65 replies to this topic

[Aznpersuasion89]

My psu had 2 of the 4 pin connectors that go to the mobo. So i just picked one.

[Vulpesveritas]

On a quick note, did you try your old power supply to check if it worked? Just thought of that.

the solder should be fine, if it is hand soldered sometimes it comes out like that with some of the flux.

and your CPU supplemental power 4+4 pin plug is normal, newer motherboards use an 8 pin connector for more power for higher end CPUs.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 22 June 2012 - 11:23 PM.

[Aznpersuasion89]

Yes I did try the old one again

[Deathwalker]

How about we start with the easy stuff. I'm thinking your brand spanking new power supply is either defective or now enough juice for your rig. Blue Screen usually = Hard drive, Memory 3 then 6 = Memory, System not switching over when starting is Power or Motherboard. I woud start with trying another power supply in the system first as it sounds like power problem.

Edited by Deathwalker, 22 June 2012 - 11:25 PM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Deathwalker, on 22 June 2012 - 11:24 PM, said:

How about we start with the easy stuff. I'm thinking your brand spanking new power supply is either defective or now enough juice for your rig. Blue Screen usually = Hard drive, Memory 3 then 6 = Memory, System not switching over when starting is Power or Motherboard. I woud start with trying another power supply in the system first as it sounds like power problem.

Aznpersuasion89, on 22 June 2012 - 11:24 PM, said:

Yes I did try the old one again

Anyhow. But yeah then that's pretty much it I think then.

[Stray Ion]

Vulpesveritas, on 22 June 2012 - 10:56 PM, said:

$150 for a new mobo and CPU or $500 for a new computer that will be slower... hmm...

Sorry, just my input. The main thing on OEM PCs is they put in tiny, low quality PSUs, and generally use cheap cases. In general you're getting low end parts, and that's all,

It's why they seem so cheap for what you get, although anything over $600 and it is still cheaper to build your own if you are looking for a gaming rig once you factor in your video card and all.


if you don't have a video card, you'll need to buy one for the CPU and mobo I recommended.

This is cheap and should run MWO at 720p decently;
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814161409

Understandable and no need to be sorry, I have built and upgraded off the shelf, though those off the shelf have all been HP's. I have repaired other manufacturers and your right about cheap cases. The HP's I own all use screws in metal brackets. I hear HP's customer service sucks, then again I have never called it.

Though not on topic, in another thread someone posted about building a recommended settings rig for $300 or $450 something with shipping and what have you. I went and priced around and found some PC's (just towers keyboards and mouse) that had 6 gigs ram, 3.5ghz quad cores and onboard graphics that met the requirements just over $500 plus they had built in WiFi and bluetooth. I just never posted to that thread as it was cheaper using their recommendations.

Another thing to take into consideration is you can search for popular MOBO's and actually find the lifespan of some of the components. 50,000 hours may seem like alot, but 100,000 is a lot better and IMO worth the extra money. But that takes a lot of time doing research and not every MOBO has the info easily available.

I also don't know how capable people are, unless you have built a computer you really have no idea what it entails. Hell you can fry a MOBO just by standing on 70's shag carpet (an example as not all carpet is anti-static) and static electricty will do the job. Not everyone has a grounding wrist strap or reads about plugging in the PC so the case is grounded. I guess I try to give the easy way out, but by all means if you have the knowledge feel free to ignore my advice.

[TimberJon]

An obvious step I didnt see covered was to remove all but one memory stick, reboot. Then slip another memory stick in and reboot. This will figure out whether a bad memory stick is causing the issue. I have supported a 200+ PC environment and I have seen bad memory do all kinds of funky things.

SMELL your PSU up close. You should be able to smell if there are busted caps or fried rails inside. You will tell. Your computer components should not smell like anything.

[Aznpersuasion89]

After I installed the psu I sat there for like 5 minutes smelling and looking. My comp also came with a handy voltage monitor for everything and everything was within limits.

[TimberJon]

Oh yes. Blue screen can = memory exception. Blue screen can also be a funky SATA driver, like Marvel ones. Switch to Intel ones if you can. Trust me, tweaking an ASUS ROG board to properly talk to an SSD is a new kind of artistry.

[Roaxis Stalomainis]

Deathwalker, on 22 June 2012 - 11:24 PM, said:

How about we start with the easy stuff. I'm thinking your brand spanking new power supply is either defective or now enough juice for your rig. Blue Screen usually = Hard drive, Memory 3 then 6 = Memory, System not switching over when starting is Power or Motherboard. I woud start with trying another power supply in the system first as it sounds like power problem.

No... This is the wrong way to go about doing this. When you are troubleshooting a mobo you remove EVERYTHING and start with just the power supply, board, and CPU. Have the monitor plugged into the onboard video. Then gradually check to see if it detects everything such as the CPU, then check the memory by inserting 1 stick at a time and rotate slots, so if you have 4 sticks of ram you should get about 16 rotations of memory to check and see if both the ram and the ram slots are damaged or malfunctioning. If your system doesn't hang or start beeping like crazy at you then you know the ram is good and you can try hooking up the HDD, Follow that with the Optical Drive then your video card. Please keep in mind as you add something while doing this test you must be weary of ESD, it's a nightmare. The whole process will take a while, but this is what IT Professionals do when troubleshooting problems like this. If your computer just hangs around BIOS even without ram then the mobo is most likely shot.

I'll try to make a cheap PC build for you as well, I'm not too sure how good it will be atm, but I'll figure a min of quad, 4gb ram, 1tb hdd and an optical drive with a nice case.

Edited by Roaxis Stalomainis, 22 June 2012 - 11:47 PM.

[TimberJon]

OK well if you want to waste all your time and risk damaging the mobo yourself when it might not be damaged at all, go ahead and take everything off and follow Roaxis's guidelines. In a production environment you do NOT remove everything. The risk of damaging something on the surface of your mobo is too great. You are unnecessarily removing components and in doing so, you can knock all kinds of things around by accident even if you are going into it knowing you need to be extra careful! If it blue screens and you read or detect something funky associated with the memory, you troubleshoot only the memory first!

When you prove out the memory is fine, you move on. It is almost never your CPU not being seated properly. Unless you were dropping it everywhere on initial assembly.

[Aznpersuasion89]

Well I removed two sticks and tried to boot up. Nothing.is there a way to test the psu? I have a volt meter.

[Stray Ion]

Aznpersuasion89, on 22 June 2012 - 11:55 PM, said:

Well I removed two sticks and tried to boot up. Nothing.is there a way to test the psu? I have a volt meter.

Yeah

http://pcsupport.abo...-multimeter.htm

[Aznpersuasion89]

Tested it. What are the limits? The 5v were at 5.06v. Is that ok?

All voltages within tolerances

Edited by Aznpersuasion89, 23 June 2012 - 12:35 AM.

[Aznpersuasion89]

Nice, I hate not knowing why something broke. I really hope it wasn't the psu. It's just such a stupid thing to have go wrong

[Roaxis Stalomainis]

TimberJon, on 22 June 2012 - 11:49 PM, said:

OK well if you want to waste all your time and risk damaging the mobo yourself when it might not be damaged at all, go ahead and take everything off and follow Roaxis's guidelines. In a production environment you do NOT remove everything. The risk of damaging something on the surface of your mobo is too great. You are unnecessarily removing components and in doing so, you can knock all kinds of things around by accident even if you are going into it knowing you need to be extra careful! If it blue screens and you read or detect something funky associated with the memory, you troubleshoot only the memory first!

When you prove out the memory is fine, you move on. It is almost never your CPU not being seated properly. Unless you were dropping it everywhere on initial assembly.

Ok, so doing it the proper way is too risky? If you don't have a wrist strap you can always ground yourself by keeping a hand or part of your arm on the case to help avoid ESD. Also, you can listen to him if you only suspect the memory, however, this is to test the full system and diagnose any problems it may currently have. Personally I think it's a ram chip myself just because HDD's bluescreening is so rare now ever since Windows implemented NTFS into their OS support and it's also one of the first things to die on any of my systems.

[Aznpersuasion89]

What are the chances of my hdd being totally corrupt?

[Vulpesveritas]

Aznpersuasion89, on 23 June 2012 - 12:37 AM, said:

What are the chances of my hdd being totally corrupt?

Well, if you aren't even booting your BIOS, then your Hard drive probably won't be having any issues. and you can check if you have an older desktop still lying around, or if you have a computer shop in town you can probably just take it to them and ask if the drive is okay.

Just what I recommend doing. It probably isn't, but i suppose it's best to be safe.

[Aznpersuasion89]

Hmmm....I'm just curious. I've never done an install of an OS onto a corrupt drive. Man this sucks. Thank Gawd mwo isnt out yet.

[Roaxis Stalomainis]

Aznpersuasion89 download a live boot linux ISO and install it on a thumb drive or burn it to a disk. That should help you after you read up a bit about linux and how it works. Complicated at first, just be sure not to install it on the hdd, otherwise you will overwrite all data and remap the drive for another file system that you have to semi-manually remap if you want to use windows again.

Edited by Roaxis Stalomainis, 23 June 2012 - 12:47 AM.