DescentBB

My current system seems fried and I'm pretty sure it's the motherboard. I usually enjoy doing the research on this stuff, but I'm way too busy right now and I need my computer back pronto. I'm hoping you guys can give me some advice. Here's what I have:

Pentium D 930
Asus 975X motherboard
2x1GB DDR2-667 (PC5400) memory
ATI Radeon x1900 XT video card

Right now I'd like to just replace the motherboard, but I'd like the new one to be able handle all the new dual- and quad- core 2 duo style CPUs so I can upgrade CPU (and memory and graphics) later. I have SATA drives, but also 2 IDE hard drives and 2 IDE optical drives, so I'd like there to be enough IDE support on the board. The Asus board that just broke is the 3rd Asus board in a row that have died on me, so I'd like to steer clear of Asus in the future. I'm thinking of spending $100-$200 on the new mobo. I don't know whether to go 975X or 965P or even use a non-Intel chipset. I doubt I'll ever use crossfire or SLI, though. My chip can overclock from 3GHz to 4GHz and my memory can overclock from DDR-667 to DDR2-800 speeds, so it would be nice if the mobo had decent overclocking options so I could mix and match CPU and memory O/C.

Thanks for any thoughts.

No ASUS hm ? Good luck

For a main board my DFI has worked flawlessly and even survived the time that I had forgotten to replug in my CPU fan once.... Only had it shut down due to over heat three times. My board only does single cores I think, straight AGP-PCI board, so I'd suggest that you look for other DFI boards.

Turns out Grendel is right; there's just no avoiding ASUS if you want all the good features. I forgot to mention that I use eSATA as well. I ended up ordering an ASUS P5B-Plus. Even so I had to sacrifice my pair of old IDE drives. Maybe I'll make them into external drives. We'll see how long this ASUS board lasts...they tend to make it about a year with me before dying.

p5b? my friend bought that - it has issues with running both the IDE and sata controllers at the same time. He had his cdroms on the ide channel, and would get odd lockups/slowdowns on booting windows, disabled the ide channel and no more issues.

I second DFI

Take a look at the Commando and P5W DH Del (I got the latter, looking at the former as a 2nd system right now).

Edit: ah, ordered already. Redo the boards cooling system, at the least make sure everything has good thermal contact. Idealy replace the stock system w/ Thermalright HR-09 & HR-05 sinks.

Too bad I was in such a hurry or I could've benefited from some of this advice! Thanks, though.

Perhaps we should sticky this so we don' thave to anwser this next time somebody asks for mobo advice?

d3jake wrote:Perhaps we should sticky this so we don' thave to anwser this next time somebody asks for mobo advice?

That wouldn't be helpful, unless you mean just keep one long-running thread instead of lots of short ones as needed. If there was only one motherboard that worked for everyone then OK. But there's a reason they make dozens of models: everybody has different requirements (memory type, chip type, chip manufacturer, cost, features, etc.). And even if there was only one obvious choice at a given time, it would be outdated in a month.

Genghis wrote:

d3jake wrote:Perhaps we should sticky this so we don' thave to anwser this next time somebody asks for mobo advice?

That wouldn't be helpful, unless you mean just keep one long-running thread instead of lots of short ones as needed. If there was only one motherboard that worked for everyone then OK. But there's a reason they make dozens of models: everybody has different requirements (memory type, chip type, chip manufacturer, cost, features, etc.). And even if there was only one obvious choice at a given time, it would be outdated in a month.

Yep, exactly. The market changes too fast for a sticky on this subject to be useful. And trying to keep it to one thread would lead to the thread being very cluttered before long. Not to mention there are enough stickies in this forum already.

Ah, good points indeed. Can't say that I didn't try.

Well that didn't go so well. Maybe it wasn't the motherboard after all. Neither the new board nor the old one will successfully boot an OS. I've tried a Knoppix Live DVD using an optical drive on IDE, and Windows XP using a hard drive on SATA. Memory has passed memtest on both boards. I don't see how it could be the video card. I've yanked the X-Fi sound card.

So the last choice is the CPU, right? Has anyone else had a CPU go bad? What are the symptoms? For me, the machine blue screens and reboots, and these incidents are happening earlier and earlier in the boot process. Does that sound like CPU? Do they go bad slowly, or all at once?

Smells like a video card, remotely possible it is the ram, even if it passes memtest. If it were the CPU, it would fail to even install the OS and POSTing would even be questionable. CPU failure on that severe a level generally leads to the computer completely locking up even in BIOS and not coming back till you completely power it off and back on again. Memtest will generally throw a ton of errors if the CPU is bad too. Try a different video card before you mess with the CPU any more.

Roger that; I'll try a new video card. It'll take me a couple of days to get my hands on another PCI-E one, though. I'll see if I can get borrow some RAM, too.

PSU may be on the edge as well. How far are you getting into the boot from the HDD ? Did you strip the system down to the bare minimum for testing (ie. what else beside the X-Fi did you take out) ?

All I've got is:
- motherboard
- cpu (with cooler)
- memory
- video card
- PSU
- keyboard, video, mouse
- one storage device (IDE DVD or SATA HD)
I'll try another power supply per your suggestion, thanks.

Crap! I've tried a different PSU and a different video card. Still crashes during boot. I also tried just one of my memory modules at a time, i.e. 1x1GB stick in slot 1. I tried each of my two sticks in this position, and both times I crash on boot. SuSe says \"kernel panic - not synching: uncorrected machine check.\" Knoppix says \"cannot load file system.\" Windows bluescreens and reboots too quickly for me to see the error.

So should my machine run with just one memory stick? If so, the chances of both being fried seems low to me, pointing to a CPU problem...

Wah. I've never had this much trouble with a machine before.

fliptw wrote:take the board back, its a dud.

So you're saying both motherboards are bad? That seems unlikely, but not impossible.

Try one stick, swap sticks. There's a slight chance that the optical drive is bad and the HDD is corrupted (kinda unlikely IMHO tho). Seems to point to the CPU -- what do you have ? Did you OC that thing 24/7 before ?

Did you even try a different CD/DVD rom drive or a cable?

Yeah,

they are starting to remove lead form the solder, and until they get it right you are going to see more duds.

hey, still under warranty

Grendel wrote:Try one stick, swap sticks.

Tried that (see above)

Grendel wrote:There's a slight chance that the optical drive is bad and the HDD is corrupted (kinda unlikely IMHO tho).

The HDD can boot my other machine just fine (or could for 3 days...until Genuine Advantage said to screw off).

captain_twinkie wrote:Did you even try a different CD/DVD rom drive or a cable?

Tried different drives and cables (see above)

fliptw wrote:they are starting to remove lead form the solder, and until they get it right you are going to see more duds.

Were they using lead-free solder 1.5 years ago?

Grendel wrote:Seems to point to the CPU -- what do you have ? Did you OC that thing 24/7 before?

Pentium D 930 (see above). I overclocked it by 33% whenever the machine was on for the first 9 months (on about 50% of the time). It hasn't been overclocked at all for the past 6 months.

Maybe it's time to upgrade to a Core 2 Duo anyway...

did you remember fresh thermal paste?

Dumb question, but how large are the power supplied you used?

fliptw wrote:did you remember fresh thermal paste?

I cleaned off the old paste with alcohol and applied some more from the tube I bought 1.5 years ago. Is it possible for thermal paste to "go bad" in the tube? My temps seemed fine in my BIOS.

MD-2389 wrote:Dumb question, but how large are the power supplied you used?

The main PSU is a 560 Watt Silverstone. The other one is a 365-watt Enermax, which has successfully powered this system in the past. So I'm pretty sure they're OK.

I tried my memory in my work computer today and it was fine. So at this point I'm pretty sure it's either 2 bad motherboards or 1 bad CPU. I ordered an E6420 today, which should be here tomorrow. I really hope that should provide some answers!

OK, everything seems to be running OK now. It was indeed the old 930D CPU, and the new Core 2 Duo works fine. I don't think I did anything wrong diagnostically; you've got to assume a bad mobo before a bad cpu.

I had a brief hiccup when the HDD would boot XP but I couldn't get any optical drive to boot any Linux live CD or DVD. It turns out that Intel in their infinite wisdom decided there's no more need for IDE (anywhere, ever), so their 965 chipset has only SATA support. As a result, Asus had to tack on a JMicron PATA controller for us poor slobs without SATA optical drives (and there's probably a helluva lot of us poor slobs). But Linux kernels below 2.6.18 don't have the JMicron driver, and only the very latest Linux live CD's (e.g., Knoppix) or install CD's have new enough kernels. This was frustrating to research since folks in every forum out there complaining about being unable to boot their LiveCD were told they had burned the ISO wrong, when in fact it was a fundamental incompatibility with the P5B boards.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions. It was helpful to have a reality check during this lenghty process to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

Edit: One more damned inconvenience. After installing the new CPU and mobo, I had to re-activate Windows due to WGA. Fine, this is reasonable. But then later I wanted to update my video card drivers, so I uninstalled all ATI software (catalyst drivers, control center, hydravision) and installed the latest stuff. Then this happens: \"Your computer has changed significantly and must be reactivated within 3 days.\" Frackin' WGA...I didn't even change my vid card; all I did was update it's software!

Thats why I use Autopatcher. Its alot easier (and safer!) to install the updates prior to going online. It only takes half an hour vs. two or three downloading from MS, and another half hour to install.

Autopatcher doesn't update video card drivers.

fliptw wrote:Autopatcher doesn't update video card drivers.

....right, but if he had used Autopatcher, he wouldn't have to DEAL with WGA. WGA is an optional component, and thats only thrown in to make Microsoft STFU.

that has nothing to do with activation.

I always wait until the optional period is over (I think it's thirty days) before I activate windows just in case I screwed something up and want to change it around. That way I only do it once.....

Genghis wrote:I ended up ordering an ASUS P5B-Plus.

Pretty good budget board actually. I just used one as a base for a friends new comp, looks nice, good set of features & controls (BIOS), affordable.

Hostile, if you lose the activation you don't have 30 days. You have to re-active immediately to use the comp

It is also supposedly possible to back up the windows activation. So if you re-installed for some reason, you can restore a previous activation and bypass calling M$ to get it back (assuming you didn't change that much hardware).

Hmmmm. I don't ever remember having to do that. Anytime I have ever had to reformat or rebuild my machine, I always had the annoying little bubble for a month telling me to activate. I guess I got lucky (or the rules have changed). With one machine I think, after the 5th time of reformatting it, I had to call them and get the 2347 digit code to re-activate it after the \"why do you need this?\" inquisition. But that too was after a couple of weeks of using the machine.... Although I haven't had to do this for a while because I have been out of the country so much in the last couple of years, that I stopped tinkering with my comps so much. That and Descent is dead so why bother.....