Not sure what the problem is but there is one

[wolf68k]

rig:
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 900Mhz
512meg RAM
TNT2 M64 32meg graphics card
SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 sound card
Primary Master: Maxtor 8.5gig
Primary Slave: Maxtor 30gig
Secondary Master: Afreey DVD 10x
Secondary Slave: Lite-On 12x10x32x
power supply: 300watts
Monitor: Dell Ultrascan 15TE (Sony Trinitron)

About 2 or so weeks ago while in the middle of moving a file, the monitor just went blank and went into stand-by mode. I tried the restart button and nothing. I tried the front power switch to shut it off and then back on and nothing. Took the access side panel off the case and after about a hour or so turned it back on and it was fine again. Some days later I noticed one of the fans I had, one of those blowers that fit in a PCI slot, was dead and I took it out. I only had a standard case fan left as an exhaust.

I run a program called MBProbe that sits in the systray and displays the temperature. Before the problem it would read between 115-120 F (46-48 C). It would guess about the time the pci blower died the temp. went up to around 125 F (51 C). After that I kept the side panel off and from time to time would start a house fan to help bring the temp. down, which it did help to get down to what it was before but mostly hanging around 120 F (48 C).

So I thought it was a heating problem. I went out just today to buy 2 new case fans. The system was off the whole time I was gone getting the fans and of course while mounting them. Both new fans became intakes. One mounted in the normal front mounting spot. The second took a little modding to mount on the side panel.
All three fans were plugged into the supply that the DVD and CDRW drive use...DVD, fans, CDRW. The system came up nicely all fans spinning. I step away for a few minutes, come back in the room and the monitor is in stand-by. Before I left the I noticed the temp. was just starting to hit 100 F (37 C).
I unplugged the side fan and after a bit of hair pulling trying to get the system back up, I used the switch on the power supply to turn it off, waited a few seocnds, power supply back on followed by the system and it came up fine. I left to go to sleep and it was running fine, although having a hard time getting to sleep worrying if the problem would come back I checked it from time to time for the next 2 or 3 hours and it was still fine.
About 8-9 hours later, I awake to find the problem is back.

Now I'm running only the one rear exhaust fan, and so far so good.
The power supply has it's own fan. Just thought I'd mention that before anyone might ask, and it is putting out air just fine.
The CPU fan seems ok as well.

I guess I'm really just asking to see if everyone else thinks it might be the power supply dying out or too under powered (which doesn't make too much sense, to me, being under powered) or if it's something else completely.

The system has been back up for about a hour as of this writing and the temp is around 120 F (48 C) or a little higher.

If you need any other info about the rig or even a list of programs normally running, let me know which you need and I'll offer it if it will help at all.
I will mention that I normally leave the system running while I'm asleep to run the text-based version of SETI@home (I can get 2 units done in 24 hours, compared to the 2 days it takes with the graphic-based version)

Thanks

 

[DanTMWTMP]

well, when the pci slot fan died...it freezes the computer and stuff......(like how when u take ouf a device out of a pci slot while the comp's on...yeah...but don't do that..aha)...

maybe the mobo got damaged from that?..maybe.....
it's cold these days..open ALL your windows...leave case bare....brave the night in the cold (wear 10 layers of clothing or something).....run seti...any problems?....oh and don't do that if u live in a humid and/or snowy rainy area.....if u do, put a huge fan next to the open case...blow air right into the comp.....leave it overnight, running seti...

if it doesn't have that problem during these tests...then yeah, it's a temp problem..(AGAIN..this is the VERY reason why i went away from amd and went to the open arms of intel hehehe 🙂 ) ...well, neways, i had a thunderbird 1ghgz b4...and the comp not booting up after awhile is a widespread problem...so don't worry about that part.....btw what mobo u have?...and u have a 300W psu....unless it's a really crappy psu (chk rails and voltage readings during seti..see if they fluctuate a lot...)....it's super plenty to handle ur setup....

(i used to have a 300W and i ran 2 120mm 150cfm deltas for test for hours...it was fine...had 2 hdd's. 2 drives, gf3....it handled it swell..although super duper freakin insanely loud like crazy insane that i went insane and P4 came to rescue and now my comp is quiet yayayayay happy ending)

 

[wolf68k]

btw what mobo u have?

That question is a lot easier to ask than it is to answer.
The book for the mobo doesn't have a name on it as to who wrote it, but it is for this mobo.
So that leaves me with using that ID number Award BIOs told me to use. Which tells me it's a ECS, which is also confirmed by the model later found screen printed on the mobo itself. However.....over that number was a little sticker label with a completely different model number which is from PC Chips.
My only guess is that screen printed number means that ECS orignialy made it the mobo, but the sticker label means that PC Chips got a hold of it and altered something some where. If that makes any sense...maybe someone that knows more about the stuff than I do can clear that help. Because of this, I have no idea who to go to if I wanted to update the BIOs.
ECS says the model is K7VZM
PC Chips says the model is M805LR
Either way it's crap, but at the time it's what I could afford and it came with the case from Fry's as BYOS.

Something to clearify. The PCI blower doesn't use the PCI port just a PCI space, it gets power the same way the drives do.
Also, I had 2 fans before the problem; 1 case fan and the PCI blower. PCI blower died, the system didn't freeze or anything like that like a device card would do. The problem started while the PCI was dead, even when I pulled it out and had only the 1 case fan.
Add 2 more fans to the 1 already in, making it a total of 3 case fans. With all 3 fans, the system dies after about 10-20mins. With 2 fans it does hours laters. So far with just the 1 fan it still seems to be running ok...after almost 12hours and the case is closed back up current temp. still reading 120 F (48 C) but has gotten to 122 F (50 C).
And I'm of course not counting the CPU or power supply fans, both I haven't seen any porblems with during any of this. But then had the CPU fan died the chip would have become roast toastie.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

Originally posted by: wolf68k

btw what mobo u have?

Something to clearify. The PCI blower doesn't use the PCI port just a PCI space, it gets power the same way the drives do.
Also, I had 2 fans before the problem; 1 case fan and the PCI blower. PCI blower died, the system didn't freeze or anything like that like a device card would do. The problem started while the PCI was dead, even when I pulled it out and had only the 1 case fan.
Add 2 more fans to the 1 already in, making it a total of 3 case fans. With all 3 fans, the system dies after about 10-20mins. With 2 fans it does hours laters. So far with just the 1 fan it still seems to be running ok...after almost 12hours and the case is closed back up current temp. still reading 120 F (48 C) but has gotten to 122 F (50 C).
And I'm of course not counting the CPU or power supply fans, both I haven't seen any porblems with during any of this. But then had the CPU fan died the chip would have become roast toastie.

ohhhhhhhhhhh ic my bad....hmm..then it's a heat problem.....make sure you have the standard ATX fan configuration....experiment w/ fan configurations....do a case mod..hehe...i had to do a case mod to handle my heat problems...

well, best of luck in cooling!

 

[wolf68k]

how is a heat problem?
It's running fine at 120 F, it's just hotter than I would personally would like is all
It happened to died at 100 with 3 case fans, but runs fine at 120 with 1 case fan

 

[Sharam]

Originally posted by: wolf68k

btw what mobo u have?

With all 3 fans, the system dies after about 10-20mins. With 2 fans it does hours laters. So far with just the 1 fan it still seems to be running ok...after almost 12hours and the case is closed back up current temp. still reading 120 F (48 C) but has gotten to 122 F (50 C)

Well, if with 3 fans the system dies and as you reduce the number of fans, the system becomes more stable it does point to the power supply unless you have positioned/ plugged the fans so that they do more harm than good! or one of the fans has a short or something?!

I would try a better power supply. That is of course if the generic power supply and the load have not in any way already damaged a component or two?! (slow death)

ECS is the parent company to PcChips and they have "identical" mobos with different names, I've seen BIOS image files for ECS used on PcChips with success, in fact some PcChips mobos have benefited from using an ECS BIOS image file as in unleashing features available with the chipset but otherwise hidden with some PcChips models!!!



PcChips mobos have a bad reputation (but I've seen systems based on PcChips run for years without any problems, and it does depend on "all" the components and the "set-up") one other thing I know with these mobos is that the memory modules are very hard to sit in their place, I always had to put a piece of cardboard underneath the mobo and push like really really hard to make the system bootable!!!)

Some useful links for you, check the discussion board for sure.

The PCChips Lottery

Discussion Boards taken from here


Good Luck,