Oni Comp

[onivel]

So yeah.. my comp has shit the bed. Working on trying to get her back up and running, but the prognosis is not good.

[sinisteromnibus]

Any idea what did her in?

[theshobit]

Need me to air mail you parts!?

[onivel]

Not sure a 100%. I was getting random frequent crashing. I had two HDs on the machine. I tried disabling them one at a time and wiping them. I even tried to reinstall windows... problem is it kept crashing during the attempt to reinstall. I still haven't gotten a working OS back on the machine yet. In checking the BIOS, the CPU and power supply fans and temps were all in the normal parameters. No overheating and no alerts to abnormal power levels coming from the PS. I'm far from an expert, but that leads me to believe the issue is in the MB.

[onivel]

Aug 8, 2016 22:41:00 GMT -5 theshobit said:

Need me to air mail you parts!?

Ha.... got a spare AMD FX 6300 compatible motherboard laying around? 

[FaeFae]

If you have more than one stick of ram, try alternating / removing them to see if that fixes the problem.

[onivel]

I'll give that a shot. I have two matching 4GB sticks in there.

[sinisteromnibus]

Aug 8, 2016 22:50:59 GMT -5 FaeFae said:

If you have more than one stick of ram, try alternating / removing them to see if that fixes the problem.

Fae is right. What you're describing can actually be caused by bad RAM. Make sure you test different configurations for the RAM in order to figure out which stick is bad or if more than one is. If you rule out RAM as the problem, then I'm afraid you may be right that it's the mobo.

[onivel]

Thanks all... Going to try them one at a time in diff slots and see what happens.

Good RAM is a more expensive fix, but a hell of a lot easier than ripping out the MB.

Currently running 2 8GB sticks of DDR3  PC3 14900 GSkill Ripjaws

[FaeFae]

Thank you for saying so.

As for the RAM ... there's actually a very minor improvement from using the best compared to the lower clock speeds. 2-3 FPS in higher end games such as Witcher 3 on Ultra. If this is the problem, go ahead and spring for cheaper. Unless you're doing a lot of higher end processing or graphics rendering, you're probably fine with 8 GB too for a long while. If that's the problem, that is.

[onivel]

So ran stick One in slots 1 and then 2, still crashing during setup.
Swapped out with Stick Two and had the same issue. Tried it in slot 1 and then slot 2.

All 4 times it fails and crashes after expanding the install files from the disc and starts installing features. When the system restarts I get the error that the system had an unexpected shutdown or error and Install can't continue. It says I need to restart the install.


Looks like I'll be ordering an AM3+ socket MB.

[FaeFae]

1) Do you have onboard video so you can test without your GPU? Spare GPU to try?
2) Can you run BIOS Memtest?
3) Did you fully wipe the hard drive you're attempting to install windows on? Try setting your DVD drive as your primary boot drive and see if that helps for a go.
4) Can you attempt a USB install?
5) If the above is doomed, check to see if the thermal paste on your CPU hasn't cooked away. It might not have a high temperature now, but it could've overheated and suffered damage at some point.


Good luck, Oni!

[thorien]

Are you getting an unusual sound signal when you turn it on? Alternatively, your MB may have a small display that gives you two or three digit number shortly after you power your PC on. Either sound or number may tell you what's wrong (refer to the manual, the meaning of sounds/numbers will be explained there.)

[FaeFae]

Check out www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/search?q=AM3%2B&sort=new&restrict_sr=on for parts to see if you can't score a deal out there on what you do need, if all else fails.

[onivel]

www.newegg.com/AMD-Motherboards/SubCategory/ID-22


Will be here on Thursday... Found one for $60. Thanks for the reddit link. Newegg and TigerDirect are my usual go to but the reddit link saved me $30.