Recasing

[Nebor]

Alright, I'm thinking that either heat or power supply problems are causing lockups w/ my current system... soooo I'm getting some new stuff.

Here's the case I like:
Casetek

Here's the power supply I think I need:
Antec 480W

Here's my new round cables:
Round Cables

Need a new floppy drive to match:
Couldn't find a silver floppy drive on new egg.... any ideas?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Be cheaper to fix the heat issue or replace the PSU if that's the issue. A new case isn't going to help if your CPU heatsink is simply too small.

 

[Nebor]

I'm using the stock Intel HSF that came w/ my processor, My processor is running at stock speeds, and when idle, it's at 52 degrees C.

 

[Nebor]

Besides, I have a beige box, and I want something that makes people think, "Damn, that thing must be faaaaast."

 

[Lord Evermore]

Personally I've never looked at a case and assumed there was even anything inside it, let alone that it was fast.

 

[Nebor]

Alright, right now, w/ my case side off, my CPU is at 37 degrees C, and mobo is at 30 degrees C. This pretty much eliminates the possibility of heat related crashes, right?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Assuming it's still crashing, yes. What PSU do you have right now? You shouldn't need anything more than a good 300W, perhaps 350W, but a crap 400W could still be unable to handle your system because crap is crap. You're really running a lightly loaded system.

 

[Nebor]

I have a 350w.... it's an Antec. But I do have 2 80GB hds in a raid... and I have like, ZERO available power connectors.

 

[Nebor]

My processor temp is now showing 36 C and mobo is at 30 C.

That means that crashes because of cooling aren't possible, right?

I should be looking only at my power supply?

 

[mrzed]

When is your computer crashing? That goes a long way towards figuring the problem. Could be almost anything. RAM, Motherboard, PCI card. You are on the right track though, it sounds like heat is not the issue.

 

[SilentRunning]

From Rage3D thread might be of interest to you:

Well I'm back from the shop. No longer an ASUS fan or and owner of a P4C800 DLX. As I type this, I am testing my new Gigabyte 8KNXP. We found a problem inherent on all P4P and P4C800 motherboards. I could post more on the issue but I am afraid I'll be called an ASUS basher or told I know nothing about computers....

Awww screw it. Your not going to believe this but here goes.

I took the system back to memoryexpress (the store) and explained the problems I was having. Which to recap...

Firstly, aside from these exceptions, my system was rock solid. I could run burn in mode sandra all night. 3DMARK2001SE all night no lockups. I was sure all was well until all of this started to pop up.

Of the 8 games I was playing, Warcraft III and Dungeon Siege were crashing within 5-20 minutes of playing. UT2003 even crashed from time to time. I have not been able to burn DVD's successfully through either MyDVD or Pinnacle 8. Yet I could capture with Pinnacle 8 but MyDVD would not capture. My Sandra memory scores were lower by a bit than expected. I was getting 4450-80 but was expecting more like 4500-4600 at least with my corsairs. I spoke to ATI, Corsair and ASUS. No one had a clue what was wrong. I was having general instability issues. The only way to get the games to stop crashing was lower AGP to 4X in the driver. ASUS had one suggestion. Run memtest86 to check the memory subsystem for stability. It would not run 6 seconds without locking up. So off to the shop I went with computer in hand and a little upset.

Get there and the tech runs memtest86. Crash. Hmmm... The tech tries 7 pairs of assorted brands (kingston OCZ Corsair TwinX and Micron ect....) None of them could complete a full run of memtest86 except for some dog slow CAS 3.0 Micron PC3200 sticks. Boooo! I was not about to switch to them. Anyway, the tech suspected the motherboard. Gets a new one and runs it outside my case on the table. While he was testing the new one I surfed the web on a PC in the lab. Searched for P4C800 issues on google and WHAM! there are hundreds on forums all over the friggin place. People complaining of stability and crashes. Hmmm...

Tech calls me back over and my Corsairs pass with flying colors. Whoohoo! I thought my original board must have been bad. He puts the new board in the system and memtest86 crashes again. We look at eachother in disbelief. Then he realizes. He did NOT have the USB mouse plugged in when we ran it outside the case. But in the case we did. He unplugged the USB mouse and memtest runs great. Thinking back all the tests we ran on my board were with the USB mouse plugged in. We tested back and fourth and same everytime. USB in use... memtest86 crashed. USB mouse out... memtest86 passes great. Then we listened. There was a faint USB detection beep while memtest was running with mouse in. Wierd. He asked what I wanted to do. I said screw going to a PS2 mouse. Try a P4P800. I'll take one of those if they work. He tested 2 of them and they both failed the same way. 2 ASUS P4C800 and 2 P4P800 exact same results and we even tried different mice. Everytime the same result. WHAT THE HELL DOES USB HAVE TO DO WITH MEMORY???????????????????????????????????????????????

Link

 

[Nebor]

Hrmm... interesting.