Big Issues with Homebuild

whallenich

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May 12, 2007
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My new system is screwed, any suggestions?

I currently have the following components in my system:
Asus P5B - E
Kingston Hyperlinx DDR2 800 2 GB
XFX 8800 GTX
2 Seagate 7200.10 320 GBS running in RAID 0
Core2Duo E6700
Xfi extreme gamer
500 watt psu - came with li lian case.
-2 optical drives
-Running on usb ports: Dell 1907 fp hub, usb keyboard and mouse, usb wireless adaptor, printer, external hdd (with its own power adaptor).


Here are some of the problems I'm having:
-Crashes all the time either in Vista (running 32/ultimate), on bootup at bios stage, on restart.
-Sometimes crashes to a blank screen and a loud high pitched noise.
-HDDs seem to be busy when there is no recorded activity in task manager.

Been told by the system builder that 'on paper' the crashing is because my 500 watt psu is not adequate - he has suggested I get a 650 watt psu.

Thoughts?
 

scoot241

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It could be that the amps on the 12V rails aren't enough, not necessarily that the wattage is too low.

I'm not great with power supplies... someone better than I can answer this better.
 

VideoQuasar

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whallenich , it most definitly is your power supply. Your 8800 is sucking all the life out of it. Get a very high quality PSU so you never have power issues again. I always use PC Power and Cooling but there are others like SeaSonic, Corsair even came out with a top notch PSU. Read reviews and choose!
 

Gh0stDrag0n

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The 8800GTX eats power supplies, you need a better one. PSU 101 & 102 will help guide you in the right direction.
I am using Corsair's HX620 with my EVGA 8800GTX.

Rule One in building a mid or high end PC, do not skimp on the power supply. The PSU is the "engine", you wouldn't put a lawnmower engine in a Lamborghini would you?
 

lmimmfn

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hold on, youre barking up the wrong tree
1. Vista is buggy, its not the OS to use to determine system stability
2. Vista keeps arsing with the harddrive on me, ive disabled 99% of the crap and now it seems to only access the hardrive for 10k every 20 seconds( compared to 1Mb per second )
3. Vista is buggy, use either linux or XP to determine system stability, i put this build together last week, since then ive had 4 BSOD's in vista, some weird graphic crash and the odd program dying unexpectedly
4. This is just from experience but crashes( in XP ) whereby the screen goes black but sound keeps playing is 99% problem with GPU( heating or power ), so as others have said maybe not enough power, but remove the power cables for your DVD(s), extra harddrives, anything unneeded in the USB port, and audio cards you have, then see i its more stable

As i said i wouldnt use vista as a benchmark for your system stability, its pretty crappy tbh, im running vista 64 bit ultimate at the moment but must get my XP running again( another bug, my XP boot has disappeared even though vista is on a completely different partition )
 

Gh0stDrag0n

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The OP did not state he is using a 64 bit OS. Bark, bark, woof, growl, bark. :lol:
You need to use 32 bit Vista, I havn't had any problems so far.
64 bit software IMO always takes a backseat to 32 in terms of support.
About the only thing a 64 bit OS is good for right now is the ability to use more than 3 Gigs of memory. BTW, Did you test your memory? 8O
 

whallenich

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The Silverstone Zeus ST65ZF 650W ATX Power Supply Unit has been recommended to me - does anyone have any experience with this PSU?
 

BustedSony

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The power supply may not be adequate for the 8800 GTX, but there is no WAY that that card is going to starve the power supply just at bootup! At boot time the video card is in basic VESA mode, drawing just a fraction of the current it takes in 3D mode during gaming.

The problem MAY be the power supply on its own, or memory, or a resource conflict with that Creative audio card (I've had crashes during boot caused by an audio card) however inadequate power for the video card will only show itself during gaming or hardware rendering.
 

lmimmfn

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The OP did not state he is using a 64 bit OS. Bark, bark, woof, growl, bark. :lol:
lol, i know, i didnt either :)
You need to use 32 bit Vista, I havn't had any problems so far.
nah, i have both versions here, and i agree that 32-bit might be a bit better at the moment, but 64bit is a lot better technically( it theory :) ), i can see most gamers etc moving to 64bit simply because of the mem limit with 32bit OS's, now i speak about the lifetime of the product, currently games need around 2gig for top performance, that will increase in the next few years, for me its either Vista 64bit or no Vista :p

64 bit software IMO always takes a backseat to 32 in terms of support.
youre right, im sure it will improve though, im already seeing a lot of vista software having 64bit versions
About the only thing a 64 bit OS is good for right now is the ability to use more than 3 Gigs of memory. BTW, Did you test your memory? 8O
right again, i havnt tested memory, just havnt had the time, most of the issues/crashes were dying in the nvidia drivers, ill isolate it eventually, it is stable 99% of the time so its not driving me crazy or anything, performance needs a lot of improvement
 

demiller66

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May 17, 2007
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I'm just finishing a build of a similar system. ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus, 4 gb Kingston DDR2 800, WD RE2 500 GB, Plextor DVD, EVGA geforce 8800 gtx, intel core 2 duo e6700, Silverstone DA850.

After I initially installed Vista, I had some of the same problems. You probably need to update the bios and the drivers for the graphics card. Though I have an 850 watt psu (it's overkill until I add the second graphics card), I don't think it's your power supply. Try reinstalling Vista and updating all of the drivers. For me, it took two reinstalls of Vista and updating all of the drivers. Now, no more errors on booting. The only problem now is that the system hangs when coming out of sleep mode. Apparently, this is due to the wireless keyboard hooked up to a USB port. The Nforce USB controller needs some kind of patch which can be downloaded from the Microsoft site to fix what I've found out is an all too common problem with Vista.