Is my X48T DQ6 finished?!

[Disgruntled Man]

Hi all,

I have an issue with my rig in that sometimes when I switch it on (hot or cold) or when I reset within Windows, the computer does not boot. It does not even display anything on the monitor, all I hear is a clicking sound. I have not being able to pinpoint where the clicking sound is coming from but it is with the CPU, Graphics card or the motherboard! I should also say that when the computer fails to boot, it appears the cpu fan dies even though the motherboard itself is powered.

I have read a whole heap of posts but nothing has helped. Please assist as I am getting frustrated now!

Specs as follows:

Intel Q9550
Asus ENGTX 285 series
Gigabyte X48T DQ6 (F6e bios)
I have 2 sets of RAM (one to be Ebay'd);

and
OCZ Technology | Products | Memory | OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Gold Low-Voltage Triple Channel
2 x 36gb Raptor Raid 0
2 x 80gb Raptor Raid 0
PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad
2 x Fan controllers
7 x fans (varying sizes)
1 x DVD Recorder
1 x Floppy disk
XP 64 bit

I have no problems with temperatures and issue occurs at standard CPU speed.

Thanks in advance and more information available on request.

[Nickel020]

Re: Is my X48T DQ6 finished?!

My guess would be that it's the power supply or the board itself. If you say that it works fine if it actually does boot then it's unlikely that the RAM or the video card are broken.

What i would try first is clearing the CMOS (see the manual about this) and maybe removing the BIOS battery and power chord from the PC over night. This will completely discharge all the capacitors and has fixed problems like this for me.

[Disgruntled Man]

Re: Is my X48T DQ6 finished?!

Yup, unplugged overnight and now it boots. Surely the RAM or Video Card is not the problem (see as though I am on the same computer now). Also, I had the same problem with my previous card (HD 4870) and different memory so I am almost 100% confident that my RAM and VC are good. If anything, I think the PSU or Mobo might be finished. The thing is that I never used to have this problem when I first bought the mobo and the PSU is fairly new and I made sure I bought quality and it cost me a bomb..........it is very depressing!

Are there any tests I can conduct to test? Surely somebody else has had this problem?!

Thanks Nickel020 and thanks to those we can help.

Feel free to jump-in LSD!

[Nickel020]

Re: Is my X48T DQ6 finished?!

Well there are stability tests for the CPU/RAM/memory controller but there are no programs that actually test everything. Download Prime 95 let that run for a while (2+ hours, the longer the better), if you get errors somethign is wrong. Also download Furmark and run that at the same time, if that causes problems the the PSU might be the problem (Prime 95 and Furmark combined cause a high PSU load).

The only sure way of telling if something is defective is exchanging it, i.e. trying another PSU and see if that fixes it. On sporadic problems like yours it can be quite hard to find the defective part, usually exchanging parts one by one and trial & error is the only way to find the problem.

[Disgruntled Man]

Re: Is my X48T DQ6 finished?!

Well there are stability tests for the CPU/RAM/memory controller but there are no programs that actually test everything. Download Prime 95 let that run for a while (2+ hours, the longer the better), if you get errors somethign is wrong. Also download Furmark and run that at the same time, if that causes problems the the PSU might be the problem (Prime 95 and Furmark combined cause a high PSU load).

The only sure way of telling if something is defective is exchanging it, i.e. trying another PSU and see if that fixes it. On sporadic problems like yours it can be quite hard to find the defective part, usually exchanging parts one by one and trial & error is the only way to find the problem.

Thanks Nickel. In theory, should my PSU be sufficient to power my rig? Also, should my components 'play nice' together? i.e. no conflicts?

[Nickel020]

Re: Is my X48T DQ6 finished?!

The PSU is more than sufficient, the requirements from Nvdia and ATI for high end video cards assume no-name PSUs with grossly inflated power ratings. For your setup a quality 500W PSU would do the job.
If you're using 2 sticks from each RAM kit at the same time you might run into compatiblity problems, but other than that I don't see a problem.

The fact that you have two Raid 0s might be a problem and a little more SB voltage might help; but I'm not an expert on that, maybe someone else can help there. Increasing SB voltage by 0.05V in BIOS can't hurt though on the other hand, I would just go ahead and see if that helps.

[Disgruntled Man]

Re: Is my X48T DQ6 finished?!

The PSU is more than sufficient, the requirements from Nvdia and ATI for high end video cards assume no-name PSUs with grossly inflated power ratings. For your setup a quality 500W PSU would do the job.
If you're using 2 sticks from each RAM kit at the same time you might run into compatiblity problems, but other than that I don't see a problem.

The fact that you have two Raid 0s might be a problem and a little more SB voltage might help; but I'm not an expert on that, maybe someone else can help there. Increasing SB voltage by 0.05V in BIOS can't hurt though on the other hand, I would just go ahead and see if that helps.

For anyone who is interested, I have been running the system over the last couple of days, restarting numerous times and the system always booted. Whats different? Using XMP Profile 1 which the system seems to like. Having said this, as previously stated, I had the same issues with non XMP sticks so it is very strange indeed.

The side affect of running the XMP profile is that I am unable to overclock in a stable environment and I cannot run 1:1 ratio between memory and cpu. What a tragedy!