MOBO or CPU issue?

sdrac

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Mar 5, 2007
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Posted this under CPU's too since I'm not sure what the issue is.
Here's the post:

Hello,
My system is a bit older and I've been having some problems with it lately (and they've been getting worse).
Things started with CTD's when playing games - that got more frequent as time went by. I thought it was the
video card at first and up'd the voltage to it, reduce the speed to 4x AGP, etc. - all helped a little, but only
for a short time. Soon I was back to crashing to desk top as frequent if not more then ever.
I ran memtest86 for 24 hours with no error. I tried Orthos and it ran for about 16 hours before the system blue screened.
When I restarted it, I went into bios and poked around. I had the Vcore set to default voltage of 1.4V, but the Bios reading was showing under 1.3 (around 1.28). So i thought this was probably the culprit and I upped the Vcore
to 1.425 - but it still showed in Bios under 1.3. When I upped it to 1.45, it finally came up into the 1.3 range - fluctated between 1.328 and 1.344V according to the BIOS. I last tried 1.47V but still saw the same readings -
of course now I'm lucky if I get into BIOS at all. The system isn't even booting far enough most times to get into
BIOS and when it does, after a short time in it locks up on me.

Is it my cpu or are the VR's on my mobo shot?

I hope I didn't fry the cpu by playing with VCORE but according to my last BIOS readings I was still well below default voltages.

Any thoughts on what it could be or what to do next?

I was hoping to hold off on a full system upgrade until early next year - anyone know of a decent, cheap 939 boards with AGP (or I could go 939 with PCI-E and bite the bullet on the upgrade on the GPU now, even though I just bought this card about 8mo's ago).

Thx,
Sdrac

- by the way, the PSU is fine. In BIOS the readings are 12.16V, 5.08V and 3.34V. I also checked with a Multimeter and got 12.01V and 5.1V (not sure why BIOS was a bit off - I trust the MM more then BIOS).
 

ejay

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You could have or be in the process of developing one or more bad caps on your motherboard. If you see any liquid oozing from any of the caps, particulary those around the processor area, or you see any bulging or convexity of the tops of the caps, this is an indication of bad caps and can cause the instability you are seeing. Additionally, capacitors can go bad without any outward manifestations.

You may want to go to http://www.badcaps.net/ to check this out further.

Good luck!
 

cb62fcni

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Jul 15, 2006
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How old exactly is your motherboard? The Vdroop you're experiencing is fairly typical, even among some new mobos. Caps generally last only a few years within tight tolerences unless they're very high quality. Cap plague is all but extinct now. I would continue to up the vcore, and measure your vcore with your multimeter to verify the bios reading. Do this under load.
 

sdrac

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ejay and cb62fcni,
Thanks for the input.
The mobo is about 3yrs old now - so I guess it could be the caps.
I'll have a closer look and see if I can see anything obvious.

thx,
Sdrac