I purchased a pre-built computer from Ibuypower in January and it has been nothing but a headache since day one. These are it's current specs:
-Leadtek Winfast K7NCR mobo
-1 Gig Corsair XMS 400 DDR, 2 512 sticks.
- ATI Radeon 9700 Pro AIW
-Win XP Home
- Enermax 420 p/s
- other spec's which I forget.
The problem I have been having the past 2 months has been random freezes/reboots. If I played any 3d intensive game for over a few hours, I would lock up/ reboot guaranteed. The tech support has "narrowed" the problem to either the ram, motherboard, cpu or video card. After hearing this oh-so-helpful advice, I decided to research my problem as much as I can. I believe it is a heat problem b/c I placed my computer in front of my window when the external temperature was 20 degrees Far. and very windy(I did this for a week roughly). This increased the cold air flow and stopped the crashing completely. I then removed one of my two dimms, placed the computer back in its original position and this too stopped the crashing. I thought at first if the problem may be a bad stick of ram so I ran some tests. I colored one stick red and the other blue. I then took the red out and left the blue inside for a week. For a few days, I left it in slot 1 and for a few I left it in slot 2. This resulted in no crashes. I then swapped out the stick and repeated the procedure with the blue stick. Same procedure, same results, no crashes. When I put -both- in, then I continued to crash. This brings me to last night.
Last night, under ,my suspicion that it was overheating, I placed the dimms in slot 1 and 3 in hopes that the distance between the dimms would cure the overheating problem, if that was the culprit. Surprisingly, this caused my computer to crash in minutes, compared to a minimum of 2 hours when the crashes usually started. I placed the dimms back in slots 1 and 2 and the immediate crashes stopped.
I have also reformated the hd, reinstalled the drivers, lowerd my memory settings from 400 to 333 per the tech support advice. Non of these has stopped the crashing. I believe this is a heat problem but then again, I am a computer newbie.
I spoke with the retailer again yesterday for the n^th time. They offered to take the computer back for a 10% restocking fee. I responded by laughing at their offer and informing them that was insulting and unacceptable, especially since I paid over $2200 for this top of the line nightmare. I asked what else they could do and they offered to switch the mobo out with an Asus A7NX8. However, they also said that that mobo doesn't support DDR400 so I would have to return the pair of DDR400 and get a pair of DDR333. All this would net me only $20 dollars back which I thought was sorta unfair but at this point, I am at wit's end. If you were me, what would you do? Thanks in advance for reading this long-winded post =).
-Leadtek Winfast K7NCR mobo
-1 Gig Corsair XMS 400 DDR, 2 512 sticks.
- ATI Radeon 9700 Pro AIW
-Win XP Home
- Enermax 420 p/s
- other spec's which I forget.
The problem I have been having the past 2 months has been random freezes/reboots. If I played any 3d intensive game for over a few hours, I would lock up/ reboot guaranteed. The tech support has "narrowed" the problem to either the ram, motherboard, cpu or video card. After hearing this oh-so-helpful advice, I decided to research my problem as much as I can. I believe it is a heat problem b/c I placed my computer in front of my window when the external temperature was 20 degrees Far. and very windy(I did this for a week roughly). This increased the cold air flow and stopped the crashing completely. I then removed one of my two dimms, placed the computer back in its original position and this too stopped the crashing. I thought at first if the problem may be a bad stick of ram so I ran some tests. I colored one stick red and the other blue. I then took the red out and left the blue inside for a week. For a few days, I left it in slot 1 and for a few I left it in slot 2. This resulted in no crashes. I then swapped out the stick and repeated the procedure with the blue stick. Same procedure, same results, no crashes. When I put -both- in, then I continued to crash. This brings me to last night.
Last night, under ,my suspicion that it was overheating, I placed the dimms in slot 1 and 3 in hopes that the distance between the dimms would cure the overheating problem, if that was the culprit. Surprisingly, this caused my computer to crash in minutes, compared to a minimum of 2 hours when the crashes usually started. I placed the dimms back in slots 1 and 2 and the immediate crashes stopped.
I have also reformated the hd, reinstalled the drivers, lowerd my memory settings from 400 to 333 per the tech support advice. Non of these has stopped the crashing. I believe this is a heat problem but then again, I am a computer newbie.
I spoke with the retailer again yesterday for the n^th time. They offered to take the computer back for a 10% restocking fee. I responded by laughing at their offer and informing them that was insulting and unacceptable, especially since I paid over $2200 for this top of the line nightmare. I asked what else they could do and they offered to switch the mobo out with an Asus A7NX8. However, they also said that that mobo doesn't support DDR400 so I would have to return the pair of DDR400 and get a pair of DDR333. All this would net me only $20 dollars back which I thought was sorta unfair but at this point, I am at wit's end. If you were me, what would you do? Thanks in advance for reading this long-winded post =).
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