Do I have a bad psu?

nina · Post by **nina** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 3:36 pm

Antec slk3700bqe, stock psu and stock psu fan (smartpower 350W SL350S).
Dfi lanparty kt400a mobo, athlon xp 1600+, 512 MB DDR RAM.
4x HD, matrox g550, pinnacle pctv pro, soundblaster audigy.
2 x dvd writer.

Whenever I try to do something cpu intense.
unrarring, copying, ghost imaging, dvd writing, my pc freezes.
Normal stuff, downloading, browsing etc is no problem.

The exhaust air from the psu is normal with case closed, with case open
it runs hot? Two front drive bays are open, to get cool air to the psu.
Memtest for the ram sticks shows no problem.
Voltages of the psu are fine at idle.
Sometimes there is a clicking noise coming out of the psu.

Can the psu be the cause of the pc freezing?

Bob_the_lost · Post by **Bob_the_lost** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 3:56 pm

It could be, but i'd be checking the CPU first if i were you. You checked the CPU temps etc. yet?

niels007 · Post by **niels007** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 3:59 pm

I'd run speedfan, and then a torture test of Prime95 and see what happens to temps and voltages.. It shouldn't be the PSU, on paper it is a decent model with a bit power reserve for your system as far as i can see..

nina · Post by **nina** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 12:01 am

mb temp idle 1 h 32°C (hardware monitor pro)
cpu temp idle 1 h 37°C (hardware monitor pro)
I will try to run prime95 but I guess that it will be the same problem.
But gonna try it.

Speedfan shows temp1 30°C, temp2 35°C, another temp1 7°C
(don't know which temp this is), and temp 32°C at start up.
HD temps 31°C, vcore 1.79V, +3.3V : 3.30V, +5V : 5.00V,
+12V: 12.10V, -12V: -6.52V, -5V : 0.68V, +5VSB: 5.56V, VBAT :3.34V

gonna start running prime now.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 12:50 am

Does it freeze completely so that you have to reset your computer? Or just makes your computer extremely slow? If it is the latter option it sound like you are running out of memory. My computer used to freeze sometimes too before I upgraded to 1gb.

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 3:04 am

Did this computer ever run ok without crashing? Your amount of memory is not the problem. I'd suggest running the computer with the left panel open and a strong fan blowing in.....this pretty much eliminates heat as a problem.

I have had several computers that suffered similar problems to what you describe.....turned out to be PSU related every time.

nina · Post by **nina** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:01 am

This is really freaking me out..

I ran Prime95 torture test 'In place large FFTS', and 'Blend' for several
hours. No problems, cpu max temp was 51°C during testing, also
no problems with voltages.

So I think that the cpu and memory are fine. The voltages didn't drop so
the psu seems to be fine also? I read in the help file of
Prime95 that it doesn't put a lot of strain on the HDs.
So I downloaded HDtach 3..
Tried it on the first seagate barracuda IV 80GB (master on primary
IDE channel).. HDtach 3 freezed the computer totally during the HD sequential read test. Pushed the reset button on the front of the pc, to restart.
Pc started fine, ran HDtach again for the second seagate barracuda IV 80GB (slave on primary IDE channel), the same, HDtach freezed the computer.
Resetted again.. ran HDtach again for the third HD, an Maxtor ATA drive 120GB, connected to the ATA Raid Highpoint controller (master, primary),
no raid config, just to add an extra drive, everything went fine.

The freezing of this pc occurs also when I try to unrar big files who are
on the HDs on the normal IDE connectors, or when I try to burn cd from files on these HDs.
I ran seatools again which doesn't show any problems with the drives.

So I was thinking, maybe it's a driver problem, so I uninstalled and reinstalled the via 4-in-1 drivers.. No solution.
Heat is no problem either, temps during prime95 were okay, even for the gpu.

Next I'm gonna try to connect the seagates to the raid connectors (don't know if XP will still boot), because the maxtor on these connectors doesn't have any problem. So, is this problem software driver related, or are the IDE chipsets on the mobo the problem?

I'm writing this from the same pc. Normal things give no problems at all.

Will be continued..

darthan · Post by **darthan** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:25 am

Congratulations, I do believe you are about to find yourself in the market for a new motherboard. Well, unless yours is still under warranty. It sounds like the built in IDE controller is failing. Now this is a problem with your southbridge so there really isn't anything you can do to fix it yourself. The first step you should take is contact DFI and check out what kind of warranty coverage you get. They may replace the board for you. The second step, which you should do if they won't replace the board, is buy a new motherboard. It kinda sucks, but on the plus side Athlon XP motherboards are down to the $40 range now so it won't hurt too badly.

kesv · Post by **kesv** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:28 am

nina wrote: So I was thinking, maybe it's a driver problem, so I uninstalled and reinstalled the via 4-in-1 drivers.. No solution.

Try just removing the via drivers entirely and running without them. They shouldn't be neccesary anyway and those mobo drivers have been known to cause instability sometimes.

scruzbeachbum · Post by **scruzbeachbum** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:30 am

Try running each drive from the PCI RAID card. If they never freeze here, and always freeze when run from the mobo's IDE controller, then you know the problem is related to the southbridge...

The old VIA 686 southbridge has a bug where it would freeze/reboot the system randomly when both primary and secondary IDE channels were active at the same time. Try running only the primary IDE channel or only the secondary channel and see if it freezes...

Try doing a google search on this with your mobo/chipset....

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:54 am

Before trying your boot HDD on the additional Highpoint controller (which could screw up windows), I would suggest the classic test, remove all cards except, your VGA card (remembering which goes into which slots). Disconnect your additional HDD's, FDD, and Optical drives.

On friday it took me 5 minutes to figure out someones PC freezing problem as their CD-RW drive, (to be fair i do this for a living, and as such have some experience).

Also, look at all of the capacitors on the motherboard, they often look like this, however they may not have "Leaked", but they are broken if they are bulging at all.

http://www.monster-hardware.com/modules ... opic&t=898

It's easier to get a new motherboard than replace the caps, as damage to the board may have already occured.

Andy

nina · Post by **nina** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 12:46 pm

Well, I placed the HDs on the highpoint controller, and windows
didn't want to boot (I already thought it wouldn't

)
So I went for the hard way, and reinstalled windows with the HDs
on the highpoint.
First.. this damn mobo didn't want to boot from CD.
(yes, I did change boot order in the bios)
So I booted from the install floppies.
No problem installing the install files.
Restarted.. than I noticed that I didn't had the option in the bios
to boot from the RAID controller, not without making a raid configuration.
But I didn't wanted to do this, because on some HDs is data the I want
to keep.
So, totally frustrated I reinstalled XP on the HDs back on the IDE controllers, had to do this, because I was unable to make an image
before the changing.
And guess, problems are gone (and hopefully will stay away).
So I think it's a software-related problem (hope so).
Now only to find out what software does give this freezing.
I guess it's something running in the background or a soft that changed
some drivers..
Pfff.. I already made images of the partitions, to be safe.

I bought this mobo (DFI lanparty KT400A) because it was the only
one that was available and fitted the hardware I had, Athlon XP1600+, PC2100 RAM,
4 ATA IDE HD's, 2x IDE CD/DVD burners, AGP video card.
But I will never buy DFI again.. the specs say it's fully acpi compliant,
but it ain't, when I installed xp the first time, I got an error mentioning
that the mobo wasn't fully acpi compatible and didn't want to install.
The only solution was to install as a 'standard pc'.
DFI only made two revisions for the mobo bios and 1 beta, but this
didn't work. The support ain't great either.
Plus the unability to boot from cd...
I will stick to asus in the future.

I hope that this story will not to be continued.

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 6:00 pm

I'd like to point out that idle temps are meaningless. It's the load temperature you should be interested in...

nina · Post by **nina** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 11:24 pm

Load temps are mentioned above.
Several hours of prime95 gave a maximum cpu temp of 51°C.