Trouble Shooting, home built system

[pureflipper]

Hi guys, I built a new computer earlier this year and last night it started acting jenky. It will start up and then after a few minutes crash and it doesn't shut down completely the monitor shuts off and the fans keep spinning and i cant force shutdown i have to unplug it. Last night I put electrical tape over the areas where the mother board touch the case because i don't have spacers and I tried booting with using only one stick of ram at a time to see if my ram was bad but that wasn't it either. I'm going to put the graphics card in another computer to test weather that is the issue later tonight. I strongly suspect its the motherboard but i want to be sure before I send it off to new egg to get a replacement. Any advice will be appreciated.

 

[striker410]

Woah woah woah. You dont have spacers, at all? Like, the things that raise the mobo from the case?

I have no doubt that your PC is acting up! You probably shorted it out! In fact, I doubt newegg will replace it even if it IS shorted!

Now what did you do that night when it started acting up? You might get lucky.

 

[pureflipper]

It was raised up by the terminals for the screw it was only touching these raisers after it crashed the first time I unplugged it and started it up again and it crashed so i told a friend of mine about it and then I disassembled it and put electrical tape over the risers my case also has one of those brass colored nails (not sure what to call it) that sticks out of the center of the mother board and keeps it from touching the case.

 

[striker410]

Ahh ok. That's good then. I don't think electrical tape is necessary, as those parts are where the mobo is grounded.

Have you tried jumping the CMOS? Find your mobo manual and look for CMOS reset jumpers. Follow the instructions on how to clear the CMOS.

 

[pureflipper]

Alright ill try that thanks.

 

[pureflipper]

Ok so I reset CMOS successfully and started up my computer and then about 15 minutes later I started rift and it crashed and i had to unplug it to get it to shut off. What should I do now?

 

[pureflipper]

Ok so I put the graphics card in another computer and it works fine so I'm gonna check the ram one more time.

 

[striker410]

What are your temps getting to? Sounds like it COULD be a heat issue. Use a program called Coretemp to check.

 

[pureflipper]

My, friend was gracious enough to let me barrow his computer i built for him (its a beast) untill i get mine fixed. I check the temps and the gpu was at 110F and the cores for the cpu were at 90-100F according to speed fan I found i have a warranty for the CPU and Motherboard but i want to know what part is failing so bump.

 

[striker410]

That's not hot at all. Right now, it's beyond me as to what the issue is. I'm sorry, but I'm at a loss.

Did you check the ram?

Try making a few passes with a program called Prime95. It will find an error if there is one.

 

[tokencode]

Def check your RAM, maybe swap RAM from your "loaner" if its the same type. I would also remove any other components that are not needed for boot. You should have it stripped down to a power supply, motherboard, RAM, CPU, Video card and HD and thats it. Disconnect any panel connections.

 

[pureflipper]

K I've checked the ram already but ill do it again and I do have a jenky sata connection on one of my hard drives so ill check both of them out

 

[pureflipper]

Ok so the ram is fine as far as i can tell i tried them one at a time in data bank 0. I disconnected the second hard drive and the disc drive and it still doesnt work. So i have it narrowed down to the main hard drive that i boot from, the CPU, the mobo, or the power suply. How do I narrow it down farther? I have warranties on the mobo and the cpu and the power supply is relatively inexpensive so I take solace in that.