New Build - Troubleshooting: Where to Start

[erndawg]

Just finished a build with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, nVidia 6800GT, Soltek MB, 2x512 Mushkin 3200. Installed XP and drivers with no problems. After ~ 2 hours operation, the display was covered in tiny red/purple dots (hundreds of dots) that seemed to twinkle. Shortly thereafter, the system rebooted itself and Windows noted an error that it wanted to report. The display still had the dots. Within ~ 5 minutes, the display froze (mouse inop), and I pressed the Power switch to shut down. Windows seemed to shutdown unevenfully. Any thoughts on how to proceed with troubleshooting? Thanks.

 

[jbritt1234]

My first step would be to try to re-seat all the cards.

Do you have a different video card you can put in there to test?

 

[erndawg]

Thanks. I only have the video card and modem card, and I already tried reseating them. I do not have another video board to try in there... I suspect this is a hardware-only problem. Do you agree? Just haven't seen the likes of it.

 

[jbritt1234]

If I had to put money on it, I would vote hardware.

However, Download and reinstall the video drivers just to be sure. Maybe even try an older version, maybe a program you instaled is conflicting with the drivers.

 

[erndawg]

Thanks Jbrit. I'll reinstall the drivers tonight. I just found it curious that it worked okay for > 2 hours then did a complete power down (on its own), and then restarted.
The display almost looked like artifacting, but oddly different. I know the nVidia 6800GT is a power hog for +12VDC. I wonder if it may have pulled down my Power Supply? The PS that came with the RaidMax case is supposedly rated at 420W, but you know how that goes...

 

[northern]

I would have to say Vid Card.

...with little fragments on the screen and whatnot, it seems it may be getting hot and causing it to overheat....Even with the supplied Fans and whatnot if your clearance when mounted in comp is not sufficient to allow air flow they tend to get extremely hot.

 

[erndawg]

Thanks, Northern, but it's getting worse now. After a few minutes, there is severe artifacting and checkerboarding, finally becoming illegible.
There is good airflow around the video card. However, do you or anyone else know how to read the GPU temp? TIA

 

[erndawg]

Thanks for your help JBritt and Northern. I was able to swap the video card with one from another PC. The problem followed the video card. That is, when I put the suspect card into another PC, I had an unintelligible diplay. (This was in BIOS no less.) When I put the borrowed video card into the new PC build, the new PC worked fine. There you have it, a fancy new $400 vid card croaking within 2 hours from infant mortality.

 

[jbritt1234]

Glad you got it worked out!