Having some problems with pc

azrael13302473 · Jul 29, 2006, 02:11 PM

Okay so i just received a new case (thermaltake armor w/ 250mm fan) and I moved everything out and into the new case but now it doesn't seem to want to run stable. Sometimes it boots up fine and runs for a while then freezes, other times it wont totally start, the fans will just be running full blast (mainly the video card) but nothing on the screen and they stay that way until i turn off the psu. I've tried swapping out power cables, ide/sata cables and so on and it just doesn't seem to run fine like it did before. Before it ran totally fine and stuff and now its just bleh. I've only gathered that maybe its the power supply that could be causing problems? I mean in the old case i had about...6 x 80mm fans on it ( with 4 of them running off of those 3 pin connectors on the motherboard and 2 from molex) and now this case has 3 x 120mm fans and 2x 92mm fans and 1 x 250mm fan(all running from molex connectors). Thats really the only difference there is in the new case, well that and an extra uv cathode. Could this really require that much more juice? By the way, i also reset all things to stock speeds and stuff too.

swimtech · Jul 29, 2006, 10:14 PM

Might be a tricky problem, might not, but I would start with the most obvious - maybe one of the mounts for the motherboard in the new case is making contact with the board in the wrong spot causing a short of some sort - you'd probably want to double check the mainboard installation manual against the mounting points for your mainboard again.

Also double check that nothing was accidentally damaged on the underside of the board during the transfer to the new case.

azrael13302473 · Jul 30, 2006, 12:18 AM

Well i went out and bought a new psu, BFG 650 Watt, and plugged everything in and so far its been running stable for 5 hours. I've left it looping 3dmark and no crashes or freezes or anything. Hopefully that was it.

swimtech · Jul 30, 2006, 12:27 AM

Was hoping for a "no-cost" repair, but nice call on the PSU - keeping fingers crossed with you...

azrael13302473 · Jul 30, 2006, 02:01 AM

Well it was running well but then the screen turned off and monitor lost signal, so i had to restart it. On the first restart the computer did that thing again with all the fans and vid card fan (which is really loud on startup) running full speed and just staying like that. After a couple more times of turning it on and off manually, it booted into windows but then just froze almost right after getting into windows.

Al_Vampyre · Jul 30, 2006, 03:07 AM

Bit of a long shot, the syptoms are just like you would expect for a slightly too high overclock, now I know you said you'd turned everything back to stock speeds but I'd just make sure your temps are OK, maybe the CPU heatsink got dislodged slightly and isn't making proper contact, try reseating it...

Something similar happened to me once witha PC that I hadn't moved in about 6 months, put a new hard drive in it and then had all sorts of problems turned out one of the other hard drives was on the way out and moving it was all it took to send it over the edge so run chkdsk or similar utility on all your hard drives as well, mkight be an idea to get a diagnostic utility that can run off a boot cd if its not too stable in windows

azrael13302473 · Jul 30, 2006, 11:33 AM

So i have basically just the motherboard powered, the primary hard drive, and the video card powered. It booted up and so far is stable. I was looking at the voltages on the smartgaurdian application and it seems that some of them are fluctuating a bit, mainly the ATX 12V+. It goes from 11.77 to 11.83 to 11.9, but mainly just 11.77 and 11.83. Is this too much of a fluctuation or is this acceptable? And as i type this, on my laptop, im running chkdsk and also hd tune's error scan. As far as the temps and stuff go, the smartgaurdian app is still reporting decent temps, the cpu is at 23c and everything else is within range too so im not too sure if that could be it. Im using the thermaltake big typhoon for the cooling so i dont think it owuld be that easy for it to dislodge and move around.

Dyre Straits · Aug 1, 2006, 10:32 PM

When you plug in everything else, make sure that the vidcard is the only thing plugged into one of the leads from the PSU. Don't use any Y-splitters to connect to any other device in the system. There have been several reports where the voltages needed by the vidcard drop below what's needed if something else is also connected on the same trunk.