Need a second opinion/sanity check

[shaithis]

Started getting some issues with my main PC and was looking for a second opinion before RMAing or ordering new stuff...

Basically, everything has been working an absolute treat until just over a week ago when I received Vista and an extra 2GB of RAM.

I installed the extra 2GB of RAM and used the system for couple of days before installing Vista, again everything was great even though I didn't get the full 4GB in XP (as expected).

I then install Vista.....everything works, install a couple of beta drivers, reboot - all ok. Only thing I am missing is ZBoard drivers, so I reboot to XP for my nightly games fix........

PC shuts down, resets and then promptly powers OFF before POST. Hmmm. Press power switch, nothing, dead.

Scratch my head for a while and pull the power cord for 10 secs. Plug back in and everything is working again.

Now, my PC sometimes will not power on and I have to remove the cable for 10 seconds. Sometimes doing it once isn't enough.....

Then I start getting the PC periodically turning itself off when in XP and BSODing in Vista......

I remove the 2 new sticks of RAM and the turning off seems to have ceased. I swap new and old RAM (all RAM is the same make and model) around and still no problems so new RAM is fine.


Now, I know for a while I have probably been on the edge of what this PSU can supply, could 2 sticks of RAM really push a PSU over-the-edge? Or do you think this is a motherboard/bios issue? Or even something completely different?

Many TIA

[pmanington]

definately sounds psu related, have you got another one you can try?

[therover]

The problem you have is unlikely to be a BIOS problem as the fault is intermittent and was working with Windows XP.

I would say it is almost certainly a Power Supply problem, and this is also the cheapest part to change to find out for sure.

[Clunk]

Are you trying to run at 9x390 as it says in your "my system"? What vcore are you running (out of interest). What speed/ratio are you trying to run the ram at? (could just be your chipset crying out for mercy )

There seems to be a few potential problems there. Things that I would do...

Ditch 2 of the 4 gigs until you completely move to vista.

Dont completely move to vista until your graphics card is properly supported.

keep an eye on that psu.

Try backing off on the overclock, or loosen the memory timings a bit.

Does it bsod with the current config, but on a single drive without raid?

Latest bios and chipset drivers etc?

[shaithis]

I have backed off to 3.2GHz (9 x 356), CPU is at 1.475v, vMCH is at 1.6v. I applied AS5 to all the motherboard heatsinks before I installed it for the first time as well, about 2-3 months ago.

Memory timings is something I can do little about on this board, if I manually set them I get no boot, not sure if I have tried them since the last BIOS flash though (0402, only 1 later and its got issues with the LAN dropping out - so staying clear of it for now)...I will surely take another look at them.

This evening when spending more time diagnosing the sound dropped out on me, just got a constant tone through the headphones.....windows then started blue screening and eventually the PC would not boot unless I took the X-Fi out....tried it in both PCI slots and it stopped the PC booting in the bottom slot and made windows BSOD before the login screen in the top PCI slot...

I then threw caution to the wind and put all the RAM back in and turned on the crappy SoundMAX....had a few hours of crash free (albeit, crackly) gaming.

Later I put the X-Fi into my 2nd PC and it didn't cause it any issues so I uninstalled the creative Audio Console software and re-installed the X-Fi and everything is working again...

I am more perplexed then I was before lol

Got a bigger PSU arriving tomorrow just to be sure and I've pulled 2 drives and 2 fans until its installed

fingers crossed

Btw, whats the issue with the 8800s and Vista? Running the latest driver and still getting 60FPS in all my games, can't see any issues and the BSODs when I got them didn't specify and module/driver, just stated "PC shut down to prevent damage" with all the hex addresses. nVidia drivers normally give the nv4...or infinite loop BSODs IIRC.

Thanks for the feedback