new setup problems

telemachus

I've just in the last day put together a brand new build from components ordered off komplett and i've hit a bit of problem so any suggestions much apreciated, i'm sure i've missed some obvious possibility along the way.

Spec wise the important parts are :
cpu: athlon 64 x2 4400
motherboard:dfi lanparty sli-dr
graphics card: geforce 7800gtx 256MB
ram: 2 1gig sticks of mushkin redline
psu: seasonic 600w
hard drives: 74gig raptor and 300gig maxtor sata
cooling: vapochill micro xtreme cooler with arctic silver

I'd put it altogether, booted up fine and installed xp to the raptor, installed all drivers and nforce software etc (I had initial bsods which I chased down to problems with the inbuilt nvidia firewall, everything was fine after this was disabled). The temps weren't the best, idling about 40 and playing fear on max settings hitting around 58 but I never stressed the cpu for a lengthy period, I figured i'd reset the cooler if temps didn't drop once the arctic silver had burnt in.

However after having it running all day fine I powered down fully (numerous restarts had been fine) and the following morning it wouldn't on powering up output anything to the monitor, all fans spun up and the board led's stuck on all lit up (booting up according to the manual). There were no case speaker beeps, and the sound of booting into windows couldn't be heard so it seems to be more than a video card fault. I've done all the usual cmos clearing and rechecked the various connections, and tested the ram in a second pc with memtest reporting no errors and i'm swiftly running out of options , i'm praying rma'ing isn't neccesary, if i even work out what's giving me problems as i'm putting it together for a friend, to be working by Christmas.

stevenmu

telemachus wrote:

to be working by Christmas.

:eek: , cutting it kind of fine.

I'd start by reseating the cpu and trying only one stick of ram, checking it in each slot (even though it tested ok in another PC). While you're doing this, try to minimise the config as much as possible, no hard disks, or other drives, no sound card if it's a seperate board, and if possible a different video card (the older and crappier the better). At least try and get back to having POST data showing when you switch on, then add things back in, one by one. 58 degrees is nowhere near damaging temps for an A64 (not a single core anyway, I suppose dualies could be more fragile), so as long as the temps you were getting were accurate and fairly consistent, I think you'll be ok there.

edit: do the diagnostic LEDs go through any kind of sequence when you switch on or just straight to all lit. For e.g. on my MSI board they go first one red the rest green = checking cpu, 2nd red rest green = checking memory and so on, they go all green when everything is ok and it's ready to boot.

commited

Is this your first build?
Did you put the spacers correctly under the motherboard when fitting to the case?

telemachus

Heh, nope, i've put together a few of my pc's over the years, it's the first time i've put together something quite this highly specced though, i suppose I somewhat naively assumed it would be a smoother process than cajoling bargain bits and pieces to play nicely together. The spacers are all fitted fine as far I can see, i've had shorting out problems on a previous build as a result of spacers and usually the symptons are power cycling and instant shutdowns seconds after powering up, in this case the machine powers up fine and sits, fans spinning etc indefinitely while outputting no video.

telemachus

Finally had time to tinker at length, after stripping out most of it i've narrowed it down (rather oddly) to the sata drives. If they're attached to the motherboard it simply wont even get to the bios screen, so it's more than a corrupted boot record or OS. I guess next i'll try and see if it's one specific drive/sata port, it's the first time i've had a drive problem actually stop me from reaching the bios, usually comes into play on booting

DemonOfTheFall

That's really odd. Try plugging them into the other set of SATA ports.
Eg. if they're on the Silicon Image ports put them on the nVidia ones, if they're on the nVidia ones put them on the Silicon Image.

I could never get my machine working well with the drives plugged into the silicon image controller, the nforce sata ports work fine though.

Try checking the manual to find out which ports are done by which controller.

telemachus

Yeah that's a good idea, the board seems to be loaded with the things, it even has a front mounted one, so hopefully it's just a problm with some a set of sata connectors. Rather ominously after poking through the dfi forums the lanparty apparently on occasion has problems with the newer seasonics (of which a brand spanking new 600watt model sits proudly in the pc ), i'm hoping it's not this since it ran smoothly for a day or so...

DemonOfTheFall

Please tell me about anything you find out about the 600w Seasonic with DFI boards, about to use the two together in a build myself.

telemachus

It all seems rather inconclusive : http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17916 , apparently some boards are drawing too much voltage on bootup casuing the seasonic to shutdown but despite wading through much of that rather vast thread they don't appear to have pinned down a conclusive incompatibility, it also seems to vay from seasonic to seasonic

telemachus

Before you get too worried about seasonics I seem to have (somewhat bizarrely) narrowed it down to the brand new 74gig raptor, using the same sata slot, same power connector etc it boots fine with a 300gig sata, simply move the power/sata cable to the raptor beside it and I can't even get to the bios. It might be worth looking at the dfi street forums I linked to, they have a list of reccomended psu's to match to the lanparty.

stevenmu

That's an odd one, but at least you have it narrowed down now, and if needs be you can carry on without the raptor untill you have it sorted. Sounds like the kind of thing that may possibly be fixed in a BIOS update.

telemachus

Hi demonofthefall, just thought i'd let you know the latest since you were looking at the same setup. I've fixed a few minor problems, and largely avoided the mysterious raptor trouble by setting a delay in the bios for the hard drives of a couple of seconds, however i'm almost certain there's a compatibility problem between this psu and board. From the dfi forums apparently the only certain s12 seasonic to work is the rev a02 model (mines an a2) and it's a problem of too much power being drawn by the board down the 5v rail and this is tripping the power supply. This leads to flashing standby and dram leds and requires either a cmos clear or if you're lucky just leaving standby power off for a minute or two.

Apparently seasonic are accomodating in replacing faulty revisions but since there's not European base for them you're probably better off getting something like an ocz powerstream or fortron.