Bad motherboard or PSU?

[ripa7487]

Hey all, I am having several problems with my setup and can't find anything online that's helpful.. So I figured I would see if I can get some answers here.

Upon start up I'll have a black screen on my monitor for about 1 minute while my graphics card fan violently fluctuates. After about 1 minute the fan speed will become stable and windows boots up as it normally would. While playing any game specifically BF3 or WoW, the games will randomly crash sometimes after 1 minute, sometimes after 1 hour.. Its totally random. BF3 freezes where I have to ctrl+alt+delete to get out and I get a "Battlefield 3 has stopped working error" WoW quits to the desktop with random WoW errors.

I'm also occasionally get random BSOD of several different errors but the most common is "page fault in nonpaged error"

I've tried using different ram and video cards but am still experiencing the same issues..

I'm now thinking its either my Power Supply, or the Motherboard.. on a side note only one of my PCI Express slots seems to be functional.. the other two don't give a display.

Please Help!

System Spec:

ASUS P5N-T Deluxe motherboard
Intel q6600 quad core processor
Antec 850W tru-quattro Power supply
4 Gigs of OCZ 1066 DDR2 Ram
EVGA GTX 295 Co-op video card
Crucial 120G SSD SATAIII hard drive
Western Digital 500G SATA hard drive

 

[inzone]

Do you have anything else to test the motherboard slots besides the video card because the video card should be in the first slot nearest to the cpu anyway. If the slots are in fact not working then it would mean that there is a better chance that the motherboard is failing than the psu. If you could get hold of a psu tester then you could verify that the psu is good. Since you were able to try different video cards and ram , are you able to try a different psu?

 

[nikimarie]

Sounds like a heat or hardware issue. Are you overclocking your CPU? Sometimes if all the components in your system are not top shelf and you try to OC, you will become unstable and get errors. Hardware compatability errors are hard to find. I would go into the bios, check your memory voltage to be sure it matches the sticks you are using, and maybe reset motherboard and processor to default speeds there to see if it eliminates the problem. The Power supply issue you ask about could be your video card requires more power then yous power supply produces. If your spreading power thin between motherboard and graphics card, that will create errors.

 

[nikimarie]

Sorry, I see you're running a great power supply. I'd run some temperature monitoring software to see where the CPU is running. You should of gotten PC Probe II with your motherboard.

 

[ripa7487]

Do you have anything else to test the motherboard slots besides the video card because the video card should be in the first slot nearest to the cpu anyway. If the slots are in fact not working then it would mean that there is a better chance that the motherboard is failing than the psu. If you could get hold of a psu tester then you could verify that the psu is good. Since you were able to try different video cards and ram , are you able to try a different psu?

I don't have a spare PSU to test at the moment.. and I'm trying to narrow it down between the two before I buy anything which seems impossible. Worst case scenario would be the motherboard, which I'd most likely have to upgrade my cpu, ram, motherboard to the new 1155 socket since 775 is hard to come by these days

 

[ripa7487]

Sounds like a heat or hardware issue. Are you overclocking your CPU? Sometimes if all the components in your system are not top shelf and you try to OC, you will become unstable and get errors. Hardware compatability errors are hard to find. I would go into the bios, check your memory voltage to be sure it matches the sticks you are using, and maybe reset motherboard and processor to default speeds there to see if it eliminates the problem. The Power supply issue you ask about could be your video card requires more power then yous power supply produces. If your spreading power thin between motherboard and graphics card, that will create errors.

I also thought it was a heating issue so I went and replaced all my case fans and the same issues occurred almost immediately. I have nothing overclocked.. I've even tried under clocking my gpu since the gtx 295 is such a power hog..

 

[ripa7487]

Sorry, I see you're running a great power supply. I'd run some temperature monitoring software to see where the CPU is running. You should of gotten PC Probe II with your motherboard.

CPU is running 45 under load.

 

[nikimarie]

Motherboards can go bad but not that often. Usually it's a hardware device bad, or wrong voltage setting, etc. Has the problem been there from day one or did it just appear after adding a solid state HD or software? Try real hard to determine what was going on, just added, or software updated when it started becoming a problem. More then likely, it ia a hardware issue you are not thinkingf

 

[ripa7487]

Best answer selected by ripa7487.

 

[ripa7487]

Motherboards can go bad but not that often. Usually it's a hardware device bad, or wrong voltage setting, etc. Has the problem been there from day one or did it just appear after adding a solid state HD or software? Try real hard to determine what was going on, just added, or software updated when it started becoming a problem. More then likely, it ia a hardware issue you are not thinkingf

Turns out I was testing two defective video cards... borrowed an old 9800GT and everything is running flawlessly. I RMA'd my GTX 295, hopefully they'll replace it with a GTX 570! (not counting on it though )

Thanks for your help!

 

[nikimarie]

Turns out I was testing two defective video cards... borrowed an old 9800GT and everything is running flawlessly. I RMA'd my GTX 295, hopefully they'll replace it with a GTX 570! (not counting on it though )

Thanks for your help!

GOOD LUCK, YES, IT'S USUALLY SOMETHING WE OVERLOOK THAT'S COMMON SENSE AND RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. IF WE SLOW DOWN, USE PROCESS OF ELIMINATION, WE GET THERE. REMEMBER, HARDWARE FAILURE, COMPATIBILITY ISSUE, VOLTAGE SETTINGS, OR BAD MEMORY IS USUALLY THE CULPRIT. I'M GLAD YOU'RE GOOD!!! TAKE CARE...NIKI