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Power supply failure on Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
OK,
Need some info. This is kind of off topic as it is in regards to the power supply but I wanted to get a bit of feedback. I've been posting over the past two months about the news system I was building using the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe. I've had a couple of problems so on the info I found here Saturday night I booted to a disk with memtest86 and set it to full test (with the promise controller disabled) and let it run. After a little over an hour it popped up a list of two errors (one at about 256 MB and one at about 550 mb) and there was a couple of clicking type noise's in the case, I look over and saw the cd-roms drive lights were blinking and then it completely shut off. I went over, got down (it's in a InWin 500A case under the desk) and as I put my hand on the power supply to lean the unit over I found the power supply was very hot. I moved it out and set it on it's side and after looking it over for any obvious signs of the problem I let it cool down and then tried to restart it. It cam back on with corrupt video (like the old asci characters, the blinking blocks.) but for only a second. I removed all the accessory's (drive cables and power connectors) from t he board and put my Dmanpdi in the PCI slot and attempted again to start it, this time it only went on for a second or two but I could see the power led indicter's on the dman card only two even started to come on. The -12 Volt led did nothing. Over the past couple of day's, thanks to my trusty old CUSL2-C I've been able to checkout most all the drives and the video card and found that my DVD drive, one HDD and my video card aren't working right for different reason's. I'm working on getting a P4 Power supply to test the mb, cpu, sata drive and memory. Component and problems Creative Labs Dxr3 Decoder and dvd player....(haven't been able to test the decoder card) the drive has read error's. I tried to use it to install XP on a 30GB I'm using now and it kept failing. Maxtor 40 GB 54098H8....had 8Gb of "unreadable gibberish' on it but after running maxblast on it now SMART disk say's it's about to fail. The warranty expired in Nov 03. ATI Radeon 8500 LE works but in the property sheet of XP it say's it cant get the info from the "CDS" so no info is available and there's a yellow mark on it. it also wont take the ATI driver only the XP. I'm emailing ATI about that part. The 40 GB and the DVD drive were on the same controller and power line set of connectors. I believe the power supply died after only about 38 day's and the company I got the power supply from say's they aren't responsible for the rest, only the replacement of the power supply. They say there' sending me a replacment one. I'm concerned that the new P4C800-E deluxe, P4 3.2 CPU, 1GB Kingston 3200 memory and Maxtor 160 GB SATA hard drive may be damaged. Thoughts? Opinions? Any case's I might be able to find online? ME |
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In article , "ME"
wrote: OK, Need some info. This is kind of off topic as it is in regards to the power supply but I wanted to get a bit of feedback. I've been posting over the past two months about the news system I was building using the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe. I've had a couple of problems so on the info I found here Saturday night I booted to a disk with memtest86 and set it to full test (with the promise controller disabled) and let it run. After a little over an hour it popped up a list of two errors (one at about 256 MB and one at about 550 mb) and there was a couple of clicking type noise's in the case, I look over and saw the cd-roms drive lights were blinking and then it completely shut off. I went over, got down (it's in a InWin 500A case under the desk) and as I put my hand on the power supply to lean the unit over I found the power supply was very hot. I moved it out and set it on it's side and after looking it over for any obvious signs of the problem I let it cool down and then tried to restart it. It cam back on with corrupt video (like the old asci characters, the blinking blocks.) but for only a second. I removed all the accessory's (drive cables and power connectors) from t he board and put my Dmanpdi in the PCI slot and attempted again to start it, this time it only went on for a second or two but I could see the power led indicter's on the dman card only two even started to come on. The -12 Volt led did nothing. Over the past couple of day's, thanks to my trusty old CUSL2-C I've been able to checkout most all the drives and the video card and found that my DVD drive, one HDD and my video card aren't working right for different reason's. I'm working on getting a P4 Power supply to test the mb, cpu, sata drive and memory. Component and problems Creative Labs Dxr3 Decoder and dvd player....(haven't been able to test the decoder card) the drive has read error's. I tried to use it to install XP on a 30GB I'm using now and it kept failing. Maxtor 40 GB 54098H8....had 8Gb of "unreadable gibberish' on it but after running maxblast on it now SMART disk say's it's about to fail. The warranty expired in Nov 03. ATI Radeon 8500 LE works but in the property sheet of XP it say's it cant get the info from the "CDS" so no info is available and there's a yellow mark on it. it also wont take the ATI driver only the XP. I'm emailing ATI about that part. The 40 GB and the DVD drive were on the same controller and power line set of connectors. I believe the power supply died after only about 38 day's and the company I got the power supply from say's they aren't responsible for the rest, only the replacement of the power supply. They say there' sending me a replacment one. I'm concerned that the new P4C800-E deluxe, P4 3.2 CPU, 1GB Kingston 3200 memory and Maxtor 160 GB SATA hard drive may be damaged. Thoughts? Opinions? Any case's I might be able to find online? ME If I can interpret the symptoms of the parts you've tested, as being failures, then perhaps the dying PSU delivered some out of spec voltages that have cooked some stuff. Of the things in your list, I would say the 1GB of RAM and the P4 3.2 CPU are most likely to still be good. This is because regulating circuitry on the motherboard tends to feed them. The motherboard itself and the disk drive connect straight to the PSU, so they could potentially be damaged as well. What is the brand and model number of the PSU ? We'd like to know, so nobody else buys one. What are the ratings printed on the side of the PSU. There is usually a label with 12V@ xx amps etc printed on it, and perhaps the PSU had too low a rating, or the PSU had a poor balance between all of its output capabilities. There are some 500W class PSU's for example, really cheap, that have less than adequate +12V output. A high end P4 system can cook one of those PSUs quite easily. Sorry for your loss, Paul |
#3
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In article , "ME"
wrote: "Paul" wrote in message ... In article , "ME" wrote: snip If I can interpret the symptoms of the parts you've tested, as being failures, then perhaps the dying PSU delivered some out of spec voltages that have cooked some stuff. Of the things in your list, I would say the 1GB of RAM and the P4 3.2 CPU are most likely to still be good. This is because regulating circuitry on the motherboard tends to feed them. The motherboard itself and the disk drive connect straight to the PSU, so they could potentially be damaged as well. I've been testing parts all afternoon. So far the DVD, two of the HDD's, and the Video card look like they were damaged. I'm on the motherboard now and it's passing the test's -w- Microscope. I'm getting "unrecoverable crc" error's on one of the hard drives. I need to do more checking on that. What is the brand and model number of the PSU ? The box say's "AG" and I just looked all over it and cant find any model or part number. The company was NWCA in Or. The website's NWCA.com. We'd like to know, so nobody else buys one. What are the ratings printed on the side of the PSU. which ratings are you wanting? input/output/amps per line? There is usually a label with 12V@ xx amps etc printed on it, and perhaps the PSU had too low a rating, or the PSU had a poor balance between all of its output capabilities. the amps per line are 26A +3.3v 52A +5v 28A +12v 1.0A -12v 0.8A -5v 2.5A +5vsb It claims 520 Watt total on the box and label. There are some 500W class PSU's for example, really cheap, that have less than adequate +12V output. A high end P4 system can cook one of those PSUs quite easily. Sorry for your loss, Paul Thanks, ME Those ratings are pretty impressive. That is an "arc welder" class power supply, and a possible reason it got hot, is because something else in the computer was drawing a lot of current from it. (Some of the older stuff Powmax made, wasn't so special.) To find the unit, what I did was type "520W" into the pricewatch.com search engine. The first entry returned, made reference to "AG/Echo Star(Powmax)", so this is a Powmax power supply. I checked the Powmax site, and the nearest thing I could find, claimed to have overvoltage and overcurrent protection. If your unit had OV protection, then something else must have happened to the thing. (Over voltage protection is supposed to be a separate circuit in the PSU, that shuts the PSU off in the event that any voltage rises higher than a certain percentage above the nominal value. Overcurrent protection, on the other hand, is pretty useless, as the current that would trip at would be so high, that whatever was connected at the other end would already be on fire :-) It is possible there was a rail to rail short somewhere, and when I read about the Inwin 500a case in Google, it makes reference to the use of "dimples" for mounting the motherboard. Does your motherboard use the standard brass standoffs, or does the motherboard get screwed directly to the tray somehow ? Maybe the tray was touching something on the bottom of the motherboard that it shouldn't be touching ? The reason for me asking these stupid questions, is you really need to know exactly what failed. If you attempt to buy new stuff, to rebuild the machine, it could be that one of the original items you own, is a "time bomb", waiting to kill the next piece of good hardware it is connected to. Maybe the power supply wasn't the part at fault, and it got hot because of an overload coming from something plugged into it. At least keep your eyes "peeled" for some unlikely possibilities. Does the original power supply still run, and have you been using it for your testing ? Or have you already tried replacing it ? It is times like this that a voltmeter, and a clamp-on DC ammeter come in handy. Maybe you could take that Powmax to a local computer shop, one that has some kind of power supply tester, and see whether it is still working or not ? If the PSU smoked or flamed out, then you don't need to waste your time on it. Paul |
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"Paul" wrote in message ... In article , "ME" wrote: snip If I can interpret the symptoms of the parts you've tested, as being failures, then perhaps the dying PSU delivered some out of spec voltages that have cooked some stuff. Of the things in your list, I would say the 1GB of RAM and the P4 3.2 CPU are most likely to still be good. This is because regulating circuitry on the motherboard tends to feed them. The motherboard itself and the disk drive connect straight to the PSU, so they could potentially be damaged as well. I've been testing parts all afternoon. So far the DVD, two of the HDD's, and the Video card look like they were damaged. I'm on the motherboard now and it's passing the test's -w- Microscope. I'm getting "unrecoverable crc" error's on one of the hard drives. I need to do more checking on that. What is the brand and model number of the PSU ? The box say's "AG" and I just looked all over it and cant find any model or part number. The company was NWCA in Or. The website's NWCA.com. We'd like to know, so nobody else buys one. What are the ratings printed on the side of the PSU. which ratings are you wanting? input/output/amps per line? There is usually a label with 12V@ xx amps etc printed on it, and perhaps the PSU had too low a rating, or the PSU had a poor balance between all of its output capabilities. the amps per line are 26A +3.3v 52A +5v 28A +12v 1.0A -12v 0.8A -5v 2.5A +5vsb It claims 520 Watt total on the box and label. There are some 500W class PSU's for example, really cheap, that have less than adequate +12V output. A high end P4 system can cook one of those PSUs quite easily. Sorry for your loss, Paul Thanks, ME |
#5
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In article , "ME"
wrote: "Paul" wrote in message ... snip That's the power supply and that's the image of the one I've got. http://us-depot.com/frshag520wad1.html Yes, I am assuming that's what the clicking was right before it shut off. Sadly it didnt do so fast enought to save everything. then something else must have happened to the thing. (Over voltage protection is supposed to be a separate circuit in the PSU, that shuts the PSU off in the event that any voltage rises higher than a certain percentage above the nominal value. Overcurrent protection, on the other hand, is pretty useless, as the current that would trip at would be so high, that whatever was connected at the other end would already be on fire :-) As in the CD-rom drive lights flashing right as it turned off. I've gone thru Microscope and the board, CPU , memory all test fine. The Asus crash free bios saved the day on the board as it wouldnt boot till I used the cd. As it looks now the 40GB HDD & 6X DVD cd-rom (decoder card?) on the secondary controller (there were also on the same power supply line also) are bad and one hdd has some unrecoverable crc error's on it. Do you know anything about Memtest86? Does it activate or use the ide controller? I dont know if reformating will resolve the crc failures and I'm looking at trying to backup my files before trying. I'm hoping this hasnt hurt the new 160GB SATA drive. The floppy version of Memtest86 has no reason to go near the IDE controller. If you used the ISO CDROM image, then the BIOS has routines in it (INT13 routines?), to bootstrap code off an IDE device. Maybe Memtest86 uses INT13 and the BIOS in both cases. You are assuming here, that the damage was caused by accesses to the IDE interface. I don't see any reason to suspect that. Since you mention a burnt smell, this could be purely a power supply problem that killed a bunch of stuff. The logic on the drives is done with +5V, and maybe that is the voltage that went out of spec. (+12V could probably take a bit more abuse, as the motor and actuator would get power from there.) snip to rebuild the machine, it could be that one of the original items you own, is a "time bomb", waiting to kill the next piece of good hardware it is connected to. This is my worry. As soon as I get a chance I'm writing NWCA a letter about it. As they havent even advised me they shipped the replacment power supply and it's been three day's I'm preparing for it. As you've been doing a lot of testing on the components, it sounds like that hasn't happened so far. Only the DVD drive sounds a bit scary. Maybe the power supply wasn't the part at fault, and it got hot because of an overload coming from something plugged into it. Well, I did have a lot connected but that's why I got a 520Watt. Before it died it had 4 Hdd's/2 cd-roms/video It ran in that configuration almost 24/7 for over 38 day's before it quit. It quit while running Memtest86 so it wasnt really doing all the stuff it does when running Windows. I just started having problems with it the saterday it died. The night before I watched Xmen 2 on it. I've measured the power comsumption on my computer while running memtest86, and it isn't the hottest test you can run. In terms of total power, on my puny Radeon 8500 equipped system, I find 3DMark draws about the same current from the wall as Memtest86. On a P4 system, the processor uses +12V for the motherboard Vcore switching supply, so any processor intensive activity can draw up to 8 amps or so from +12V. The DIMMs generally draw a smaller amount of power, at about 5W for an active DIMM. On a single channel, only one DIMM can be kept active at a time, so the total power of all DIMMs is less than N*5W. The DIMM circuit could be a small switcher as well, and run off +5V. That isn't enough current to worry about. Maybe the Powmax isn't good for as much +12V as it claims ? Tomshardware.com has had the odd article on PSUs and whether they live up to their specs or not. At least keep your eyes "peeled" for some unlikely possibilities. This is why I keep doing all the "testing" instead of playing, hoping I can catch it before hand. I'd hate to get this all said and done and then have more trouble. Does the original power supply still run, and have you been using it for your testing ? No, the power supply, no matter what it's connected to will start them in 1-2 seconds it shut's off. No, I got out my last system parts (CUSL2-C,PIII 1Ghz, 512 Ram) and used it to do most of the testing. Last night my Dad got me an Allied 300 Watt for testing the board, video card and SATA drive. What's the best program for testing a SATA controller and drive? That's what I'm on now to write this. It's working but the CPU temp is 116F, volatges are all within 10% and no alarms but if I connect the DVD player and turn it on the machine reboot's right after the desktop comes up. On boot smart drive say's the 40 gb is about to fail and the video has artifact's in it and periodicaly it goes wiggly, kind of like trying to run a Super VGA video card on a Non-Super VGA Monitor. Hmm. Doesn't look good for the DVD player. In the BIOS, do the brand name and model number of the drive show up in the IDE section of the BIOS ? To get that info, the BIOS has to be able to draw a few bytes of data across the cable, and that will help determine whether it is completely dead. No idea on the wiggly video. It really should either work or just be dead. For a disk drive, I would try to find a program that checks the disk surface for CRC errors. A "scandisk" or "chkdisk" type program probably does more than that, and all you really want is something that just reads every sector. Disk drives contain spare sectors per track, and for a simple failed sector, the bad one will be "spared out" by the controller. That is why most of the time, you cannot observe problems happening to your disk. (The level of sparing or problems can sometimes be observed by running something like HDTach or another disk benchmarking program. If the "bandwidth" versus "position of the head on the disk" plot is not smooth, the valleys in the plot could be indicating a large amount of sparing activity, which would slow the disk down. This really depends on whether the spare sectors are on the same track or somewhere else in the same cylinder. I don't know what sparing policy is used on today's dense disks.) If CRC errors show up now, it means a previously recorded sector is damaged. A worst case scenario, would be the head writing over the embedded servo information, but chances are that would give some other kind of error. If the CRC errors are all over the disk, then maybe the disk heads or head amplifiers got damaged by an out of spec +5V. If you have valuable data on the disk, the first thing to do is try to make a bit by bit copy of the disk, to another disk. Then, you can do whatever kind of testing you want to the questionable disk. For example, some disk manufacturers have a test program that they insist users run, before returning a disk under warranty. Those programs generally don't test the entire surface of the disk, but may pop up a fancy error code, indicating a hardware failure of some sort. If you are certain all valuable data on the disk is backed up, you could try reformatting it, and then see what shape it is in. If the electronics are damaged, the disk will probably hang with the drive LED lit, while attempting the format. Based on my comments, I think you can see that I don't expect your drive to be good for anything but a paper weight. Something I've done with the last two disks I bought, was make multiple copies of the same ~1GB file to the new disk. I fill it right up with big files. Then, I use a file checksumming program, to read and generate a checksum for each file. All the files should be identical to the original file stored on another drive. That is an application level test that the disk is working. If you can pass that test a few times, then maybe the disk is a "keeper". Or have you already tried replacing it ? See above It is times like this that a voltmeter, and a clamp-on DC ammeter come in handy. Yes, I have a nice Fluke, that's how I first found there was indead no -12V. Just to back up the DMAN card's testing. Kenn at NWCA has admitted it sound's like the power supply died and sais Monday they will send out a replacement. He was to talk to someone and find out if they needed this one returned and so far no answer on that. Many people claim that modern motherboards don't use -5V and -12V. Some of the RS232 level shifting chips, used for COM ports, now generate the necessary voltages internally, so they no longer need -12V. While there could be some crazy function running off the -12V, I doubt it. I think your PSU had more than that wrong with it when it died. Maybe you could take that Powmax to a local computer shop, one that has some kind of power supply tester, and see whether it is still working or not ? I live in a small town, one computer shop and he has no tester other than the meter as I have done. I'm consideirng getting one of those plug in type on ebay. If the PSU smoked or flamed out, then you don't need to waste your time on it. I'm unable to smell due to my trach but my Mom smelled it and said it smelled burned, that was two day's after it died. Paul ME A well designed PSU should have thermal protection, and when the main heatsink on the PSU gets too hot, the PSU should shut down without burning any of its components. Same goes for the multi winding transformer. If something burned, then that could be a failure condition the PSU doesn't check for. I'm sorry I cannot be of more help with regard to test programs. I haven't had enough experience building PCs to have collected programs like that. I've used some of the nice tests that come with Sun computers, and I've even written test code for the computers my former employer used to build. Since I've been pretty lucky with my home PCs, I haven't had need of anything more than memtest86, prime95, cpuburn, and 3dmark2001se. Just filling a disk up with files has so far been a "good enough" test for me. Paul |
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"Paul" wrote in message ... snipped for space Those ratings are pretty impressive. That is an "arc welder" class power supply, and a possible reason it got hot, is because something else in the computer was drawing a lot of current from it. (Some of the older stuff Powmax made, wasn't so special.) Well, this one is claimed to be new. Was nicely packaged in a colorfull box. To find the unit, what I did was type "520W" into the pricewatch.com search engine. The first entry returned, made reference to "AG/Echo Star(Powmax)", so this is a Powmax power supply. I checked the Powmax site, and the nearest thing I could find, claimed to have overvoltage and overcurrent protection. If your unit had OV protection, That's the power supply and that's the image of the one I've got. http://us-depot.com/frshag520wad1.html Yes, I am assuming that's what the clicking was right before it shut off. Sadly it didnt do so fast enought to save everything. then something else must have happened to the thing. (Over voltage protection is supposed to be a separate circuit in the PSU, that shuts the PSU off in the event that any voltage rises higher than a certain percentage above the nominal value. Overcurrent protection, on the other hand, is pretty useless, as the current that would trip at would be so high, that whatever was connected at the other end would already be on fire :-) As in the CD-rom drive lights flashing right as it turned off. I've gone thru Microscope and the board, CPU , memory all test fine. The Asus crash free bios saved the day on the board as it wouldnt boot till I used the cd. As it looks now the 40GB HDD & 6X DVD cd-rom (decoder card?) on the secondary controller (there were also on the same power supply line also) are bad and one hdd has some unrecoverable crc error's on it. Do you know anything about Memtest86? Does it activate or use the ide controller? I dont know if reformating will resolve the crc failures and I'm looking at trying to backup my files before trying. I'm hoping this hasnt hurt the new 160GB SATA drive. It is possible there was a rail to rail short somewhere, and when I read about the Inwin 500a case in Google, it makes reference to the use of "dimples" for mounting the motherboard. Does your motherboard use the standard brass standoffs, or does the motherboard get screwed directly to the tray somehow ? Maybe the tray was touching something on the bottom of the motherboard that it shouldn't be touching ? No, I have an older Inwin 500 with no dimples on the tray. I have one brass stand off holding the board in place and plastic screw in locks everywhere else. The brass stand off is in the hole up next to the memory/cmos battery. I was considering installing brass standoff's in all as a better way to secure the board due to the heavy CPU fan but that will wait for now. The reason for me asking these stupid questions, No, I dont consider them to be stupid questions. It's bad to give advise without all the info. is you really need to know exactly what failed. If you attempt to buy new stuff, I cant (economically) and wont buy new to replace these parts. The failure of the power supply casued the damages and NWCA will have to address it. Currently, the two hdd's, a dvd drive and possable a dxr3 card. to rebuild the machine, it could be that one of the original items you own, is a "time bomb", waiting to kill the next piece of good hardware it is connected to. This is my worry. As soon as I get a chance I'm writing NWCA a letter about it. As they havent even advised me they shipped the replacment power supply and it's been three day's I'm preparing for it. Maybe the power supply wasn't the part at fault, and it got hot because of an overload coming from something plugged into it. Well, I did have a lot connected but that's why I got a 520Watt. Before it died it had 4 Hdd's/2 cd-roms/video It ran in that configuration almost 24/7 for over 38 day's before it quit. It quit while running Memtest86 so it wasnt really doing all the stuff it does when running Windows. I just started having problems with it the saterday it died. The night before I watched Xmen 2 on it. At least keep your eyes "peeled" for some unlikely possibilities. This is why I keep doing all the "testing" instead of playing, hoping I can catch it before hand. I'd hate to get this all said and done and then have more trouble. Does the original power supply still run, and have you been using it for your testing ? No, the power supply, no matter what it's connected to will start them in 1-2 seconds it shut's off. No, I got out my last system parts (CUSL2-C,PIII 1Ghz, 512 Ram) and used it to do most of the testing. Last night my Dad got me an Allied 300 Watt for testing the board, video card and SATA drive. What's the best program for testing a SATA controller and drive? That's what I'm on now to write this. It's working but the CPU temp is 116F, volatges are all within 10% and no alarms but if I connect the DVD player and turn it on the machine reboot's right after the desktop comes up. On boot smart drive say's the 40 gb is about to fail and the video has artifact's in it and periodicaly it goes wiggly, kind of like trying to run a Super VGA video card on a Non-Super VGA Monitor. Or have you already tried replacing it ? See above It is times like this that a voltmeter, and a clamp-on DC ammeter come in handy. Yes, I have a nice Fluke, that's how I first found there was indead no -12V. Just to back up the DMAN card's testing. Kenn at NWCA has admitted it sound's like the power supply died and sais Monday they will send out a replacement. He was to talk to someone and find out if they needed this one returned and so far no answer on that. Maybe you could take that Powmax to a local computer shop, one that has some kind of power supply tester, and see whether it is still working or not ? I live in a small town, one computer shop and he has no tester other than the meter as I have done. I'm consideirng getting one of those plug in type on ebay. If the PSU smoked or flamed out, then you don't need to waste your time on it. I'm unable to smell due to my trach but my Mom smelled it and said it smelled burned, that was two day's after it died. Paul ME |
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Paul
snip The floppy version of Memtest86 has no reason to go near the IDE controller. If you used the ISO CDROM image, then the BIOS has routines in it (INT13 routines?), to bootstrap code off an IDE device. Maybe Memtest86 uses INT13 and the BIOS in both cases. OK, I've re run Memtest86 as I was doing Saterday when it died. The IDE light did not blink this time and 2.5 hours of testing and no error's, as there was error's before (about 1 hour 45 minutes in) I guess that shows the bad power was going into the board at least to a small effect. I plan to overclock it a bit and re-run the test. I did have one problem but I think it's more of a damaged file in the game then hardware, at least I hope. While playing Far Cry last night it kept locking up with a message that the video card had stopped getting signals (ATI 8500 LE) and wanted to send a problem report to ATI. CPU temp was up about 120F and it re-booted. I'll re-install the game as soon as I get a working DVD drive. One additional issue with the damaged parts, my MS Office 2003, Far Cry & Splinter Cell Pandora's all are on DVD"s so I'm stuck till then or barrow more from my parents till the end of the month. In the mean time I'll re-install Directx and the newest ATI driver pack and try again. You are assuming here, that the damage was caused by accesses to the IDE interface. I don't see any reason to suspect that. Since you mention a burnt smell, this could be purely a power supply problem that killed a bunch of stuff. The logic on the drives is done with +5V, and maybe that is the voltage that went out of spec. (+12V could probably take a bit more abuse, as the motor and actuator would get power from there.) As this supply has a -12V issue, wouldnt that mean they were exposed to "bad" 12V and possable that's the reason the lights were flickering? And that exposure cause the damage and issue mentioned above? more snip As you've been doing a lot of testing on the components, it sounds like that hasn't happened so far. Only the DVD drive sounds a bit scary. Yes, it and the 40 GB drive and the video issue mentioend above at this point looks like it. Now to see what they say about replaicing the parts. Maybe the power supply wasn't the part at fault, and it got hot because of an overload coming from something plugged into it. Well, I did have a lot connected but that's why I got a 520Watt. Before it died it had 4 Hdd's/2 cd-roms/video It ran in that configuration almost 24/7 for over 38 day's before it quit. It quit while running Memtest86 so it wasnt really doing all the stuff it does when running Windows. I just started having problems with it the saterday it died. The night before I watched Xmen 2 on it. I've measured the power comsumption on my computer while running memtest86, and it isn't the hottest test you can run. In terms of total power, on my puny Radeon 8500 equipped system, I find 3DMark draws about the same current from the wall as Memtest86. I'll have to download 3dmark and run it. What are your spec's? so I can compare. On a P4 system, the processor uses +12V for the motherboard Vcore switching supply, so any processor intensive activity can draw up to 8 amps or so from +12V. The DIMMs generally draw a smaller amount of power, at about 5W for an active DIMM. On a single channel, only one DIMM can be kept active at a time, so the total power of all DIMMs is less than N*5W. The DIMM circuit could be a small switcher as well, and run off +5V. That isn't enough current to worry about. I'm running a matched set of Kinsgston 512Mb's in dual channel. Maybe the Powmax isn't good for as much +12V as it claims ? Tomshardware.com has had the odd article on PSUs and whether they live up to their specs or not. I guess after I do this bit more testing I'm going in search of rticles about powmax's. sniped Hmm. Doesn't look good for the DVD player. In the BIOS, do the brand name and model number of the drive show up in the IDE section of the BIOS ? Yes, An interesting point here, in XP Hardware property's, the video card properties sheet say's it cant get info from the "CDS". I forgot to go ask what that was over in the ATI newsgroup. To get that info, the BIOS has to be able to draw a few bytes of data across the cable, and that will help determine whether it is completely dead. No idea on the wiggly video. It really should either work or just be dead. Well, every now and then the screen streaches out horazontaly tot he point that the cloxk and the start button are outside the monitors area then pop they flash back in. I have the refresh rate set high but it's been that way for a long time without issue. It normally runs from 80 to 100 hertz and the Optiquest V95 has been rock solid since i got it back in 96 or so. For a disk drive, I would try to find a program that checks the disk surface for CRC errors. A "scandisk" or "chkdisk" type program probably does more than that, and all you really want is something that just reads every sector. I've run a couple, found a lot of lost files and two director's. Looks like I'm in for a reformat and reinstall as soon as the dvd issue is resolved. Disk drives contain spare sectors per track, and for a simple failed sector, the bad one will be "spared out" by the controller. That is why most of the time, you cannot observe problems happening to your disk. (The level of sparing or problems can sometimes be observed by running something like HDTach or another disk benchmarking program. If the "bandwidth" versus "position of the head on the disk" plot is not smooth, the valleys in the plot could be indicating a large amount of sparing activity, which would slow the disk down. This really depends on whether the spare sectors are on the same track or somewhere else in the same cylinder. I don't know what sparing policy is used on today's dense disks.) I hope to check it again after the re-format and find it's just some bad files from the loss of power. If CRC errors show up now, it means a previously recorded sector is damaged. A worst case scenario, would be the head writing over the embedded servo information, but chances are that would give some other kind of error. If the CRC errors are all over the disk, then maybe the disk heads or head amplifiers got damaged by an out of spec +5V. No, only a few, most of the disk read's good and Norton found the missing files and dir's and created files on the root for them. If you have valuable data on the disk, the first thing to do is try to make a bit by bit copy of the disk, to another disk. Then, you can do whatever kind of testing you want to the questionable disk. For example, some disk manufacturers have a test program that they insist users run, before returning a disk under warranty. Yes, I have Maxtors and WD's programs, ran already, all but the 40 GB are ok. Those programs generally don't test the entire surface of the disk, but may pop up a fancy error code, indicating a hardware failure of some sort. If you are certain all valuable data on the disk is backed up, you could try reformatting it, and then see what shape it is in. If the electronics are damaged, the disk will probably hang with the drive LED lit, while attempting the format. I did this with the 40 GB and now on bootup Smart drive say's it's going to fail and I should replace it asap. All the rest but the SATA are ok now. Based on my comments, I think you can see that I don't expect your drive to be good for anything but a paper weight. Something I've done with the last two disks I bought, was make multiple copies of the same ~1GB file to the new disk. I fill it right up with big files. Then, I use a file checksumming program, to read and generate a checksum for each file. All the files should be identical to the original file stored on another drive. That is an application level test that the disk is working. If you can pass that test a few times, then maybe the disk is a "keeper". I'll have to look for this program but with smart drive saying it's bad I'll just replace it. Save the worry on that point. Many people claim that modern motherboards don't use -5V and -12V. At this minute the DMan card is in the very last PCI slot, the one by the wi-fi slot and it has 4 voltage indicater's. All are lit green including the -12V and -5V. Some of the RS232 level shifting chips, used for COM ports, now generate the necessary voltages internally, so they no longer need -12V. While there could be some crazy function running off the -12V, I doubt it. I think your PSU had more than that wrong with it when it died. I'll find out if NWCA refuses to replace the part's as my Dad was an electrician in the military and the local shop will test it for the hourly fee. I hope there honest and just do the right thing. Funny there moto is, accoring to there website, "NWCA's mission is to make your satisfaction our first priority" and right now I dont feel very priority. I sent them a letter to that effect yesterday. snip If the PSU smoked or flamed out, then you don't need to waste your time on it. Well, for now I dont but if they dont respond I'll need fact's and documentation for the courts. snip I'm sorry I cannot be of more help with regard to test programs. I haven't had enough experience building PCs to have collected programs like that. I've used some of the nice tests that come with Sun computers, and I've even written test code for the computers my former employer used to build. Since I've been pretty lucky with my home PCs, I haven't had need of anything more than memtest86, prime95, cpuburn, and 3dmark2001se. Just filling a disk up with files has so far been a "good enough" test for me. Well Paul, I'd have to say youve been a real help! Just to have someone to talk this issue over with, compare notes and backup my direction on the problems is great. That's why I posted in the first place. Ops, I hear some thunder in the distance, time to shut down. Later ME |
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Paul
I downloaded these and have run them with these results. What do you think? 1) memtest86, Runs fine -w- no error's. I guess the memory's ok now that it's getting the right voltage. Ran over 2.5 hours and I quit it as it had error's within the first 1 hour and 45 minutes the night the power supply died. 2) prime95, OK, I ran this three times and each time it failed at test 2 at about 120 F until I remembered that I still had the three extra IDE hard drives and the CD-RW attached. I removed them and the Dman card and reran the test, it's on now and I'm up to test 2 800000 and it's gone up to as high as 125 F without shutting off or going into an error. 3) cpuburn, I ran this one while I played Far Cry for about 4 checkpoints just to see how things were. Video setting's at very high. I got a lot of color flashing in the game but it didn't lock up or re-boot the whole time and at the end it was 125F. After I shut this off it took just a few seconds to go back down to about 93 F. I will try again with the frame rate turned on in Far Cry and see what happens. The video didn't have color problems before. It could be video card and it could be software. (The re-format issue again) I am starting to think the motherboard, memory and CPU are ok. I still may have issue's with the hard drives and cd-rw but with only a 300 Watt right now I'd better do without or test them solo on the board. 4) 3dmark03 build 340 Wouldn't run all the way with the IDE drive's and cd-rw attached just as above. Disconnected it ran all the way and gave me a score of 1493. OK, don't flame me. It's only a 8500 LE and I think it may be damaged. Actually I don't know if that's high/low/normal for this system setup. I just cant afford to get anything newer (faster) right now. I loved the flight images it use's to test. I've been watching PC Probe and the voltages. System is not overclocked at this time. The +12V line runs under +12V(+11.8V to +11.97V) most of the time but even with all the drives attached it never goes below +11.5V The +5V line stay's above +5V most of the time, actually almost always at +5.107V. Never seen it go below +4.85V Same with the +3.3V, lowest seen was a +2.94V with all drives on. Vcore is +1.6V with downs as low as +1.54V These are all on the Allied 300 Watt. ME |
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In article , "ME"
wrote: Paul I downloaded these and have run them with these results. What do you think? 1) memtest86, Runs fine -w- no error's. I guess the memory's ok now that it's getting the right voltage. Ran over 2.5 hours and I quit it as it had error's within the first 1 hour and 45 minutes the night the power supply died. 2) prime95, OK, I ran this three times and each time it failed at test 2 at about 120 F until I remembered that I still had the three extra IDE hard drives and the CD-RW attached. I removed them and the Dman card and reran the test, it's on now and I'm up to test 2 800000 and it's gone up to as high as 125 F without shutting off or going into an error. 49C isn't bad for a temperature. I don't know why Prime95 would be failing with the disk drives in place. Prime95 should be just the CPU and memory at work. In terms of wall current power consumption on my machines. My 3dMark power consumption is similar to the CPUBURN results. On my TUA266 with 1.1GHz Tualatin: Idle=120W CPUBURN=132W On my P4B with 1.8GHz P4: Idle=106W CPUBURN=160W 3) cpuburn, I ran this one while I played Far Cry for about 4 checkpoints just to see how things were. Video setting's at very high. I got a lot of color flashing in the game but it didn't lock up or re-boot the whole time and at the end it was 125F. After I shut this off it took just a few seconds to go back down to about 93 F. I will try again with the frame rate turned on in Far Cry and see what happens. The video didn't have color problems before. It could be video card and it could be software. (The re-format issue again) I am starting to think the motherboard, memory and CPU are ok. I still may have issue's with the hard drives and cd-rw but with only a 300 Watt right now I'd better do without or test them solo on the board. Yea. No reason to punish the 300W supply. As for the colors, that will be the video card and not the software. After a test run with Far Cry, try running a finger over the video card (touch your other hand to the case first, to reduce the risk of zapping the card with an ESD discharge). See if anything is too hot to hold a finger on. Some color problems are due to overheating. 4) 3dmark03 build 340 Wouldn't run all the way with the IDE drive's and cd-rw attached just as above. Disconnected it ran all the way and gave me a score of 1493. OK, don't flame me. It's only a 8500 LE and I think it may be damaged. Actually I don't know if that's high/low/normal for this system setup. I just cant afford to get anything newer (faster) right now. I loved the flight images it use's to test. I've been watching PC Probe and the voltages. System is not overclocked at this time. The +12V line runs under +12V(+11.8V to +11.97V) most of the time but even with all the drives attached it never goes below +11.5V The +5V line stay's above +5V most of the time, actually almost always at +5.107V. Never seen it go below +4.85V Same with the +3.3V, lowest seen was a +2.94V with all drives on. Vcore is +1.6V with downs as low as +1.54V These are all on the Allied 300 Watt. ME I haven't run 3dmark03, and normally use the 2001se version. That is because I haven't installed DX9. (Does the 3dmark03 still support the online database feature ? In '2001 you could connect to the online database and compare your system to other similar systems.) 3DMark2001SE on my P4B 1.8GHz Radeon 8500 at 1024x768: AGP 2X - 7271 pts AGP 4X - 7255 pts These numbers are about 1/3 of the current top numbers. Pretty good for a computer that uses the old SDRAM. Your voltages are all fine. The PSU is normally rated for +/- 5% tolerance (the spec may be on the label). Vcore load lines allow more voltage variation than the 0.06V you list above, so nothing too scary there. Paul |
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"Paul" 49C isn't bad for a temperature. I don't know why Prime95 would be failing with the disk drives in place. Prime95 should be just the CPU and memory at work. Yea. No reason to punish the 300W supply. As for the colors, that will be the video card and not the software. After a test run with Far Cry, try running a finger over the video card (touch your other hand to the case first, to reduce the risk of zapping the card with an ESD discharge). See if anything is too hot to hold a finger on. Some color problems are due to overheating. Yes I've been doing this along the way and other than the normal "caps" & GPU/Memory being hot nothing. I alos noted the ATI fan is slowing down so I added a Enermax 80MM fan above the Video card. Oh yea, I use a wrist strap grounded to the house ground and that's grounded to a ground spike out by the old Satalite mount. I also have one of those green antistatic desk mats from when I worked at Compaq. snip I haven't run 3dmark03, and normally use the 2001se version. That is because I haven't installed DX9. (Does the 3dmark03 still support the online database feature ? In '2001 you could connect to the online database and compare your system to other similar systems.) 3DMark2001SE on my P4B 1.8GHz Radeon 8500 at 1024x768: AGP 2X - 7271 pts AGP 4X - 7255 pts Wow, I hope the difference is the program not the parts as the differance between my P4 3.2Ghz -w- Radeon 8500 LE at 1024X768 in the 340 version and yours is sad. I have installed a fresh 40 GB and Windows Xp Pro and after loading all the drivers I'll re run the test's to see if software curruptiuon on the old drive is an issue. These numbers are about 1/3 of the current top numbers. Pretty good for a computer that uses the old SDRAM. They sound real good to me. What's your motherboard? Your voltages are all fine. The PSU is normally rated for +/- 5% tolerance (the spec may be on the label). Vcore load lines allow more voltage variation than the 0.06V you list above, so nothing too scary there. Yea, just have to wait for a larger power supply. ME |
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