Recently I put together a new system after some j-hole stole my old one from my apartment (if you don't have renter's insurance, get it now--thankfully I was insured and could afford to replace it). Here are the spec's:
Chaintech VNF4 Ultra
Athlon 64 3000+ retail
1 GB (2x512MB) Geil DDR3200 RAM CL2
MSI nvidia geforce 6600GT
Chaintech AV710 soundcard (Envy24 chipset)
WD 120GB SATA
Seagate 120GB PATA
Maxtor 120GB PATA
Benq DW1620 DVD burner
Hauppague Win-TV PVR-150
Windows XP Home
The first month and a half that I had it, I did not have much of an opportunity to do anything with it, since I was busy at work and was very rarely at home. So only recently have I started gaming again. After anywhere between 10 and 60 minutes, I get BSOD's, crashes, spontaneous reboots, and I have had one or two lock-ups.
The first thing I did was to update all my device drivers. But even before that, I had run the RAM through memtest86 for 48 hours with zero problems. I did some very mild stress testing with SiSoft's Sandra after getting it set up (again, no problems) and mostly used it for internet, emailing and writing for the next few weeks. The cpu seems to withstand stress testing fine, as does the RAM, as I mentioned before.
But something very odd happened before I started gaming again--I was checking the temp's in Sandra using the Environment Monitor module, and somehow the board temp had skyrocketed to 75C for at least several minutes (I was away when this happened). At first I thought it was a misreading, but to be safe, I shut down the machine, felt the heatsink on the Chaintech board (it arrived with passive cooling, unlike the newer revisions which are shipping with fans), which was hot as hell. At the time I thought it was a good thing, since generally that means it's doing its job of drawing heat away from the chip.
While touching the heatsink, I noticed it was slightly loose and easily came detached from the chipset. I tried to reseat it as snugly as possible and didn't use my computer for a few days, hoping to get a replacement from Chaintech. It took them over a week to get back to me about it, and in the end I just decided to get a Zalman northbridge cooler at MicroCenter. This heatsink is discussed at length in this thread. Before and after I attached the new heatsink, I was noticing the gaming problems, i.e. no change with the new heatsink. Actually, at first it started with analyzing and transcoding DVD's with DVD Shrink. Doing one DVD was no problem, but transcoding more than one in succession made the system reboot a few minutes into the second DVD.
Here's the question: Is it possible that the chipset's temp got so high in the first few days it was running that it was permanently damaged? Or is it possibly another defect in the board or another defect in the chipset unrelated to the earlier heat? The reason I am wondering so much about the board and chipset over everything else is that the cpu, RAM, video card seem to be fine (and since the video card does not figure highly into transcoding DVD's [or does it?], I assume it is not the culprit).
The system is running at stock speeds. It is also far from the first I have built. I have had overclocking mishaps in the past up to and including complete hardware failure, but I have never, ever had a problem like this that was not recognizably caused by the cpu, RAM or video card.
Could a once-overheated chipset have brought this on?
Or is it the PSU? I am running it with a four-year-old Enermax 350W PSU, for which I had to purchase an adapter so it would fit the new mobo. The voltage comes up a little low in Sandra, but it looks fine in the BIOS readings.
The only other anomaly is the Date of Manufacture of the RAM that shows up in Sandra: November 14, 2159. But I don't think Sandra is altogether that reliable anyway.
Anyway, if you have read this entire post, thank you. Any input is helpful. The possibilities are a little overwhelming (if anything because of the potential cost involved), and I am just trying to get a better idea of the most fruitful line of inquiry from the beginning, so I don't wind up wasting a lot of time pursuing dead-ends that others have already run up against.
Thanks!
Chaintech VNF4 Ultra
Athlon 64 3000+ retail
1 GB (2x512MB) Geil DDR3200 RAM CL2
MSI nvidia geforce 6600GT
Chaintech AV710 soundcard (Envy24 chipset)
WD 120GB SATA
Seagate 120GB PATA
Maxtor 120GB PATA
Benq DW1620 DVD burner
Hauppague Win-TV PVR-150
Windows XP Home
The first month and a half that I had it, I did not have much of an opportunity to do anything with it, since I was busy at work and was very rarely at home. So only recently have I started gaming again. After anywhere between 10 and 60 minutes, I get BSOD's, crashes, spontaneous reboots, and I have had one or two lock-ups.
The first thing I did was to update all my device drivers. But even before that, I had run the RAM through memtest86 for 48 hours with zero problems. I did some very mild stress testing with SiSoft's Sandra after getting it set up (again, no problems) and mostly used it for internet, emailing and writing for the next few weeks. The cpu seems to withstand stress testing fine, as does the RAM, as I mentioned before.
But something very odd happened before I started gaming again--I was checking the temp's in Sandra using the Environment Monitor module, and somehow the board temp had skyrocketed to 75C for at least several minutes (I was away when this happened). At first I thought it was a misreading, but to be safe, I shut down the machine, felt the heatsink on the Chaintech board (it arrived with passive cooling, unlike the newer revisions which are shipping with fans), which was hot as hell. At the time I thought it was a good thing, since generally that means it's doing its job of drawing heat away from the chip.
While touching the heatsink, I noticed it was slightly loose and easily came detached from the chipset. I tried to reseat it as snugly as possible and didn't use my computer for a few days, hoping to get a replacement from Chaintech. It took them over a week to get back to me about it, and in the end I just decided to get a Zalman northbridge cooler at MicroCenter. This heatsink is discussed at length in this thread. Before and after I attached the new heatsink, I was noticing the gaming problems, i.e. no change with the new heatsink. Actually, at first it started with analyzing and transcoding DVD's with DVD Shrink. Doing one DVD was no problem, but transcoding more than one in succession made the system reboot a few minutes into the second DVD.
Here's the question: Is it possible that the chipset's temp got so high in the first few days it was running that it was permanently damaged? Or is it possibly another defect in the board or another defect in the chipset unrelated to the earlier heat? The reason I am wondering so much about the board and chipset over everything else is that the cpu, RAM, video card seem to be fine (and since the video card does not figure highly into transcoding DVD's [or does it?], I assume it is not the culprit).
The system is running at stock speeds. It is also far from the first I have built. I have had overclocking mishaps in the past up to and including complete hardware failure, but I have never, ever had a problem like this that was not recognizably caused by the cpu, RAM or video card.
Could a once-overheated chipset have brought this on?
Or is it the PSU? I am running it with a four-year-old Enermax 350W PSU, for which I had to purchase an adapter so it would fit the new mobo. The voltage comes up a little low in Sandra, but it looks fine in the BIOS readings.
The only other anomaly is the Date of Manufacture of the RAM that shows up in Sandra: November 14, 2159. But I don't think Sandra is altogether that reliable anyway.
Anyway, if you have read this entire post, thank you. Any input is helpful. The possibilities are a little overwhelming (if anything because of the potential cost involved), and I am just trying to get a better idea of the most fruitful line of inquiry from the beginning, so I don't wind up wasting a lot of time pursuing dead-ends that others have already run up against.
Thanks!