random reboots problem

[shiro]

Recently I put together a new machine...here's what I got goin:

New Parts:
ECS KN1 SLI Lite v1.1d (updated bios)
Zalman NB47J northbridge passive heatsink
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (w/ Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 64)
Powercolor x800GTO 256mb

Old parts:
Antec TruePower (Ver 1) 430 watt PSU
three WD hard drives, one Quantum hard drive
3.5" floppy drive
one stick 512mb ddr333 (I unfortunately found that my other 512mb stick DDR266 would not work, in fact it would not boot up the computer)
DVD burner
CD Drive
PCI ata/133 Raid controller card
Tv Tuner card
3 case fans, all connected to a custom made fanbus.




I just put it all together last night, wiped my main HDD clean and put a fresh copy of WindowsXP on it and SP2, and it was running well for a number of hours. However this morning as I was updating a program of mine (FFXI if you must know...), it suddenly restarted. I was away from the pc and the monitor was off so I didn't see what caused the problem, but I heard the hard drives go off. When I went to turn the monitor back on it was already rebooting itself.

Just now as I was setting up the same program, it rebooted again, but this time I saw that I saw the BSOD flash on my screen before rebooting itself.

My question is, is there any known problem of random reboots with my particular motherboard or any of the other components that I listed?

I've also had the computer freeze on me while starting up a couple 3d games. Once in one game, and once in another. I don't know what's causing it as I don't think things are overheating. The mobo bios reports that my CPU is holding at a steady 41-43 C, and my system is at 30-33C. I have no way to tell how hot the northbridge is getting, and one thing about the passive NB heatsink is that it's just ever so slightly kissing the heatsink on my x800GTO. There is a molex power plug right next to the first pci-e slot which I believe is used for SLI configuration, and I figured I would not need it for a single card approach. Do I need to plug that in after all?

 

[shiro]

Just BSOD'd for the third time.
This time I was plugging/unplugging a USB device trying to get it to show up in windows (which about half the time it does, half the times it doesn't). It BSOD'd and restarted right as I unplugged it for like the 5th time.


And as a correction, the second time it BSOD'd was while I was working with text files in Notepad.


So so far it doesn't seem like there's any pattern I can pick out that's causing these reboots... seems completely random to me... it's also happening more frequently. For the first few hours I had this machine up and running it didn't do that, but now that I'm using it more it's happening about every hour or a little more now.


And I don't know if it's just me being paranoid or something, but every now and then I can smell a faint burning smell...yet when I check the insides of my computer everything smells fine and seems to be in working order. Maybe it's from the A/C or from outside somehow...



Could it be that my current 430watt PSU isn't powerful enough for this new setup?
It is connected to 6 IDE devices, a floppy, and the 20-pin ATX connector, and the 4pin12v connector near the CPU...

I have been considering getting a new PSU as well...maybe 500 watt will do the trick? But before that I would like to know if anybody else has any other thoughts on what's goin on here.

 

[o1die]

I'd go with different memory. With such a nice setup, it deserves some pc3200 memory. I use corsair, ocz, and pny on 4 different slots with my ecs board. I also set the timings in manual, using cas 2.5 with 6-3-3 at 200 fsb. My local Fry's has the pny 3200 512 for $45 with a $15 mail in rebate. Sell the pc2700 or use it in your spare system.

 

[Ecca Ecca]

i have the same problem, this pc worked for awhile then I switched the case and my cat went in was playing with the mobo. Then I came home and there was cat piss on my PC so uhm yeah I brutally killed the cat... (j/k but I am pissed) oh well excuse for core 2

 

[shiro]

I don't really know anything about cas timings or whatever with memory...

Is PNY a good brand to get? That PNY is pretty cheap I might just go pick one up


-edit-
I also wrote this in another thread, but thought as long as people are helping out, why not let them know as well so that I don't have to post in each thread...

Anyway...using speedfan to get temperature and voltage readouts...here is what it had to say about my power supply unit:

Vcore1: 1.36V
Vcore2: 3.30V
+3.3V: 2.61V
+5V: 4.95V
+12V: 5.95V

-12V: -10.72
-5V: 0.53V
+5V: 5.00V
Vbat: 3.04V

Could this also be a cause of the random reboots? Along with crashes during games that I've been getting lately... I've had it for about 4 years now...and I usually have my pc running constantly...shutting off only when I leave for extended periods of time (aka vacation or a short trip). I believe before with motherboard monitor 5, those values were a bit more spot on close to their rated Volts...but I hadn't checked in a long long time...

 

[shiro]

ahh...excuse the noobiness of this question but,
If I were to stick a pc3200 stick of ram, and pc2700 stick of ram in, would it lower the speed of the pc3200 to match the pc2700?


btw thanks for the memory tip o1die. I've replaced my pc2700 with the pc3200 PNY from fry's (hooray for rebates!), and things seem to be running smoothly so far. No crashes, freezes, or restarts (yet!). I didn't know a change in RAM would be such a good change...

I'm still planning to get a new PSU tomorrow just to make sure my system is sound on the electrical side.

 

[o1die]

Glad it worked for you. I've wasted a few dollars on the wrong solutions. I traded a p4 2.8c that wouldn't run stable on 2 different boards with my memory. Changed to athlon 64, and the memory works fine.