Motherboard or PSU problem?

pinksoir

I recently upgraded my system to a better CPU and more ram, and also replaced my OS drive with an SSD. One of the reasons I did this was because my BIOS was sometimes, increasingly more often, not detecting my OS drive which was a regular HDD.

Since upgrading everything was running smoothly until today when BIOS was again not detecting my drive, but this time it wasn't detecting any drive at all (all SATA). I powered down and restarted a few times until it detected the drives and then went on to boot Windows 7. Then after a while it blue screened and restarted again, once more not detecting the drives. If I would try to, for example, go in to task manager the same thing would happen.

So I tried removing my ram, only this time the computer wouldn't power on at all. It seemed completely dead. I replaced the ram and removed my second hard drive to try and get at the cables that connect the power button to the motherboard and then tried booting without the second hard drive connected. It booted up fine and I could enter task manager, but then after a while it crashed, blue screened and restarted, not detecting the drives again.

Anyone have any idea what's going on here? It's really weird. Is my motherboard on the way out? Or is the PSU not supplying enough power/on the way out? The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R and about 5 years old. The PSU is a Corsair 550W and the same age.

System is:

Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R
Intel Core2Extreme Q6800
6GB ram
Nvidia 8600GT
Corsair VX550W 550 Watt PSU
128GB OCZ Octane 2 SSD
WD 500GB HDD
Windows 7 Pro

Thanks very much.

fionny

A dying PSU can be hard to diagnose, so can a faulty MB.

But seen as its having trouble reading drives etc... I would err on the side of it being the mainboard.

pinksoir

Cheers. I have a gut feeling it's the motherboard myself.

Kind of a PITA because I just spent a good bit of cash upgrading my system with old enough components. I should have just upgraded to an i5 or i7 system...

fionny

Ya sometimes its cheaper to get all new kit :P

pinksoir

Yeah... damn it!

Any recommendations for a replacement motherboard?

-( i )- Wicker

Could just be a bad sata cable or a loose connection, do you have another cable to try? Maybe the one from the optical drive?

pinksoir

I didn't think of trying that actually... I'll give it a go.

Still it's strange that now both drives aren't being detected.

Ghost Train

with motherboard problem would kind of expect it to work or not work

power supply could be slightly stranger behavior

that being said could be either

pinksoir

Well it is strange behaviour! Unfortunately I don't have a spare PSU to check if that's the culprit...

What was really weird was that a while ago, after I shut down the computer, it wouldn't power on at all. Then I removed my second HDD and it did power on.

ZENER

Did you replace the cooler on the new CPU or use the old one from the original ? Could it be heat related possibly ?

I have a Dell XPS machine here with a Pentium 4 Extreme that does similar to what your is doing. Won't find any SATA drives at power up yet indicates in the BIOS that they are there but can't identify make/model or size. In it's final days the PCI slots stopped working. Turns out it's a capacitor related issue, electrolytics dry out losing capacitance effecting voltages to critical components.. Common for these boards it seems and was also responsible for a lot of old iMac G5s dying. Maybe your board has a similar affliction ?

Personally I'd be pointing the finger of blame at the mainboard.

Ken

pinksoir

I dunno. Could be the motherboard. But then again, it could be the PSU!

I'm using the same CPU fan as before, yes, but it's not the stock fan, it's a good Zalman one. As for the SATA drives in the BIOS, it doesn't detect them at all. What happens is BIOS will detect the ram, get stuck at detecting 'IDE Drives', and then jt go on to DMI data. It will then tell me to insert the boot disk. Then, when it does work, it will detect the drives and boot to Windows normally.

But then obviously freeze, go to black and then restart...

pinksoir

I think I might have fixed it.

I noticed in the BIOS that AHCI mode wasn't enabled, so it had been running in IDE mode. I went into the registry and changed the relevant item and then switched to AHCI mode in the BIOS. I also updated the BIOS to the latest version. Also, I hadn't installed the MB chipset drivers or the SATA drivers.

So far it seems to be behaving. So hopefully that's that. I'll have to wait and see though!

It's strange though, because the problem only arose over the last year while I was using my old drive and XP. It had gotten progressively worse, which is why I switched. Then once I'd switched it was fine until today when it suddenly went bat****.

Does that sound like it could have been caused by AHCI not being enabled? I had the proper chipset and SATA driver running under XP, I just forgot to install them under Win7.

Anyway, I'll have to wait and see if it starts acting up again. May not be out of the woods yet, I guess.