Semi new build, same old problems (random posts)

[brinner]

To try to make this somewhat short, earlier this week I turned my pc on, and everything lit up but nothing displayed on screen, and the usb mouse/keyboard wouldn't light up. After trying a few different things, (PSU, booting with different/no ram, testing parts in another computer, etc.) I was talking to a guy at a shop, and he asked me the temp on the MB, I told him the CPU was usually around 25C and the motherboard around 70C.. His jaw dropped, told me I basically cooked my northbridge.

Noobs will be noobs.

I decided this was a good time to upgrade my system, grabbed a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and a much better CPU waterblock.

The system's spec is:

MSI NF750-G55 AM3 NVIDIA

AMD Athlon II X4 630 Propus 2.8GHz

2 Seagate Barracuda 500G hard drives

2 8800 GTX OC2 video cards, sli

Patriot Viper II Sector 5 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

Antec TruePower Quattro 850 W Power Supply

Thermaltake LCS Kandalf case (BigWater watercooling system)

Thermaltake Aqua Bay M5 pump/ LCD display

2 DVD/CD Litescribe burner/readers (one is Sony the other is LG)

--
Went home, installed everything, I go to push the power button.. and.. nothing. Checking wires, trying to get it to boot with different things plugged in, etc. and the computer is posting randomly. Sometimes it will boot, other times it won't. It doesn't matter if it has one video card, two video cards, the onboard video, ram in differnet slots, etc. The closest I got was when I unplugged the dvd/cd drives and tried.. it booted 6 times in a row.

Then stopped, and went back to the random pattern. With, or without the drives being plugged in (or only one of them plugged in.)

All the parts being tested together and in seperate computers, or on their own prove that they all work. Everything is seated correctly, everything is wired, everything is compatable.

I'm at a complete loss to what this could be. It's basically a new build, with the same problems. The only common denominators are the hard drives, dvd/cd drives, case, PSU. And yes, it was/is on a power bar with a surge protector, and it's never been touched without an electric static band, or any tools that weren't made for PC repair.

It isn't possible to pull the motherboard out and try building it outside the case, due to the CPU waterblock mounting. There's nothing blocking the north/south bridge this time.

I'm totally stumped.

 

[Attila_the_pun]

Could it be that the chipset is overheating? Are there are fans or anythong to blow air over the chipset heatsink?

 

[aford10]

Are you running a RAID array?

Try booting into the repair console and at the command line type chkdsk /r

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Well you could build it outside the case, you'd just have to deal with thermal paste and the stock fan. That really sounds like the case is doing something it shouldn't be, because you've tried it without everything but the case and PSU, so those are pretty much the only suspects since by building something else you narrowed it to those yourself.

You could get a el cheapo case and PSU to rebuild your old comp in as a secondary computer. If that just plain works that pretty much solidifies what the problem could be.

 

[buzznut]

PSU

 

[brinner]

Not running in raid... tried the old motherboard with some other parts, and it's defiantly fried.

When the computer boots, it's now giving a message saying that one of the video cards isn't getting enough power (but won't say which one, and according to psu calculators, 850w is more than enough).. the cards both work fine together and indepentantly in another computer.

I'm starting to think that maybe there's just too many items on the same rails for the psu, but I don't know. Going to try to order some connectors and rewire everything to try to split the load more evenly. For giggles, tested the voltage on some of the coolant and it's compeltly non conductive.

The card's aren't overheating, they're both running at 30C and 31C respectively.. CPU is around 28C, motherboard is 36C.

It just doesn't make any sense. The PSU is for hardcore gaming... I'm not sure how the case could be the problem, could you elaborate on that?

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Pretty much it could be touching the motherboard in a way it shouldn't be. Bridging connections between stuff that shouldn't be connected.

 

[brinner]

Solved... rewired everything and it started working