dennis.resevfan

Everyone, I have discovered something in my system, which could possibly be causing my problems. My case has an extension cable for the 24 pin motherboard power connector. This is because it has an LCD front panel incorporating a fan speed controller as well as the power and reset buttons. I just looked at the extension cable and noticed that one of the pins (at the motherboard end) is blackened and burned. It looks like it actually melted part of the way through its plastic casing. It's one of the ORANGE cables, at the end of the 24 pin connector. I'm wondering if this would explain instability. Sure looks to me like it would. I'll try out the system in my old pc case, which doesn't require that extension cable. But in the meantime, what do you guys make of this? I expect the damage was caused when that idiot of a repair guy plugged in my power supply wrongly. That's not the same power supply I'm using now, and not the same motherboard.

That being the case though, how did the bundle work for Overclockers UK? It's the same motherboard, cpu, and ram. Are they lying about having tested it? Overclocking by myself actually voids the warranty on the bundle, so it's to be avoided. Having a stable system at standard 2.66Ghz clock settings would be a start. I can't think how it could be the hard drives causing this, considering that when the PC is running in Windows, it can transfer data to and from the drives with no problem at all. Let me check something... If this was a problem to do with Windows and motherboard driver files, what is the soonest point at which it could become unstable for that reason? I mean, I'm sure it couldn't in the BIOS. Probably wouldn't while POSTing. But how about at the selection of Windows screen? And when Windows is attempting to load, but hasn't loaded yet? When is the soonest that it could go wrong? I can test it and see at which point it is going unstable. It could be that with the new power supply it's only doing it during Windows trying to load up and afterwards. I'm not sure. I only tested it a couple of times after getting the new PSU in there. One further important question occurs. If Overclockers UK are being lying bastards, and didn't really test out the bundle, what can I do about it?

Hm, worth a try, I suppose. The other thing to try is what Overclockers just told me. To format the hard drive. I assume they meant format the OS partition and reinstall the OS. I have confirmation that the graphics card is perfectly fine in another system, so other than another bad PSU, it doesn't leave many options. Maybe it IS the old system files causing trouble. I seriously wish I could kick the arse of the moron who didn't think ahead when coming up with the concept of "installing" games, though. Did they not realise people might want to upgrade their system without losing all the installations on their hard drives? Even if I only reformat the OS partitions, I'll still lose the installations. SOME games still work just by being on the hard drive, of course...

I'm currently still waiting for the parts to be returned to me. Hmm. So basically you're saying make a new partition and a new installation of Windows. One thing I want to check first. I currently run a dual boot. Of XP and Vista. I have a third hard drive, on which I could install XP again. But if that drive was put in along with the others, then how would it affect the dual boot? I could just do a fresh install and put in that drive only, to check everything works. But later on I'd need all the drives in, so I want to know what I'm letting myself in for. The drives are not in raid, no. Now, for you guys who were talking about the EPS12V / ATX12V connector: The repair guy who I said was an idiot and damaged my PC did exactly what you just warned me against. Put a PCI-e power cable into the ATX12V socket on the motherboard. I'm not that stupid. I definitely have the right cable. It has two 4 pin connectors on it. I can either put in one of them, or join both together and have an 8 pin connector. My 24 pin motherboard cable is entirely plugged into the 24 pin socket, so there's no danger of confusing the two, even though it does have a detachable 4 pin section. Interesting... So you're saying that perhaps I should be using 4 pins instead of 8 pins? Why would that make a difference though? Maybe I should check what the overclockers UK people were using.

Yep, the overclock is a saved bios profile. I switched between that and the Optimised defaults. Resetting the CMOS also created a new state of 2.00Ghz which doesn't have a saved profile. What I'm wondering is which clock setting they did their testing on when I RMAed the bundle. Hm, so you think I should reinstall Windows on the non overclocked profile, and then try out the overclocked profile? Well, I can do that. The problem is I'll lose lots of installed games. I've backed everything up, but it's going to be a major pain putting the save files in manually. Anyway, you said to check everything is correct. The trouble is, I'm not sure what to check for. I have a bit of a weird PC case. It's got an LCD front panel which incorporates touch sensitive power and reset buttons. The front panel also has its own power connector which attaches to the main motherboard power connector. (You put in an extra length of cable which has a branch off it) I can't help wondering if I've wired that up right. I'm pretty sure I have. Then there's the various pins on the motherboard such as power button, reset button, power LED, HDD LED, etc. There's no way of telling which polarity the power and reset cables are. I've heard it makes no difference, but is that true? For some reason the corresponding motherboard pins DO have plus and minus signs. Any ideas as to what kind of mistake with wiring would cause overclock instability? My first thought was the auxiliary motherboard power cable. But it was clicked into the socket, so I can't see how that could be the problem... Could it just be another bad power supply? And for that matter, if the graphics card was damaged by the dodgy power supply, could THAT cause such a problem? I can't see how a graphics card could affect CPU stability though. Hm, I've just heard back from someone I asked about this on Neoseeker. They say power cycling is normal when overclocking. Is that right? If anyone could confirm that, it would be great. That would mean that basically the only problem remaining is instability. But what could cause that which apparantly isn't causing it when I rmaed the hardware? The hardware which was NOT RMAed, and therefore could in theory be causing the issue is: 1. The case. An Aerocool V-touch pro or something similar. LCD front panel with a kinda confusing way of wiring it up. No indication of power on/off or reset cable polarities. 2. Hard drives. But they seem to be fully functional as far as copying data goes. I can't see how they could be the cause. 3. Graphics card. I'm waiting to hear back about whether this works on another PC or not. 4. Power supply. I just RMAed one of these and this is the replacement. It's NOT causing the same problem (graphics card shutting down), but maybe it's a dodgy PSU all the same? Anything I can do to narrow it down? Or can anyone tell me what they've known to cause a similar problem?

A while ago, I had to replace my PSU because it was giving strange voltage readings. Unfortunately the guy who installed it for me was an idiot, and damaged the PC. I got some new hardware. The new hardware is a Core i7 920 D0 pre-overclocked to 4Ghz, a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard, and some 1600Mhz ram. From Overclockers UK. I have had nothing but trouble since I got this hardware. I want to know what's causing it. I have had the following problems: 1. Graphics card would shut itself down and go cold, while the fan would still spin. Display would shut off. This was fixed when I RMAed the power supply and put in the replacement. 2. When powering on, the system often starts up the CPU fan, then the fan stops, then starts. This happens a few times, then the system boots up. I think it only does this when overclocked. (May have been fixed by replacing the power supply. I'm not sure.) 3. System fails to boot, while either the fans all start up, OR only the Molex connected fans start up, and not the CPU fan or other PWM fans. It did this when running at 2.66Ghz settings instead of being overclocked. (After a crash when overclocked, the PC started up in "last known good configuration", which was 2.66Ghz) I forget if it did this when overclocked also. 4. Telling the system to shut down from within Windows caused it to reset instead. It would power down fully and then start itself up. (This was stopped when I reset the CMOS, as instructed by Overclockers UK tech support). After the CMOS reset, the pc was set to 2.00GHZ. It seemed to be stable at this clock speed. 5. Since it seemed stable after this, I tried it on the overclocked profile again. The result was major instability. The system would do the fan on/off routine and then boot up, but then crash at random intervals, sometimes even before getting into Windows. The BIOS gave me an error message saying that there had been problems caused by the overclock or voltage settings. After all this, I RMAed the hardware bundle. I just got a message from Overclockers UK, claiming that the hardware is "prime stable". I assume this means they ran it in Prime 95 to test it? It also said the problem is "Configuration-User". So they're claiming I buggered something up? I don't understand what I could have done wrong. I followed the manual, and if the hardware is still working for them, then I can't have damaged it. The power supply is a replacement for the RMAed one, so surely that should be ok... It's a Corsair 950TX so it should have enough power! I have not yet tried changing the graphics card. I'm going to see if it works on a friend's PC first. I'm also using the same hard drives, but I can access data on them, so surely they're ok? It's the same case, also, but how could a case cause this?! It has a fan speed controller that I'm not using, and an LCD front panel, but as far as I can see, it works normally. Any ideas? Basically, what could I have screwed up that would result in instability like this? And what causes the odd power cycling routine before bootup? It only happens when overclocked, as far as I can tell. I'm pretty sure I plugged in everything I should have plugged in. The motherboard power connector and auxiliary power connector were in, and were hard to remove, so must have been in properly, surely? I did notice that the power connector isn't quite the same shape as the socket. It fits in, but a couple of the holes on the socket are square, but match up to D shaped pins on the plug. Surely this can't be the cause? There's no other way to get that plug into the motherboard! Help! This is driving me mental! EDIT: One thing I should mention. I haven't yet reinstalled Windows, and it's a new socket type. (LGA1366 instead of SKT-775) It's not giving me the option to do a repair install. But seeing as the problems I'm having are pretty much before Windows even THINKS about loading up, I can't see how that could cause this.

Hm, ok, thanks. It ws mostly just Metro 2033 that was worrying me. That game is notoriously fickle. Not to mention it supposedly runs like crap no matter what hardware you have. Then again, I won't be using any 3D or anything like that, so maybe it'll be ok.

A 9800GT is basically a 8800GTX, right? I tried using mine for PhysX and found that it couldn't handle it as well as being used as a graphics processor. Would work fine as a dedicated PhysX card, but since the card is dying anyway...

Hm. Point taken. Actually my monitor can go up to 100Hz, but still, yes, it does seem to be a tiny loss. I think I'll go ahead and get the bundle then. God knows if I'll actually be able to get the PhysX card to work, though! Sounds very complicated. Some people claim you have to stick resistors up the vga socket or some such weirdness. Other people say it's unneccessary. Any idea what the truth of the matter is? Oh, and by the way, when one of your x16 slots turns into a x8 slot, and you have a 5870 card in each x16 slot, what happens to the performance of the card in the remaining x16 slot? Does that drop to match the x8 slot card? It's not a huge deal if it does, but is that what happens?

Yeah, I know. I'm just thinking that losing 2 percent of the performance would basically mean I was losing quite a lot of the added benefit of my overclocked graphics card. It's running at 925Mhz instead of 850Mhz. http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/sa...oxic_2gb/16.htm According to this very website, it outperforms the GTX 480 in most games. The performance increase of the Toxic vs the normal HD5870, in Crysis Warhead, is about 4 percent. So if I lose 2 percent of the total performance, that is quite a chunk of my overclock benefit being lost. I think I have a plan though. I'll get the Gigabyte motherboard, and keep just the one HD5870 for now. I'll see if I can get it working with the 9500GT, and see how well that works in games vs CPU based PhysX. If there's not much difference, then I'll just get rid of the 9500GT and get a second HD5870 later on. Metro 2033 is the game that worries me. I could always complete that using the 9500GT then get rid of the card afterwards.

Yeah, the only reason I was thinking of a different motherboard was because of the slot speeds dropping. Which won't be a problem unless I use the PhysX card. Just checking, but do games ever demand GPU based PhysX to activate certain options, or is it simply a matter of better frame rates if you use the GPU rather than the CPU? If it's just frame rates, then I shouldn't think a 4Ghz Core i7 should struggle too much.

Yep, which is what's putting me off. The performance drop is tiny, but it means no matter what I used as a PhysX card in the third slot, it would still drop one of my x16 slots to x8. Right now I'm considering whether to just sell the 9500GT and forget about using GPU based PhysX. Sounds bloody complicated to get working anyway. Then I could use two HD5870s in x16/x16. What do you think? Is GPU based PhysX worth having? Or should a Core i7 handle it just fine with the CPU? At the moment I'm thinking its probably not worth the bother. Hm. Well, I looked up the X58a-UD9. You say a price premium, but where did you get that information? Sure, I'd expect it to be expensive, but as far as I can see, its not been released yet. There isn't even any information about it on Gigabyte's website. When's it actually going to be available?

Noone else has any input on the motherboard question?

Wow, that is a lot of PCI-e slots. I wonder which ones you actually have to put the graphics cards into for the correct crossfire setup though. It's hard to tell which are running at the high speed, and I doubt there's enough space to use all of them with standard sized graphics cards. Not that anyone sane would even try.... I just wonder why they bothered putting in that many slots. I can't imagine needing more than... let's see... 5. That would get you a quad crossfire and a sound card too. Hmm. Well, I'll keep an eye out for that board, and see what the price turns out to be like. I wonder... Apparantly there's a 2 percent drop in performance if you use x8 instead of x16 speed with a graphics card. I think that was with a HD5870. But how much drop in performance would I get with my overclocked 925Mhz HD5870 Toxic? I wonder if maybe I should just sell the 9500GT on ebay and put the money towards my new system, while leaving PhysX to my processor. It seems not all that many games support GPU based PhysX anyway... Then pretty much any X58 motherboard will be fine with x16/x16. What do you guys think? Will I miss out on anything special by sticking to CPU based PhysX? How about Metro 2033? I heard it has settings for both basic and advanced PhysX. I don't know if advanced needs a GPU...

Actually, if you check my last post, I said I'm not entirely against the idea of overclocking myself. The overclocked bundle is simply cheaper than buying the parts myself. That said, I've now discovered the motherboard in the bundle won't let me use the PCI-e slots in x16/x16/x8 configuration. With three cards in the board, it would be running at x16/x18/x8. Not terrible, but annoying. I'd appreciate it if someone could direct me to a relatively cheap motherboard (with some USB 3.0 ports if possible), that would allow me to use two graphics cards in x16/x16 Crossfire and also a PhysX card in a x8 slot. And if I did buy the motherboard and other components myself, I'd be wanting to make sure I had the best possible heatsink for a reasonable price. What should I go for? Fenrir? Megahalems? Something better?