Building a new PC - having hardware issues

[Typhon]

Putting together a new pc for the first time (I always bought pre-assembled before), as such I did a bunch of shit wrong (wrong ram, wrong power supply for the graphics card I bought, cpu fan that I bought doesn't fit in the mobo).

Finally fixed all the shit I did wrong, put it all together, put in a Linux boot disk to give it the once-over before installing Windows, and the system freezes upon boot up (never gets to the UI).  By "freezes" I really mean freezes, grapics lock, mouse won't budge, fans idle down.  Only option is turning the power off.

Ok, I figure maybe I burned a crappy disk, let's try installing Windows.  I get 23% of the way through extracting files and the same thing happens.

Please note that I upgraded the bios to the latest version, as I was getting a BIOS message about not recognizing the processor type/version.

Next (ok, a day later after beating my head against the wall trying to figure out what was wrong, reapplying thermal paste, and crying in my cheerios) I try a linux bootable flash drive and this works.  Now I'm definitely thinking it's a heat problem (or an optical drive problem), so I download a system UI linux thingee and a little cpu testing utility called cpuburn-in.  The system UI thingee requires compilation, so I go to compile and WHAM! the system locks up again (mobo never makes a noise upon locking up).

To be thorough, after fixing the flash drive and rebooting, I run 4 instances of cpuburn-in and bring the CPU to 100% for a minute or two without any errors.  Because of this I feel my current problem is not a heat issue.  I use linux to search the windows install disk for files that begin with the letter m.  I kick off acouple of these windows simultaneously.  It doesn't appear to be a optical disk reading error.

So now I put all the peices together and come to the conclusion that something is chewing on the data stream when the machine is asked to write out a new file (during initial linux load from DVD (temp drive on disk, I think), during Windows installation (extracting files after inital file copy), during the "RAM ONLY" linux boot-up that I tried, and when writing files to the flash drive.

I makes a pretty big mess of the FAT when it does this write (whenever I crash the system like this, I have to use another Windows machine to fix the drive, then delete all the old files and replace them to get the boot flash drive to sucessfully boot again).

I call Asus and that dude says, "hunh, never heard of that before".  Then he suggests that I magically pull another motherboard, cpu, graphics card and power supply out of my ass so that I can definitively say which component is giving me the problem.  He says that he's leaning toward it being a motherboard problem (but is also very leery of the power supply).

I call Intel and they lean toward the motherboard.

I call the retailer, they direct me to a CPU support shop, the CPU support short leans more toward the CPU.

I really don't know if it's the CPU or the motherboard, but I really don't think it's anything else.  I don't know enough about mobo or CPU architecture to say what system decides on where files get written to, but it seems like that sub-system is fucking up big time (which then gets read, which then causes the system to lock up hard).

I'd really love to get this right in one shot, I've had these parts for two weeks now and I'm pretty frustrated and kind of depressed.

Anyone have a feel for which part is bad?  Even a gut feeling would be appeciated.

[Trippy]

First, tell us what all your parts are.

[Typhon]

I started out modestly, really I did.  But it's been 6 years since I was able to do anything PC-wise, and it sort of got away from me.  As mentioned before, I did bone-headed things (like thinking DDR2 would fit in a DDR3 motherboard, and not knowing the new graphic cards require special power supplies... I couldn't find a way to get from the 4 pin cables that came with the 700W supply to the 8 pin connector that the 9800GX requires).

Anyway, I'm playing Linux Freecell on it right now - booted up from the flash drive again, cause it's breaking my hear that it's just sitting there.  Ok, enough rambling, here it is:

Case:	Aluminus Ultra
Power:	ThermalTake Toughpower 1200W
Motherboard	Asus P5E3 Deluxe
CPU:	QX9650 (Core 2 Extreme)
RAM	OCZ Platinum 4096MB PC10666 DDR3 1333MHz (forgot to mention that I ran the RAM test on the Linux DVD, took an hour and a half - passed)
GPU:	EVGA 9800GX2
HD:	Western Digital SE16 500GB
Optical Drive:	Sony DRU 190A (simple drive, says DVD+-R 20X on the box)
Sound Card:	Sound Blaster X-Fi

[Trippy]

What are the jumpers set to on the DVD drive and what type of IDE cable are you using on it (the 40-wire or 80-wire type)?

Do you have another video card you can put in the machine?

[Typhon]

DVD is set as master, cable is new-fangled (due to the ThermalTake wrapping the wires), but the connector looks like any other IDE connector (translation: I'm too ignorant to answer you question).

More Info:  a buddy mentioned an article where over-clockers were having a problem with getting a similar board to overclock their RAM to the rated speeds (some were talking 1500, some 1333).  So I tried dropping the RAM rate to 1066.  I clicked OK when asked to save, and the CPU hard-powered off.  Now it won't come back on.

I'm pretty sure it's the motherboard (or, at least the motherboard) at this point.

[Trippy]

Stick a little pin in or whatever you need to do to reset the BIOS. What are the default CPU and memory settings that come up? You didn't mention you were OCing your system. No wonder you are having trouble!

[Typhon]

I'm not overclocking, I cannot even install an operating system on this machine, let alone think about overclocking (which seems to me to be a lot of work for the risk/gain).

A friend of mine was helping me out by doing a search on the P5E3 motherboard and that led him to read a thread on an overclocker's forum that they were having trouble overclocking (or even getting the RAM to clock to what it was rated for) with this motherboard.  He suggested that I try down-clocking from my RAM's rated 1333MHz speed.  Even though I had already run an exaustive RAM test, I'm willing to try anything to figure out what is wrong.  When set the BIOS to 1066MHz, the system shit the bed.

I know that I can reset the BIOS (in theory, I've never actually done it), but I have to return something to get a better idea of what is wrong (I don't have a spare power supply, video card, CPU or motherboard).  The motherobard fucking up just because I dropped the RAM frequency makes it the first candidate in my trouble-shooting by product return.

I was babbling before about wrapped IDE cables, I was thinking about power, not IDE.  I think the one's I was using are the 80-wire (as the other set of IDE cable were the thicker-wired, so I'm assuming they are the 20-wire).

[Trippy]

Oh you dropped your FSB speed, not your RAM speed (they are independent). Reset your BIOS and check these standard settings: FSB, CPU frequency and multiplier, memory bus speed, and latency settings

On the cable side of things try the 40-wire cable on the DVD drive -- you could have a bad cable.

[Typhon]

Yes, I think I dropped the FSB speed.

As far as the DVD - when I loaded Linux via the usb flash drive, and then tried to compile files on the flash drive, the system froze.  In this scenario there is nothing in the DVD drive (mostly because I changed the boot order and I didn't want to accidentally boot from DVD)

[Dtrain]

I've heard bad things about the default bios on the board. You might want to try a flash.

[Engels]

This may sound silly or insulting, but I've seen this mistake in first-time builders; when you put the motherboard into the case, did you use the little riser screws to place the motherboard on them, or did you bolt the motherboard to the plate? I ask because the latter can cause a short. In fact, it should immediately short, but sometimes there's a bit of room and you don't get shorted out immediately and presents itself as an intermittent problem.

Other questions are; have you done isolation tests, like taken out the sound card, DVD drives, hard drives, one memory stick and then another stick, etc, to try to isolate the issue? I realise that you can't do that trick with CPU, motherboard or video card, but other factors are worth eliminating.

[Typhon]

Risers - check (case comes with a motherboard tray that detaches from the case for attaching the motherboard, it had risers pre-attached)

I sent the motherboard back.  My feeling was that if I cannot even change the bios settings (to a more modest setting) without it freaking out then I want a new motherboard.  I'm hoping this fixes everything, but I won't expect it to fix everything.

Thanks all for the help.

[Typhon]

New motherboard arrived in the mail.  Installed it.  Booted it, flashed the BIOS to the latest version. Noticed the the process of flashing the BIOS was more complete this time (no odd power-down at the end).  Started to get excited that it was the mobo afterall.

Booted to Flash drive.  Ran a "make" on some linux system utilities, make ran fine (previously it had choked every time).  Now getting really excited.

Popped windows install in the DVD and restarted.  System froze upon loading the windows loading screen.  Cursed.

For some reason felt like it was the optical drive.  I tried to copy the windows disk to a flash drive (WD 120) to see if I could install from the flash drive.  System again locked up when copying files from optical to flash drive.  Hard drive is now completely removed as a suspect.

I ran to BestBuy and got a SATA DVD +/- R drive.  Installed the new optical drive and restarted, this time with no USB drives connected.  Used the Linux distro DVD first, and for the first time booted all the way into Linux from DVD.

Excitement returned!  Popped windows disk in, and it ran really, really slowly.  More slowly then the first time I tried to install.  Begin worrying.  Finally get to the "extracting files" section, moves decently quickly to 10% then locks up hard.

I'm returning the power supply.  It's either that, the CUP or the RAM.  The RAM passed the 1.5 hour burn-in test, but I know that doesn't always mean what it should.  The CPU will go back next.  Then the RAM.  After that...  well I'm out of ideas after that.

Mostly I'm just writing this as a horror story for people who are toying around with the idea building their own system.  If you are going to do it, you need to be prepared for the worst - or you'll waste a lot of time trying to diagnose what's wrong with what they send you.  It's very frustrating looking at a bunch of parts that should make a really fast computer, but they are nothing more then very expensive parts.

[Engels]

When you used the new dvd drive, did you switch out the cables?

[schild]

At this point I'm going to assume that Typhon is doing this correctly and setting his computer up while submerged in bleach.

The computer, not him, you ninnies!

[Typhon]

When you used the new dvd drive, did you switch out the cables?

The second DVD drive that I got was a SATA DVD drive, so yes, I switched cables (mostly because the first drive was an IDE DVD drive).  Also note that I completely removed the first DVD drive for the installation.

Also note: the new DVD is a Samsung Super WriteMaster DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM (and double layer), $60 at BestBuy and it runs super quiet, I've never heard a dvd make less noise in computer (I'm not sure why I'm pimping for this drive, I was just really impressed with how quiet it was, Linux start-up messages started popping up on screen and it was like magic cause I couldn't hear it).

[Hoax]

Honestly ever since I/O drives became dvd/cdr/cdw/fucking six other things...  They have sucked.  I've had several random ass total fuck ups which only happen when I'm reinstalling windows because beyond that I never use a cd ever.

[Morfiend]

I am going to go with RAM or PSU, both of those going bad can lead to very unpredictable lock ups. While both being easy to test if you have extras, the problems of ether going bad can be fairly hard to diagnose due to the unreliability of the issues they cause.

[Pennilenko]

New motherboard arrived in the mail.  Installed it.  Booted it, flashed the BIOS to the latest version. Noticed the the process of flashing the BIOS was more complete this time (no odd power-down at the end).  Started to get excited that it was the mobo afterall.

Booted to Flash drive.  Ran a "make" on some linux system utilities, make ran fine (previously it had choked every time).  Now getting really excited.

Popped windows install in the DVD and restarted.  System froze upon loading the windows loading screen.  Cursed.

For some reason felt like it was the optical drive.  I tried to copy the windows disk to a flash drive (WD 120) to see if I could install from the flash drive.  System again locked up when copying files from optical to flash drive.  Hard drive is now completely removed as a suspect.

I ran to BestBuy and got a SATA DVD +/- R drive.  Installed the new optical drive and restarted, this time with no USB drives connected.  Used the Linux distro DVD first, and for the first time booted all the way into Linux from DVD.

Excitement returned!  Popped windows disk in, and it ran really, really slowly.  More slowly then the first time I tried to install.  Begin worrying.  Finally get to the "extracting files" section, moves decently quickly to 10% then locks up hard.

I'm returning the power supply.  It's either that, the CUP or the RAM.  The RAM passed the 1.5 hour burn-in test, but I know that doesn't always mean what it should.  The CPU will go back next.  Then the RAM.  After that...  well I'm out of ideas after that.

Mostly I'm just writing this as a horror story for people who are toying around with the idea building their own system.  If you are going to do it, you need to be prepared for the worst - or you'll waste a lot of time trying to diagnose what's wrong with what they send you.  It's very frustrating looking at a bunch of parts that should make a really fast computer, but they are nothing more then very expensive parts.

In all the years that i have built computers i have never had to go through the chaos that you are going through. I am sad for you.

[Typhon]

I am going to go with RAM or PSU, both of those going bad can lead to very unpredictable lock ups. While both being easy to test if you have extras, the problems of ether going bad can be fairly hard to diagnose due to the unreliability of the issues they cause.

This was my thinking as well.  Fortunately it occured to me that I do have a spare for the RAM - I ordered two 2GB sticks, I don't have to put both in at the same time.  Since I'm still waiting on a rerturn code from the seller for the PSU so I'll try that tonight.

@Pennilenko: thanks, I appreciate it.

[Typhon]

Ok, so I reconnect the powersupply, but I'm in a hurry so I only use one SATA connector this time - it's powering both the HD and the DVD drive.  I put one RAM stick in and boot it up and Windows installs.

Oddly, I'm not psyched, I'm kinda bummed.  I put the other stick in and redo the installation and it installs.  Now I'm only kinda bummed.  Next I'll connect the DVD and the HD on two different connectors and plug in my USB devices.  I might even reinstall the IDE DVD.  At this point I'm 95% sure it's the PSU, but it would be nice to be 100%

Once thing that's making me smile alittle - I'm writing this from the new machine.  At least I can get back to a configuration where I can do something with it.

[Engels]

So basically one of the SATA power connections is bad, yes? I'd replace the PSU, but at least you have a working machine till you swap it out.

[Typhon]

 

I have no clue what happened.  It's all working.  Everything.

Only thing I did different is that I moved the RAM to new slots, and fiddled with cables (not that I used any different cables, just that I put them into different places).

Happy it's all running, but feeling like it's a bomb ready to go off at any point.  Re-installed windows 5 times with different configurations, finally I put everything in (sound card, old/new DVDs drives, everything) and it still installed and has been working well.

Fucking unreal.

[Engels]

And this is with the brand new motherboard? How many ram banks do you have? Its possible you had the ram in the wrong bank pair?

[Typhon]

4 RAM banks, 2 RAM sticks (each stick is 2 GB).  I first up them in right next to eachother.  BIOS (correctly) showed 4GB.  As soon as I started having problems I ran a mem-test utility from the SLAX distro.  mem-test showed no errors.

Yesterday I put in only one stick - where you put the stick in seems to make no difference as far as the system info is concerned.  After sucessful installation, I replaced that stick with the other stick and was also able to install sucessfully.  You know the rest.

It's worth mentioning that I did read something online that seemed to say people were having more "luck" with the black banks, which seemed like bullshit to me, but now that I think of it, last night I put them in the black banks to keep them seperated from eachother.  I did this to give them a chance to disipate more heat- the banks are laid out with a organge/black pair close together, and then another orange/black pair so either putting them in both black or both orange gives the most spacing.

I still don't understand what I did differently.  Even the IDE DVD drive works like a champ (although it is loud).

[Engels]

I first up them in right next to each other

That may have been your problem right there. Some motherboards are picky about making sure you're using the A slots or the B slots, but not one in each. Check your motherboard manual.

[SnakeCharmer]

Possibly stupid question, even though you have your problem resolved:

Are you using Vista Prem 64 bit?

If so, I had issues during the install (getting 0x0000007E errors (maybe with more or less zeros) with 4 GB of RAM.  Once I removed 2 GB, and continued with the install, it went fine.  Patched it, then put in the other 2GB, and everything was shiny.  Come to find out, I wasn't the only one that had the same problems.

[rattran]

Yeah, I had that issue too. Oddly, it installed just fine with 8GB.

[Typhon]

I'm using 32-bit Windows, although your experience sounds similar to mine.

Engels: everything I read seems to indicate that it doesn't matter what slot you put the ram in (which is a completely new experience for me, previously there was always a very definite order that the RAM wanted to be in - but the BIOS would yell at you right quick if you didn't do it right).  Course, this doesn't mean I read the right things

[Lantyssa]

I've had boards where it mattered, but BIOS didn't complain.  Things just acted wonky yet nearly impossible to diagnose.

[Engels]

I've never been very impressed with Asus documentation, and come to think of it, the Asus boards I have had in the past were particularly poor about memory slot assignment, with confusing language, and I only knew where the ram went based on prior knowledge.

[Trippy]

I'm using 32-bit Windows, although your experience sounds similar to mine.

Engels: everything I read seems to indicate that it doesn't matter what slot you put the ram in (which is a completely new experience for me, previously there was always a very definite order that the RAM wanted to be in - but the BIOS would yell at you right quick if you didn't do it right).  Course, this doesn't mean I read the right things

If you want to use dual channel memory and you aren't filling all the slots it does matter which slots you put the RAM into.

[Typhon]

I see it now. Internal naming scheme is wonky, documentation is wonky, and BIOS messages are wonky - and by "wonky" I mean something that I should have read more carefully.  Disheartening to realize that I probably could have avoided most of this issues if I had read more carefullly (first motherboard acted completely differently though, which is to say poorly, so I'm not sure that I could have avoided all of them).

It's worth noting that I currently don't have the RAM in the recommended configuration and everything is working fine.  It's also worth noting that the recommended configuration is the exact opposite of what I did to start.  At this point I'm afraid to change to the recommended configuration, but I'm more afraid not to.

Thanks again for all help

[Typhon]

More weirdness:

1) I put the RAM into the recommended configuration (both in the B-slots, which are furthest from the CPU) and this caused my machine to lockup upon rebooting (in the same way it was locking up when I was trying to install).  Finally making sense of what I read somewhere, "user are having more luck putting RAM into the black slots (which would be A2 and B2).

2) Same part of the documentation that tells me to put RAM sticks in B1 and B2 also says, "if you use a 32-bit operating system, it is recommended that you use as most 3GB of RAM".  Fast forward to me playing WoW - I play for a bout 15 mins and the system locks up.  I take 2GB out of the syste, and it plays just fine.  I'm guessing WoW is having these issues more then other games (HG:L, for instance) because WoWs textures are so much larger then other games.

So, for now, I guess I leave the system with just 2GB of RAM and wait for the 32-bit patch to Vista that allows it to address more then 2GB of RAM (or more support comes out for 64-bit Vista, in which case I install that).

So much fun!

[Trippy]

More weirdness:

1) I put the RAM into the recommended configuration (both in the B-slots, which are furthest from the CPU) and this caused my machine to lockup upon rebooting (in the same way it was locking up when I was trying to install).  Finally making sense of what I read somewhere, "user are having more luck putting RAM into the black slots (which would be A2 and B2).

2) Same part of the documentation that tells me to put RAM sticks in B1 and B2 also says, "if you use a 32-bit operating system, it is recommended that you use as most 3GB of RAM".  Fast forward to me playing WoW - I play for a bout 15 mins and the system locks up.  I take 2GB out of the syste, and it plays just fine.  I'm guessing WoW is having these issues more then other games (HG:L, for instance) because WoWs textures are so much larger then other games.

Which P5E3 motherboard are you using?