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Need help with a strange crashing bug

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  • Need help with a strange crashing bug

    So, I was one of the people who pre-ordered a parhelia and have been quite happy with it. (That's not the problem in case you were wondering.) Shortly after I put the parhelia in I started having this strange problem though, whenever I would try and play any game my computer would just shut itself off randomly after anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. After which I would have to unplug my puter and wait for 5-10 minutes before I could turn my computer back on (and have it successfully boot anyway).

    At first I thought it was just a heat problem (and I still think thats what it was actually), so I took the side of the case off to help lower the temps some. I also pulled my HS off my cpu and cleaned all the dust out of it that had gotten clogged in it and put on a fresh layer of heat sink compound.

    This seemed to help, for a few days anyway. Then it started happening again. The trick is, this time I'm nearly certain that it isn't a heat problem (having cleaned my HS my cpu temp is an average of 5 degree's lower under heavy load now). I also tried putting my old video card back in the system (Herc P4500 Kyro II), and it was still crashing.

    So, I've tried most of the standard things that I can think of (drivers, DX, bios, etc. ) at this point, and after debating things with my roomates for a while we reached the conclusion that it's probably either the powersupply or the RAM. The reason we think it's the RAM is because one of my roomates has the same mobo and same ram that I have and he had a stick of ram go bad earlier this year and had the exact same problem, computer would randomly turn itself off and he would have to unplug it for a while before he could turn it back on.

    Now, to fess up to a couple of things, I have performed the same mod on my parhelia that ALPBM did. I've checked very carefully though and I don't seem to have shorted anything or damaged anything (and the card still seems to function fine). Also, I had a 400watt Sparkle PSU in the system that mysteriously stopped working in this computer and I had to swap it with my old 300 from my other box (the 400 works fine in the other box strangely enough). All indications from my MBM 5 logs deny a heat problem or a power problem however.

    I have also tried pulling out each stick of RAM and trying them individually and I still get the crashes. So, what I THINK happened is that during the brief period of time when I was having a heat problem I managed to damage both sticks of RAM slightly. I'm going to try and pester my friend into letting me borrow a stick of ram to test, of course if it turns out to be something else, or that some component is frying my ram, then I wouldn't want to fry his as well.

    So, that is my very long winded explanation of my problem (very typical for me), and I would appreciate any input that everyone here can offer.

    Full system specs below, only 1 HD in main system is currently wired (that includes power and data).

    Thanks
    Ian
    Primary System:
    MSI 745 Ultra, AMD 2400+ XP, 1024 MB Crucial PC2100 DDR SDRAM, Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro, 3Com 3c905C NIC,
    120GB Seagate UDMA 100 HD, 60 GB Seagate UDMA 100 HD, Pioneer DVD 105S, BenQ 12x24x40 CDRW, SB Audigy OEM,
    Win XP, MS Intellimouse Optical, 17" Mag 720v2
    Seccondary System:
    Epox 7KXA BIOS 5/22, Athlon 650, 512 MB Crucial 7E PC133 SDRAM, Hercules Prophet 4500 Kyro II, SBLive Value,
    3Com 3c905B-TX NIC, 40 GB IBM UDMA 100 HD, 45X Acer CD-ROM,
    Win XP, MS Wheel Mouse Optical, 15" POS Monitor
    Tertiary system
    Offbrand PII Mobo, PII 350, 256MB PC100 SDRAM, 15GB UDMA66 7200RPM Maxtor HD, USRobotics 10/100 NIC, RedHat Linux 8.0
    Camera: Canon 10D DSLR, Canon 100-400L f4.5-5.6 IS USM, Canon 100 Macro USM Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 IS USM, Canon Speedlite 200E, tripod, bag, etc.

    "Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke

  • #2
    You could really use a couple of case fans, to keep the overall system temperature down. One at the bottom front sucking air in and one at the top back pullin it out.

    Look at the inside of you case and see what you can do.
    Its allways funny, until someone looses an eye.

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