I've recently been forced to upgrade my computer through a series of hilarious events where I destroyed my old motherboard. This is no small amount of reading to help someone you don't know, so I thank you immensely should you choose to offer your assistance by reading *all* of this gargantuan mess. Using Windows XP Home as the OS, I kept my old graphics card, RAM and HDDs. (A GeForce 8600, 2GB DDR2 and 3 HDDs totalling 680GB respectively) The new items are as follows: Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8GHz CPU ASUS P5Q-VM Motherboard TSST Corp CDDVDW SH-S223F (Optical Drive) 500W PSU Since I upgraded, I've been experiencing an unusually unstable system. This is most evident when attempting to install games and unzipping large .zip and .rar files. When installing games, some work perfectly, even if the media is scratched. While others, with near-new discs produce errors like "Cannot locate *file*, please check.... etc." (generally with .cab files or files that make up the largest parts) Unzipping etc. is even more frustrating, a good example being the recent Burnout Ultimate Box Demo. Like many large zip/rar files that I've tried, it will give either CRC errors or just report that the file is broken or corrupted (again, most often with .cab files and such). I choose the Burnout demo as an example, because it's large, and I've had friends download it from the same source as well to make sure the hosted copy wasn't corrupted, it working fine for them. Additionally, some games like Spore, Age Of Empires 3 and numerous casual downloadable games install fine, but suffer from unsual graphical artifacts or ramdomised crashes. This level of instability was not present on my old system, and does not seem to be caused by some malfunction of my graphics card. I've eliminated some posibilities: *HDD Health reports that all my drives are working correctly. *I used memtest86 to check for errors on my RAM (none after 12 hours of testing) *I've updated my BIOS, and all the drivers I could find an update for. My HDD's are fine I think, I removed and tried them in two other computer setups, both of which were stable running off them. All of this, plus some advice from from friends leads me to believe it's something to do with my CPU's settings. There seemed to be a rather large emphasis on the power saving nature of my MB/CPU combination on the packaging, and I wonder if they've done something silly to the settings in order to facilitate that at the cost of system stability. Not wanting to screw around much with the BIOS settings, I just had a look at the "AI" tab (it seems all the CPU related options are in there), most of them being set to "Auto" had me slightly worried. So, to finish, I'd just like to know what you fine people think is wrong, and any opinions on how to fix it would be very much appreciated. Thanks again in advance for any help you can provide. (Also, I apologise if it's something obvious and I've just been too silly to realise)
Yes, I've done a clean install of XP and it's gone through it's automatic update to the latest version.
If you think your cpu is the culprit I would run prime95, to check for instability issues. it basically runs your cpu at maximum load, bombarding the cpu with calculations. give it ago it will definatly tell you if your system is stable.
Ok, I'll give that a go and see what happens. Also, I did mess with one setting in the BIOS, which was "Intel Speed Step", the description of which is as follows: "When set to [Disabled], the CPU runs at it's default speed. When set to [Enabled] the CPU speed is controlled by the operating system. After disabling that option, there was less problems running programs and games, but unfortunately, unzipping and installs are still problematic.
500 Watt...What kind of PSU?...Brand name please? Right off the top...I suspect your PSU. What one needs to know about...the relation of the negative effects of heat on the computer...That can be caused by the power supply. Manufacturers test their PSU's at a set temperature...from this their rating is determined... for most this No. is 25 degrees Celsius...which falls short of the temperature that most computers are capable of achieving. Given that a PSU will actually lose 2-5 watts per one degree of heat above the 25 Degree Celsius testing temperature...coupled with the fact that computers tend to run at 10 degrees higher than room temperature... In the summer time when the room temperature can easily reach 80 degrees F... your computer will be running at 33 Degrees C. or 90 Degrees F. So the...math can make...your 500 watt power supply into a 460 watt unit. In addition to this...what needs to be taken into account is that each degree that your computer components are operating at...under powered...adds more heat to the equation. Consider also...the possibility...that ratings given by the manufacturer of single components...such as graphics cards...need to be treated with skepticism...Manufacturers may minimize support issues and under rate the power required...in order to make a larger profit. The above has not taken into account...the issue of high quality vs poor quality units...Power supplies convert voltages from wall outlets to lower levels used by the PC. During this conversion, some power is lost as heat. The efficiency level of the PSU determines how much extra power must be put into the power supply to run the PC. A high quality PSU can help reduce the noise and heat generated within a computer system. The higher the efficiency rating the less heat the PSU has to deal with. Therefore heat is the computers enemy...The hotter the temperature your PSU is forced to run at...the poorer the supply of power the rest of the components will receive...which has been known to lead to such things as crashes, freezing, rebooting, BSOD’s, and video distortion, as well as partial and complete failure of other components. The fact is very few PSU’s are capable of producing the wattage that the companies advertise. For a very good comprehension of recommended brand names, wattage, and models in listed categories...Plus much more...check out this link. Power Supply Information and Selection - Tech Support Forum
The PSU is a Beecroft ATX-500WB&P4. I was using a similar setup beforehand, but with a 400W PSU and never encountered troubles though. (Albeit with a motherboard 3 years older).
Ya...Beecroft is not a recommended brand name...and although it may have well worked for you ...good for a no. of years...The lower quality units could let you down a few years premature of the expected life time of the unit...And it is not unusual to see them take out some other components with them on their way out.
Hmmm... Well thank you for helping me locate a possible source of the issues, in addition to BoBBYI986's assistance. It's all helping to narrow down the solution. As it stands however, I won't really have the money to pay for a new PSU (or CPU for that matter) for some time. I know it's kind of a daft thing to ask, but I was wondering if there's any options in my BIOS settings that I could play with to achive a more stable operating environment? I'm aware easy solutions are rare, but even if there's just something to try (without jepordising my computer's intergrity of course, i'm not exactly well learned technically) that could result in a possible fix, I would be greatful. That aside, thank you both for your assistance so far.
after running Prime95 what happened did it have errors? Bios only thing you can really do is alter voltages for the cpu, ram, chipsets-northbridge & southbridge. but that all depends really on what stability programs come up with. After all it could just need a cpu vcore voltage increase.
Prime95 didn't show any errors, but I only ran it for two hours. I was actually a bit worried using it, I didn't want to destroy my CPU or something equally drastic by overheating it. *edit I should also mention that I left all the settings on their default parameters.
well then that basically rules out your CPU and RAM, it's somethin else!, if your computer passes Prime95 it's cpu/ram stable, plus you also run memtest without errors. Graphics issues What graphics card you got? Have you got all the latest graphics card drivers installed? Installing from Opiticle Drive Issues try your old Opticle Drive see if it comes up with errors installing. Also what are your temperatures? cpu, northbridge/southbridge & Graphics card?
I'm going away for a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd just leave a message so you didn't think I'd just run off on you without saying thanks. I'll try the optical drive thing, I'm silly I should have thought of that earlier. Temperature wise, everything seems to be ok, nothing too high. I'll check it out when I get back. Thanks again for your help so far.
