Major Comp. Problems - Possible board issue?

[VoodooU]

I've currently got an Albetron 845 PVE Pro and am in the process of seeking a replacement due to what I believe to be a bas board. However, before I go down the road of rebuilding the machine, I thought I'd through out a hand and ask for the opinions of some folks around here as to if anything else could be the issue.

The Hardware:

Albetron 845 PEV Pro
1gig Crucial PC2700 RAM
Hercules Sound Card
1 80gig Maxtor ATA 133 HDD
2 200gig Maxtor ATA 133 HDD
9800 Pro video card
Enermax 440 power supply

The Problem: About 3 months ago, whenever I booted up my machine, it would occasionally not see some of the drives. I'd have to reboot, go into the bios and manually search for the drives for it to pick them up. After replacing my Lite-On CDR with a DVD burner, the issue was magnified to the point where the machine would routinley lock up and I coul hear the drives spinning up/down repeatedly as I tried to run applications. On boot, my Maxtor drives would also sometimes be seen as M@x }^&t0 drives (always appeared as jibberish).

My current situation: I have replaced drive cables, swapped RAM, flashed bios and swapped drives and the issue is still present. Currently, if I place more then one drive in the machine, the machine will lock-up or I receive a disk boot failure. I then have to unplug the drive, reboot, plug the drive back in and then it boots fine. I've checked my temps and voltage, all look fine and well within spec.

At this point, the only thing I can think is that the board or the PSU is bad, but as the issue seems to be HDD related and I have swapped all those, I am leaning towards a board issue.

Any ideas?

 

[VoodooU]

Selfish bump

 

[Fern]

Well, the troubleshooting steps you have taken seem sound. If you have access to another cpu & gfx card, I'd try those too. Otherwise, the only suggestions I can come up with are trying another psu (if you have a spare), and as a last resort b4 RMAing (which is a PITA) I'd take the mobo outta the case, clean everything with compressed air, reseat the components. Then while set up on a phonebook, I'd boot with CPU (HS+F), ram, vid card and try one-by-one to add each HDD. Maybe there's a short to the case somehow?

I'd leave the sound card out till last.

Good Luck with it.

Fern

 

[VoodooU]

I've got a spare PSU I can try, so I'll give that a go. and I'll see about trying it outside the case just to see if it makes a difference or not.

I've already removed and remounted everything and cleaned it up with compressed air, but at this point I'm willing to try anything, heh.

 

[Omega Ohm]

Sounds like a defective controller on the motherboard.

 

[VoodooU]

That's what I am thinking too. I've just never had one go out on me. I've had the board for close to a year and the controller just failing seems a little odd, but that's the only thing I can think of.

 

[XRaider]

I would have to agree with Omega.. It is the board causing your grief my friend.

 

[VoodooU]

Well, I've replaced the board with a new board and am having the same issue. So long as I only have one device on a drive channel, there is no issue. More then one device and you can here the drive(s) spin up/down, the machine becomes laggy and ultimately locks up.

Only thing I can think of at this point is PSU, any other ideas?

 

[Omega Ohm]

Did you replace the HDD cable or still using the same one?

 

[VoodooU]

I've replaced the cables for the HDD and Floppy drives - tried both the 'normal' cables that come with the drive and picked up some new rounded cables as well.

One thing I noticed this morning was the the bios shows my 12v line to read at 10.2v, could this be the issue? That seems awfully low for a 12v line and I am wondering if that, coupled witht he fact that the 9800pro needs a power line, could be part of the issue.

 

[Fern]

One thing I noticed this morning was the the bios shows my 12v line to read at 10.2v, could this be the issue? That seems awfully low for a 12v line and I am wondering if that, coupled witht he fact that the 9800pro needs a power line, could be part of the issue.

If the reading is correct, it is WAY out of spec. 11.40 volts would be the lowest still in spec. So yes, this appears to be the problem.

Fern

 

[VoodooU]

Well, I picked up a ne PSU today. Was going to get an OCZ Powerstream until I was told that they are all being recalled due to fire hazrd by OCZ and the store would not seel it to me.

That being the case I picked up an X-Connect 500w, so I'll see how it goes...