Strange PC problems

[Engels]

Cooling geeks (yes, there is such an animal) will argue very vehemently against leaving the case open. You want at least two fans on your box, one in front, one in back, pushing air in, and pulling air out; which one does which is subject to debate. Leaving the case open without an actual flow of air moving through the box is simply letting hot air 'sit' on top of your hot components and the idea is that you want fresh, cool air to move into that space. Hoping simple open air convection will do the cooling is not a good idea.

[Trippy]

Cooling geeks (yes, there is such an animal) will argue very vehemently against leaving the case open.

That makes sense for the setups that cooling geeks use but that doesn't mean it's worse to the leave the case open in all situations. I helped plenty of people on the CoH forums who were having trouble with their GF4 cards overheating by telling them to open up their cases (the reference cooler design on the GF4 was pretty poor).

You want at least two fans on your box, one in front, one in back, pushing air in, and pulling air out; which one does which is subject to debate. Leaving the case open without an actual flow of air moving through the box is simply letting hot air 'sit' on top of your hot components and the idea is that you want fresh, cool air to move into that space. Hoping simple open air convection will do the cooling is not a good idea.

It's not just as simple as having the front and back fans. Most cheapo cases have very poor airflow through the front of the case. Cooling geeks have no problem with this since they just whip out their Dremel and make themselves a giganto opening. The rear exhaust is often not a whole lot better with an airflow restricting grill working against the fan (out comes the Dremel again). Heck a lot of cases don't even have a fan mount in the front. By leaving the case open, as long as your ambient room temperature is lower than the hottest parts of the case, free convection will move hot air away from your hottest components. This is less efficient than if you had a well cooled case but most people probably don't understand how to identify or build a case that is. If your ambient temperature is the same as the inside of your computer, well then you have other problems and closing the case is not going to make things any better (since you are just sucking in hot air) and you are better off opening up the case and sticking a room fan next to your case to cool it off that way.

[Trippy]

I have great success with leaving my case open.  It is noisy but I prefer that to overheating or paying for extra fans.

Hmmm. I do have a spring loaded door on my case...I might try leaving it crack open and see if that has any effect. It sounds like my card decided to un-overclock itself, so the combination of the two might keep me from making ANOTHER run to the computer store. Until it doesn't work and fries my goddamned CPU.

Check to make sure your CPU heat sink is still mounted properly and the fan on top is still spinning. That's not good that your CPU is overheating. If you are going to run with your case open I would suggest you stick a room fan next to it and blow room temperature air into it.

[Miasma]

Cooling geeks (yes, there is such an animal) will argue very vehemently against leaving the case open.

But they're wrong!

Obligatory Links:

[Trippy]

Cooling geeks (yes, there is such an animal) will argue very vehemently against leaving the case open.

But they're wrong!

Obligatory Link:

The case is facing the wrong way.

[Engels]

Miasma, overclocking means increasing the cycling on your cpu or gpu slightly. Not throwing gasoline soaked swiss watches at the keyboard and front panel of your computer. Just makin sure we're on the same page  :-D

[WayAbvPar]

Further update- After booting it successfully yesterday morning, I arrived home last night to test it and see how hot it was going to run with the non-o/c'ed GPU. I started the system up and walked out of the room. Came back a couple of minutes later and clicked my log in name to start Windows. Which asked to be activated before I could use it. WTF? I tried to activate, but it couldn't detect an Internet connection. I rebooted and realized that it was booting from my old (slave) HDD which has XP Home on it, and not the IDE master drive with XP Pro.

I went into the BIOS to see WTF was going on. The BIOS was not detecting the IDE Master drive at all, and I couldn't figure out a way to get it to detect. I then went in to monitor the CPU temperature through the BIOS- it climbed steadily from 82 degrees (F) to about 105 in less than 3 minutes. Is that normal? What is the normal running temp?

I am at a loss. I unplugged everything last night and plan to take it in to the shop today. This fucking $300 video card is going to end up costing me a grand or more eventually. Fuck.

[Trippy]

I then went in to monitor the CPU temperature through the BIOS- it climbed steadily from 82 degrees (F) to about 105 in less than 3 minutes. Is that normal? What is the normal running temp?

Depends on the CPU but 105 F is nothing to worry about assuming it wasn't continuing to climb before you turned it off -- if you look at my screenshots on the previous page you can see my Athlon 64 X2 is idling at 100 F and I have a massive Zalman cooler on top of mine.

[Trippy]

I went into the BIOS to see WTF was going on. The BIOS was not detecting the IDE Master drive at all, and I couldn't figure out a way to get it to detect.

Is the hard drive still powering up? If so try another IDE port on your motherboard and try another IDE cable if you have one. Also check the jumper on that drive to see if it's explicitly set to master or if it's using cable auto detect and change it to master if it's on auto detect. And disconnect the IDE and power connector from the slave drive to remove that from the equation.

[Miguel]

100F is nothing to worry about.  That's just barely warm to the touch.

Most semiconductors are characterized to run in the 50C to 70C range (that's 122F to 158F, respectively) without problems.  Typically the maximum
junction temperature rated on a datasheet (with full operation) is 85C (or 185F).

Keep in mind the effectiveness of any heatsink is directly proportional the the temperature differential between the object being cooled and the ambient temperature of the air.  You can put the best Zalman heatsink+fan combos on your chipset, CPU, and video card, and it can still overheat your computer if there isn't enough airflow to keep the case air temperature at a minumum.  With a 100W CPU, a 150W video card, and a 50W chipset all pumping heat into a case it can go from room temp to muffin baking temperature in a very short time.

As stated above, the best option is to use a single fan on one side drawing air into the inside of the case, and another fan blowing out on the other side.  The vast majority of cases support this operation, and all you have to do is find the fan mounting holes on the inside of the case.  They are typicall 90mm or 120mm apart in a square pattern.  Two Panaflo fans running in this configuration can keep the case temperature reasonable and they don't add much noise either.

[Engels]

I just got myself two replacement 120 mm fans for my Antec "Lan Boy" case (my god that's an embarassing name, but its a really nifty case). The two 120 fans that came with it were low speed, low noise. Since I've caught my GPU heading up into the 120s range, which is technically fine, but makes me antsy, I bought two aftermarket 120 fans for front and back. The new fans run faster, both alleging an 80-90 cubic foot per minute air flow rate. Its going to be noisy as heck, but I'm not taking any risks with my 2nd GPU.

Oh, and WAP, hate to say it, but your problems may have been a dying hard drive in the first place. Have my fingers crossed for ya.

[WayAbvPar]

Further update- drug the PC in the the shop and gave him the rundown on what has happened to date. He popped the cover off and hooked it up to a monitor. Of course, XP Pro (on my new drive) booted right up. His explanation was a bit confusing (he has a REALLY thick accent), but it sounded like the shutdown caused the BIOS to default to look for an IDE drive instead of a SATA drive? Something along those lines.

Further inspection of the case showed that the case fan at the back was running at about 15 RPMs, which is almost assuredly the cause of the heat problems- the CPU and GPU fans were running fine, as was the fan on the PS. He grabbed a $13 case fan off the shelf and was going to install it- just got a call from him to let me know it is ready.

Goddamn I hope this is the end of this crap. Stupid Oblivion.

[Cheddar]

I am fucked currently.  I had an issue with my video card due to the fan port getting blocked (or so I thought, might of been the PSU outlet that was blocked I am thinking now), and started having crazy graphics issues.  So I went to the net and found a decent card that was a slight upgrade (see other thread) and immediately ordered it without thinking.  Well, turns out it was PCIE, which I did not have on my MOBO, so I decided to order a new MOBO, looked around, found a decent mobo, bought one_{fuck ebay}, and went looking for a CPU.  Turns out CPU's are expensive (relatively) for the MOBO I purchased, and dropped more money then I could afford on one + CPU fan (read: College tuition). 

MOBO I got for a steal seems to be busted, and for the benefit of brevity will not go into the details of my trouble-shooting over the last week + 1/2.  After spending the last 10 years or so with minimal breaks from easy access to the internet I am not sure what to do, and since I decided to take a break from my occupation to work at a restaurant (I  the job) I am fucking poor.  Tomorrow I am going to make a list of parts and will figure out what to do from there. 

Eh, I guess if worse comes to worse I can go back into the military, heh.  Does anyone have a suggestion for a cost effective PSU (450W+, 24 pin for MOBO), MOBO (preferably with PCIE, DDR1 and 2, P4 Prescott 775 socket CPU capability), and possibly a case?

On a side note, my brother during his visit from Iraq, gave me a PS2 along with some random games to play.  I now realize that MMOGs have spoiled me on all console games.

edit.  Clarity.

[Trippy]

Eh, I guess if worse comes to worse I can go back into the military, heh.  Does anyone have a suggestion for a cost effective PSU (450W+, 24 pin for MOBO), MOBO (preferably with PCIE, DDR1 and 2, P4 Prentiss CPU capability), and possibly a case?

Do you mean to say "Prescott" instead of "Prentiss"? If so, we still need to know which socket type you prefer (Prescott comes in socket 478 and socket 775 versions).

[Engels]

Further update- drug the PC in the the shop and gave him the rundown on what has happened to date. He popped the cover off and hooked it up to a monitor. Of course, XP Pro (on my new drive) booted right up. His explanation was a bit confusing (he has a REALLY thick accent), but it sounded like the shutdown caused the BIOS to default to look for an IDE drive instead of a SATA drive? Something along those lines.

Further inspection of the case showed that the case fan at the back was running at about 15 RPMs, which is almost assuredly the cause of the heat problems- the CPU and GPU fans were running fine, as was the fan on the PS. He grabbed a $13 case fan off the shelf and was going to install it- just got a call from him to let me know it is ready.

Goddamn I hope this is the end of this crap. Stupid Oblivion.

Gah, I just installed two fans here man, hope he doesn't charge you a bundle for that installation, since its just about as easy as installing a video card. Easier in fact since it doesn't require drivers or anything. And yes, if your computer was set to boot to SATA but the bios default was to boot from IDE (two different types of hard drive) and somehow you reset your bios, naturally, your OS would not boot.

I just got done installing two 120 mm fans. The good news is that the thing is super cool. Right now the CPU registers at 26 Celcius / 79 F. Its actually cooler than my ambient temperature (the GPU and other devices heat up the system more than the cpu!) The bad news is that those two fans are g'damned loud. I knew they would be loud, but not this danged loud. The previous fans were going at 300 rpm, these go at 1800 rpm.

[Trippy]

Get a fan speed controller and undervolt the fans.

[Strazos]

Just go onto Newegg and look around. There are tons of different types of fans and cooling solutions.

[Engels]

Just go onto Newegg and look around. There are tons of different types of fans and cooling solutions.

Heh, where do you think I got these two? Unfortunately, some things you have to see in person to get it right. As for a fan voltage regulator, I may have to revert to that. One of them came with one, and I currently have that one tuned down. Its the other one that runs at 1800 that's pretty loud still. Its liveable.

[WayAbvPar]

I had him install the fan since the case was already open and sitting there- even I could have installed a new one. $25 in labor to troubleshoot and install the fan.

Except the fucking PC died AGAIN last night. Same behavior as before- playing BF2 for a couple of hours, then the monitor goes black (no signal) and I have to use the reset button to start the PC again. No warnings about CPU temp or anything. I know the new fan was working- it was blowing cool air off the wall behind my desk which was then bouncing onto my leg- first time I remember that happeneing, so my case fan was probably nearly dead for a long time.

It takes a few hours of gaming to get the problem to manifest itself, which seems like it will nearly impossible for the shop to troubleshoot. Any suggestions?

[bhodi]

It takes a few hours of gaming to get the problem to manifest itself, which seems like it will nearly impossible for the shop to troubleshoot. Any suggestions?

Not necesarially true - Does it always take around the same amount of time? If you reset and continue playing, does the time decrease or is it stable for that amount of time afterwards? Does it happen when you're loading a level, or just randomly?

These questions can help narrow down what might be going on; a lot of things can cause a hard freeze, evrything from a bad piece of memory (might want to get a decent memory tester / system burnin on a cd and boot into it and let it run) to the power supply not giving enough of a steady current to your hard drive throwing out a bad signal and causing your bus to freak out.

A good indication that it isn't the heat is your ability to just reboot and continue playing.

[Miasma]

Some digging around found quite a few threads about the card you bought having blank screen problems, often with BF2.  It looks like there was a bad batch shipped out.  There seem to be several options to fix it.  I would first download coolbits, turn off overclocking and see what happens.  If that doesn't work try installing the ngo drivers and if that fails I would probably try to get a replacement.  Or if you don't want to have to bring down the clock setting maybe go right to getting the card replaced.

Also note that if you wait a while the display should return, the card is shutting itself off because it thinks it is too hot but once the temperature returns to normal it will bring back the monitor display.

Go down to a post by JLukas.
Another 7800gs black screen with BF2 thread.
Unfortunately the links referenced from this thread are now dead.
Report of same problem and after getting an RMA everything is fine.

[Engels]

Ugh, I hate that type of problem. All the above suggestions are good, but with this type of problem it could be so many things you're basically playing a hit and miss game. I had exactly, I mean exactly the same problem with another box I had, and it turned out that it was a bad motherboard. But it could as easily have been a bad power supply. Or a bad video card. Or a faulty hard drive.

Just last night I was having random reboots as well, after installing my two new fans. Turns out that the voltage regulator that came with one of the fans was making metal-on-metal contact with the case and causing a short any time I wiggled the danged dial. Total luck that I managed to correlate the dial wiggle with the reboot.

[WayAbvPar]

Some digging around found quite a few threads about the card you bought having blank screen problems, often with BF2.  It looks like there was a bad batch shipped out.  There seem to be several options to fix it.  I would first download coolbits, turn off overclocking and see what happens.  If that doesn't work try installing the ngo drivers and if that fails I would probably try to get a replacement.  Or if you don't want to have to bring down the clock setting maybe go right to getting the card replaced.

Also note that if you wait a while the display should return, the card is shutting itself off because it thinks it is too hot but once the temperature returns to normal it will bring back the monitor display.

Go down to a post by JLukas.
Another 7800gs black screen with BF2 thread.
Unfortunately the links referenced from this thread are now dead.
Report of same problem and after getting an RMA everything is fine.

Interesting- thanks for the links! I will try coolbits tonight, and maybe try the new drivers as well. Having to RMA it will fucking piss me off to no end, since I gave my other card to my brother already.

[WayAbvPar]

Just last night I was having random reboots as well, after installing my two new fans. Turns out that the voltage regulator that came with one of the fans was making metal-on-metal contact with the case and causing a short any time I wiggled the danged dial. Total luck that I managed to correlate the dial wiggle with the reboot.

I had that problem a few PCs ago- it was driving me crazy! I would get crazy display glitches and the like. I became expert and reseating the card, which tended to clear it up for a bit, but eventually it wouldn't work any more. Found out there was a short and got it taken care of; things worked fine after that.

I am starting to understand schild's fondness for consoles.

[WayAbvPar]

Latest-
Installed coolbits- at least the registry hack part. I couldn't figure out where/what the UI was to change the clock settings- I am obviously missing something. I checked the nVidia control panel and asked it to tell me when it reached critical heat (115 degrees C was the default, so I left it there). It was idling between 58 and 59 while I was checking it. Also installed the NGO drivers (which warned me 3 differerent times that they were not responsible for any damage incurred from using the drivers- I am brimming with confidence now!).

Played Eve for an hour or so. Checked the temp- 59. Played Bf2 for 2-3 hours. Checked the temp- 58. No black screens, no noticeable problems. Cautious optimism.

[Yegolev]

I might be a cooling enthusiast, but not quite.  Just for clarification, I run with the sidepanel off because I get a few degrees cooler that way, at least last time I checked temperatures.  I have a huge tower with crappy airflow, and this is just easier.  The noise has bothered me for a while but I'm too fucking lazy to do anything about it.  The obvious solution is water cooling, but that's work++.  If I was going to do that, I'd just mod the case for better airflow... and cut a hole for that second PSU.

As it is now, my lower cupholder is flaking and I have a shiny new DVD/CD combo burner just sitting on the table, but I just can't muster the energy to even replace that thing.  I am having a blast playing Atelier Iris 2 (PS2) and Castlevania (Xbox), though.

Back to WAP... I haven't seen any mention of thermal paste.  I assume you or the installer used some.  It's rather important.  With temp = 58 I think you must have. ;-)

[bhodi]

There is simply no excuse for a noisy case anymore. For an exrta 10-15 bucks for the case itself and for an extra maybe $20 or $30 in special fans, you can get a more or less silent case. Silent enough to hear when the hard drive reads, anyway. You don't need to go to water cooling or any other crazy techie thing, just buy the right components (ones that specifically have "quiet" as a benefit) and build it yourself.

[Miasma]

Installed coolbits- at least the registry hack part. I couldn't figure out where/what the UI was to change the clock settings- I am obviously missing something.

You should see something similar to this.  The clock frequencies section appears after the registry change.  Then bring the clock down to whatever the stock speed is, probably 375.  The "No overclocking" option is somewhat misleading, it actually just reverts back to the card's default settings, however since the default setting is overclocked choosing the "No overclocking" actually turns on overclocking, at least on my card.

That said if the drivers seem to be working I wouldn't mess with any of it.

[Trippy]

Latest-
Installed coolbits- at least the registry hack part. I couldn't figure out where/what the UI was to change the clock settings- I am obviously missing something.

What did you set the CoolBits registry value to? It should be 3 since you aren't using SLI:

[Trippy]

There is simply no excuse for a noisy case anymore. For an exrta 10-15 bucks for the case itself and for an extra maybe $20 or $30 in special fans, you can get a more or less silent case. Silent enough to hear when the hard drive reads, anyway. You don't need to go to water cooling or any other crazy techie thing, just buy the right components (ones that specifically have "quiet" as a benefit) and build it yourself.

The case fans are only part of the problem. You also have the video card fan, which is usually the loudest fan in an "enthusiast" setup (a la NVIDIA's infamous "leafblower" fan), the CPU fan, the chipset fan (if any), and then the power supply fan(s).

[bhodi]

The case fans are only part of the problem. You also have the video card fan, which is usually the loudest fan in an "enthusiast" setup (a la NVIDIA's infamous "leafblower" fan), the CPU fan, the chipset fan (if any), and then the power supply fan(s).

The CPU fan can not only be replaced with a quiet model, but can usually be tuned to a slower setting in the bios. I've never heard of a chipset fan, the power supply fan(s) are bought with the case, as I said above, and yes there are some specific video card fans that are loud (ish) but in general they are no louder than the other fans. Add to that a case that's designed to be fairly quiet (not much sound escapes good cases) and you've got yourself a silent runner.

[Trippy]

The case fans are only part of the problem. You also have the video card fan, which is usually the loudest fan in an "enthusiast" setup (a la NVIDIA's infamous "leafblower" fan), the CPU fan, the chipset fan (if any), and then the power supply fan(s).

The CPU fan can not only be replaced with a quiet model, but can usually be tuned to a slower setting in the bios. I've never heard of a chipset fan, the power supply fan(s) are bought with the case, as I said above, and yes there are some specific video card fans that are loud (ish) but in general they are no louder than the other fans. Add to that a case that's designed to be fairly quiet (not much sound escapes good cases) and you've got yourself a silent runner.

Chipset fan. I'm not sure what you mean by "the power supply fan(s) are bought with the case". It is very rare for any case with a bundled power supply to have a "quiet" power supply -- the Sonata line by Antec being one of those exceptions.

[Yegolev]

There is simply no excuse for a noisy case anymore.

Since when is "sheer laziness" not an excuse?

The loudest thing in my case is the ancient Delta fan on the CPU.  I got it and the HS back when the Intertron was abuzz with the new "copper core" junk.  Works well enough and I AM LAZY so I have not bothered to buy/install something made in the last four years.

If I wasn't lazy, hell, I could do all kinds of crazy shit.  Or just something basic like running a 120mm fan instead of a 80mm, maybe with a fancy heatpipe-laced copper flower.  The fan on the 6800GT can't compare to that Delta for noise output, and since I am only using a Nforce2 mobo, the chipsets are cooled by mere convection.  I don't even have heatspreaders on my RAM.

Man, I am depressing myself.  You might be un-lazy-ing me.

[WayAbvPar]

I could care less if it sounds like the deck of an aircraft carrier when it is running as long as it does what I want. My speakers and TV have adjustable volume controls on them  :-D

[Yegolev]

Yeah, well my wife has a lot to say about how loud I play my games.  She also gets angry that I can't hear her over my fans.  My rig is the reason we have those gigahertz phones that double as an intercom system.