i'd spend on a replacement board would be gone in 6 months. Better to spend it on a £180 board and replace everything else at the sametime - which will last longer!

[PK|Lemming]

if it's just a heat prob, get some cable extensions and stick the base in your freezer

[PK|Cerro]

innovative!

Still more hassle than its worth though... although I want a 680i board and all the good ones are out of stock or yet to be released ahhhh!