Please help with freaky voltages and burnt stuff!

[dkopel]

Hey,

So i've been having some frustrating issues with my PC, and I've gotten somewhere, but I'm not 100% where I go from here...

Problem: PC sometimes shut down, doesn't come back to life, no post beeps, everything just spins but no display... eventually, it comes back to life, often after jiggling with power connectors...

Specs:
QX6700, running stock, no OC
8gb Corsair RAM, about 1 month old
Gigabyte 965-dq6, rev 1.0, bought when this board just came out
2 HDD running off MB, one raptor, one 400G seagate
4 HDD running off Areca 1210 in RAID5
WinXP 64 OS
Seasonic 650w PSU (about 3 months old)

Recently I upgraded from a Core2 6400 to the QX6700, and when replacing the zalman with a thermalright xp120ex, i noticed that i had incredibly stupidly, screwed a hole from the zalman mount into a capacitor adjacent to the CPU, PC had been working fine for 1.5 years-ish prior to upgrade, but theres a hole straight into a capacitor...

I did some research and eventually checked the power connectors on the MB, and I was shocked to find that the Aux connector (8pins) has been severly damaged - 4 pins of 8 are charred on the MB, and the PSU connector is a bit melted around the pins corresponding - I cleaned the connectors up a bit and now the computer is running OK (for now), but I suspect these voltage readings from speedfan indicate that my system needs to 'make sure it's affairs are i order' if you know what i mean...

+12v fluctuates between 8v and has dropped as low as 2.5v!

I guess my question(s) is:

Is this thing hanging on by a thread? Do I need to replace the motherboard and PSU? I was pretty worried about the motherboard until I found some threads around the place indicating that i can probably change the MB to an X38 DS3 without having to reinstall windows, using sysprep or some such...

Any words of wisdom? I'm stressing cos this PC is my work computer, it does video editing and post production and I need it to be as stable as possible...

Thanks!!

Oh, and try to resist the temptation to say what every single person at my office has said thus far... 'get a mac'...

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

If you care anythingm for performance you will say "no" to the Mac, always. Anyway, you will need to get a new motherboard, because if the previous power supply fried the CPU connector on the board that means there most likely is an instability in the system. Whether it was the power supply that caused it or not, 2 HDD, 1 nice CPU, and 8 Gb of ram are on that the motherboard and could fry thanks to energy instability.

 

[atarione]

it would sound like you need a new mainboard and then test the other commponents to be sure prime95 /memtestx86..etc

if the connectors where damnaged on the psu you might need to replace them or replace the psu itself.

using this computer as it is now for "mission critical" (work) applications seems pretty risky. actually using it at all and risk frying everything else seems pretty risky.


also ... running it like that seems like a pretty good way to burn your house down... you should sort this before using ur comptuer

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Macs are actually good machines, but pricey...

 

[Zorg]

I'm stunned. You screwed a hole in a cap and your 12V is burnt, and you continued to use it. Additionally, you don't know what to do.

GET A NEW MOBO FOR LESS THAN $150.00 AND HOPE THAT YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY DAMAGED YOUR OVERPRICED CPU!

ADDITIONALLY, EITHER CUT THE 8PIN 12V OFF AND SOLDER AND TAPE A NEW END ON, OR SEND IT BACK TO REPAIR!

 

[dkopel]

Thanks for the advice and spanks ;-)

I bought a gigabyte X38 DS3 board, and a new seasonic s12+ 650w PS...

Sysprep did a great job of letting me change the motherboard chipset without having to repair install windows.

The machine did so some weird stuff afterwards, like audio output from my Firewire sound interface stopped about 10 seconds after starting an MP3 or video, but reinstalling drivers for the sound card & UPS had everything running very nicely... and so far its stable running an SP2004 instance for each core for 3 hours, will test longer term stability on some very long video FX renders...

Seems like I got lucky with the other components not getting damaged... phew...