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  1. #11
    Player
    catch22atplay's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Location
    SoCal dude
    Posts
    30
    Character
    Trigger Broken
    World
    Sargatanas
    Main Class
    Lancer Lv 50
    I've had bad motherboards in the past. If you eliminated everything else and it sounds like you have i'd go that route next personally. I would however check the mobo manufacturer forums for your mobo and see if anyone else is having these issues. Sometimes you get lucky and there's a fix for it. Updating the bios for example or an RMA. But then you have to wait a month for a replacement mobo. Sometimes you can repair it yourself like the old Abit ic7 mobo where they used a capacitor on the V Sense line for VDDR volts if memory serves. Easily fixable by removing said capacitor.

    Drivers can cause issues. For me i've had more problems with audio drivers causing system errors then just about anything else. It's one reason why i'll never use any creative cards/chips again. But even realtek i had issues with. Just mentioning this is you do need to eliminate everything.

    BTW i've had hundreds of sticks of memory. I've even soldered a few to improve overclocking ability. I have never ever had a bad stick of ram. Just bad settings.

    Googling the mobo for issues there are many hits and i'd suggest you read them. A lot were RMAed when all they needed to do was update the bios. Here's an interesting one and one which i suspect may be the problem gain, what fixed the crc failers was to change the memory timing from "auto" to "2T", and the bsods were fixed by disabling "DCT Unganged Mode"

    Google is always your friend. Please research a bit more.
    (0)

  2. #12
    Player
    KisaiTenshi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Location
    Gridania
    Posts
    2,775
    Character
    Kisa Kisa
    World
    Excalibur
    Main Class
    White Mage Lv 100
    In terms of probability:
    Any part that directly generates heat (CPU, GPU, RAM) and any moving parts (PSU fan, CPU fan, GPU fan, mechanical hard drives) fail the most often
    In experience
    1. GPU's fail the most often, either the FAN fails or the RAM fails. The observable effects of both are "Windows has reset the graphics driver" and unexplainable graphical glitches, and Windows refusing to load Aero. When it hits a critical failure state, it simply BSOD's
    2. Hard drives fail the next most often, and often the failure is progressive. Errors on mechanical hard drives are always caused by
    a) Wear (I had two drives from the same manufacturer, fail within a week of each other, despite being in different PC's) those machines RAID systems were unrecoverable and warranted a reinstall.
    b) Inappropriate shutdowns (pulling the plug, power switch, power spikes/sags/surges)
    c) laptops and portable drives usually suffer from "drop damage"
    3) PSU failure, I'll admit that I've replaced PSU's for people going back to the 90's and their symptoms are usually the computer works for a while and then BSOD's or shuts down/reboots. This is caused by voltages dropping for whatever reason. The second, and less obvious symptom is that the PC won't turn on, or gets stuck in a "POST loop", where it's drawing too much power on boot up. This is not to be confused with...
    4) Motherboard failure, which has the same "POST" loop problem that may be a result of a firmware update gone bad. Clearing the CMOS will usually fix it, but I had one board (combined with the CPU/RAM timing problem) kill itself, despite having a rescue firmware.
    5. CPU or RAM - Now the only way either of these fail is by thermal damage. It's far more likely that the CPU and RAM are a bad match than the parts independently going bad. This is usually why your Dell/HP/Gateway systems come with low-end slower parts, because they get a higher yield out of them, despite shorter lifespan.

    The AMD 6700 series is not a "low end card", that's actually the 120$ price point card (the current model is the 7750) Switching the video card from one brand to another is usually not the correct answer since that just exchanges one set of driver problems for another.

    My personal opinion is that the crashing sounds like the Motherboard (MSI is great and producing cheap, low-quality parts, I won't touch them) , also I would probably not recommend going to BestBuy for advice, as the people there (even if they aren't commission) are still primarily sales people, and their technicians are high-school kids. However the crashing may simply be motherboard settings, not defects. The "time till failure" mentioned is something that happens from bad CPU/RAM timings (I replaced every single part in my previous PC chasing down a similar problem, ultimately replacing the CPU fixed it, but that was because I went from a Xeon to a C2D chip that was 60% slower.)

    The motherboard is supposed to select the most appropriate timings. However sometimes you have "high performance mode" or "turbo settings" set when you probably shouldn't.
    (1)

  3. #13
    Player
    Kittra's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Posts
    349
    Character
    Kittra Thelder
    World
    Hyperion
    Main Class
    Lancer Lv 50
    I actually have a PC doing this same exact thing now. Ordered New, came in fine, one month later *blam* it starts crashing without BSOD or anything. It just goes from straight on, to off.

    I've narrowed my problem down to the CPU overheating (they used cheap grey grease which hardened like a rock), just waiting for a new air cooler to come in and I'll be good I think.

    I'd recommend downloading a free system monitoring program like HWMonitor and just watch the temperatures as the system runs. If they start rising sharply from any activity, it could be that something in the system is overheating and causing an emergency shutdown. I can't say I've seen it do that for anything other than the CPU overheating though, other hardware usually throws up the BSOD for a few seconds.
    (0)

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