AMD 3800+ X2 socket AM2
Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe MB
3Gig OCZ ddrII 800mhz running 5-5-5-15-2
6x320gb seagate 7200.11 16mb cache in raid 5
win xp home, all updates sp2 etc
Geforce 6600gt
drivers are all current.
was able to goose CPU to 2450mhz with 245x10 timings and ran 2x prime 95 stable x 48 hours. had the memory settings backed off to ddr-533 so i could primarily test the cpu. Had hypertransport backed off to 4x ratio so it was slightly underclocked at about 960mhz. all good. max cpu temp under speedfan was 49 deg, stable at 47 for most of the test. no voltage mod needed.
bumped to 250x10. booted but immediately apps started to fail and i was unable to power down. manual reboot, backed off settings to last successful OC but would not boot, kept rebooting at win xp splash screen. backed out of OC and reset stock timings, no change. was able to repair by using last successful settings and reboot was successful.
Bumped back up to 2450mhz and added one voltage step so effective voltage about 1.35 as 1.34 was the usual reported by cpu-z, just to ensure stability. DDR II and hypertransport were well within spec with effective DDRII clock being about 407mhz reported. all was good x 1 week, prime 95 good, pcmark multiple riuns good. never oc'ed the gpu during this.
suddenly radi array starts to stop responding. computer will hang, allow me to do a few things, but will not access the hard drives. they just sit there, no sound, no lights on. no report of the array failing. no nothing. tried 20x reboots and now it stalls at the screen just after raid array is sdetected, no winxp splash screen, can pull up the boot menu but as soon as i select an option it immediately freezes upon resuming the boot pattern. have to manually restart the machine.
reseated all components, pulled all memory and tested each stick inidivdually (2x1gb, 2x512mb) to see if it was a bad memory secotr which i doubted - no change. moved all wires, checked for any loose areas that could be shorting - no change.
suddenly, it boots. then locks up.
run it a bit more - get it to boot again using the same sequence above - runs x24hrs, even captured 2 HD movies - 20gb each - off cable box - no issues, no crash, checked the movies and playback was fine, even ffd and rewind so disk access seems fine.
did some web surfing while moving one movie off the aray to a faster machine for editing and boom, lockup in the HD - got in a few keystrokes/mouse moves and it is done.
now it is back to not booting up. have totally erased bios, flashed with most up to date bios from ASUS, re-entered settings, no avail.
attempted a repair of windows and it froze when checking the disk
now got it to load into windows recovery mode and am running chkdsk /r - will probably take 12 hours to complete.
noticed the lower chipset by the SATA ports was waaaayyyyy hot - burning my finger to touch (i was grounded) - it is pasisvely cooled, but all other passive components are fine and I have 4x120mm fans going in this thing to ensure the raid array never overheatts - but non very close to theis chipset area (hey heatpipe s supposed to move heat away from here, right?).
case is custom built by me, quite large and airy, good airflow, cables are good, etc. been running fine x6 months or so.
On a hunch I have addedd some spair ramsinks to the passively cooled chipset - case is desktop forfactor so they sit on top fine, with xalmans sticky tape - and plugged in another 120mm silent arctic cooling fan blowing right down on that puppy from above, case top oipen ( note the thing was frozen and booting with both top open and closed, did not seem to matter to it, so case is open now just so i can access the crappy innards.
SOOOOOOOO!
while I await report from chkdsk, which is running now 2hrs without the HD light going out and hanging - any ideas?
troubleshooting?
similar issues note d( icould find none but maybe i'm blind?)?
sympathy?
Any help appreciated. I suspect that i can access all my movies on here by setting up another hd on the SiL controller as a windows xp boot drive if i need to or my gettigna new mb and moving all 6 drives over cord for cord (i am pretty sure it is a mb issue - but could be wrong) so i think in the end this will be more PITA than a case of crying myself to sleep (1.1.TB of 1080i captures from motorola cable box........on raid 5 for the redundancy but if everything fries then ARRRRGH!)
Take care, have a good weekend, will update this when chkdsk is over.
chkdsk ran al the way through without hangin, reported fixing some errors.
I rebooted out of the winxp recovery console region and went straight into windows, where it suddenly spontaneously shut everythign down for another reboot.
Reboioted again, and now everythign seems fine x 30min. no issues, no nothing.
I'm gonna leave the extra fan and ramsinks on te lower end chipset of te nfroce 590 and see fi the problem is resolved fora few days. if it is I may remove the extra fan, then the ramsinks if that also does not replicate the problem.
Guesses? did my passive cooling system give up the ghost or did i incur a disk error when opc'ing that simply needed chkdsk run fo a few hours?
even if you are unsre, would you have tried any different steps in troubleshooting? I would appreciatethe input so that if this happens again to me (or others) we cna continue to hone down are search and destroy the bug skillz.
