Never really got back to people on this one.

The build went ok, LFS runs at 200FPS with full details etc etc, possible down to 180 ish with full AA on etc.


However i have a problem.

The computer REGULARY crashes.

Now i have to say that it tends to crash in game after several hours playing - and the chip monitoring does not really show any excessive heat and the blue screens that come up say about memory errors etc etc...

so my question is, how do i once and for all get this system working good.

For instance it has to be heat/corruption/memory issues as.....

LFS works well and lasts a long time,
rFactor with everything turned on generally lasts 15-20 minutes
etc etc

At the mo i have the front of the case open with an office fan running into the front to help cool things down.

Can anyone point me in the right direction of how to go about diagnosing this problem once and for all and then helping me solve/resolve it?

Best regards,


Dru.

Spec

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4ghz) Socket 775 FSB1066 4MB Cache
Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 Onboard Audio AT
250 Gb SATA HDD
Inno3D GeForce 7600GT 256MB TV Out DVI Core 560MHz Memory 700MHz PCI-E
Corsair 1GB Kit (2x512MB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 (TWIN2X1024A-6400) CL5-5-5-12
EYE-T Silver X-Blade Mid Tower Case - With 450W PSU

will post temps later on but from memory does not go above 40 ish

I've read about the E6600 having overheating issues and that people are using something like a thermaltake golden orb II to solve it?

anyone used this on one successfully?

Cheers,

Dru.

COuld be a psu issue. Never heard of EYE-T but it sounds like some yum cha brand they usually include a weak PSU in them.

Check the crash address and file if available from the bsod when it crashes and plug them into google and see what you get.

Quote from Davo :

COuld be a psu issue. Never heard of EYE-T but it sounds like some yum cha brand they usually include a weak PSU in them.

Check the crash address and file if available from the bsod when it crashes and plug them into google and see what you get.

shall do that when the crash eventually comes. . . . .

looking at dabs they have 650W PSU with really good reviews (ie running biggeer spec machines that mine) without issue, and for only £38 they would be good on the wallet too

Dru - You should think about using the site

www.overclockers.co.uk

Thats where I get my parts from, I got my G25 there not long back for £140. Great delivery and service, also cheap. Add up your parts list on there, see how much cheaper than Ebay it is.

ok first test

memcheck passes all sectors of memory in memory test

running constant monitoring.

ambient temprature running 45C

rFactor single player no AI but full graphics running for 20 minutes 58C

LFS test to follow..

Quote from Quint999 :

not that cost is a pointer, but a £38 psu probably aint a great bet, and unfortunately the one you have with the case and psu costing £35 is probably not much cop at all.

with the quality of kit youve invested in already its a shame to lumber it with a crappy budget psu & risk a psu that wont deliver solid stable power down the rails , may have a short life span .. as well as noise levels etc

have learnt the psu lesson the hard way after buying numerous cheap psus and having them fail after a few months time after time.

you really you ought to be looking at quality psus's but theyll cost £60/£70 upwards , Seasonic , Antec etc

I have a Seasonic S12 450w and its rock solid and incredibly quiet.

Corsair also make PSU's and its my understanding they are re-badged seasonics at a slightly lower price.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... ;catid=123&subcat=823

A friend has the above with a very similar setup to yours we built a month ago, but the gfx cards a 8800 GTS and he is very happy indeed

You might want to up the wattage a bit if your considering going SLI in the future with bigger cards than your 7600GT. If not then 520 is plenty for your current kit and will be enough to handle a 8800 gtx which need abour 450w +

you might also want to consider a couple of fans inside the case if heats an issue.. my mates e6600 is fine on the stock cpu cooler, but his case is well cooled with 3 120 mm fans , if yours has none other than the CPU fan , then airflow might be an issue, if it can take them , get a couple of 120mm fans 1 for front and 1 for rear ..

Well running a burn test tonight the PSU only got up to 45C
The graphics card running up to 60C

Mem test was clear, therefore i think it HAS to be PSU.

Know i don't know why, but i'm guessing that altohugh all my kit only needs 300W (did a powercheck online) that the quality of my 450W is not producing it stable and theis is cuaseing the issue.... does this make sense??

I will be looking at the £60-70 investment in a PSU methinks.

Regarding Fans the Case already has 2 fans on it (excluding the PSU one) so i'll grab myself a third one for the rear exit as well

Do i need to do anything else??

Best Regards,

Dru.

Quote from Quint999 :

Yes makes sense, if its dropping off the volts under pressure or the PSU itself is hotting up then thats going to cause crashes etc . Not saying it is definately psu, but it sounds possible with the symptons you have.

You can test the psu in some ways with a multimeter etc, but im not an electrician so i'll leave that one to a google search

yeah i'd get one to exhaust the air from the rear, if it can take 120mm's then get one, they can shift a reasonable volume of air at lower rpms than 80/92mm fnas and hence less noise

have you checked the voltage of the Ram in the bios, some of the 965 Intel boards dont automatically detect the Ram voltage ( or Latency timings ) correctly (possibly later bios fix this ) and default to 1.8v, we had to change it on friends Intel 965 board to 1.9v .

Am pretty sure its the same spec Corsair Ram as yours , but check the voltage with corsair, although fairly sure most would need at least 1.9v on the 965 boards

I'm not really a technical guy so will have to google most of what you jusrtsuggested.. lol , burt thanks for the information. i will look inot it

Regards,

Dru.

I have just ordered my Corsair 520W PSU and 120mm fans so shall be installing it when it arrives.

Lets hope that this will resolve the issues seen here

New PSU and fans makes no difference, have updated the bios chipset grap drivers etc etc and still getting the shutdown problem..

at least it went through a stage of saying 'display driver error'

now it just says 'device error' which is un solvable.

Total re install tonight and see what happens...

Hi Dru,

keep us posting.
I have few bits in my mind but its uselless untill you will re-install your OS.

4 days later and the situation is this.......


IT WORKS PERFECTLY!

soory for the caps, but after spending close to £800 on all bits and bobs i was getting increasingly down about it all.

Anyhow what did i do?

I went and registered on both Asus and Corsair website support forums and looked for similar problems regarding mobo/ram compatability errors etc etc

well, from the asus website i found out that the slots on my PN5-E SLi are particulalry picky when in comes to memory and that the recommended slots in the hand book (Yellow) are actually more problematic that the non-recommended Black ones.

needless to say swapped them over immediately.

Also at the same time found out that the auto bios settings for this memory is also not the best, therefore followed the advise given there and manually set some of the memory settings to 5,5,5,12 rather than auto. Also and importantly changed the Command Clock rate from auto to 2T.

With all this set i went and tried a few games, they seemed to work ok for a little while (about 30 minutes per game, without any problems)

Therefore i decided i needed to d/l some stuff and left the computer running over night.

In the morning i got up and saw that the computer was on it's start up page - NO - i thought it can not just last a night of idle (actually only about 6 hours tbh

Checked the events log and there was nothing apart from an entry of AVG at 3.07 am..... hmmmm so actually it had only lasted a couple of hours.

Then the penny dropped.

As it was a fresh install i had turned on automatic updates in windows, these had obviously d/l at 3.00 (default d/l time) and reset the machine, the AVG log i was seeing was when the computer had booted back up and dones it's standard startup sweep

so ok it had lasted a night of idle and a few hours of combined play but nothing 'major'

so wed night and thursday night got back from work (had left computer running 24/7 ) and played a mixture of games all evening including the trouble some (don't judge me rFactor) that used to only last 10 minutes before crashing...

well a very bleary eyed Dru is writing this having spent all last night playing LFS/DOD/rFactor with out one single crash or hang up.....

this is FANTASTIC

I thought i would share my happiness with you all.

Thanks to all of you who have posted and suggested things in this thread.

MY computer is now behaving itself properly and i can go back to enjoying racing again (particulalry league) so i'm not afraid to have hang ups anymore.



Thanks guys.

Also, morale of the story, always try and get good advice also from the support forums of the products individually, you may think you are alone in your setup (as they are all self builds aren't they) but many people had the same mobo/memory/chip combo as me and als othey had gone through the same and come out the other side alive and kicking

Great news, and thanks for posting the solution. Might help out others in the future.

Quote from Bean0 :

Great news, and thanks for posting the solution. Might help out others in the future.

Exactly , many people post problems, but not always the solutions once they have them. I have felt that many people in the LFS community help me so much already if this can some how help another then that just makes me feel i am contributing too