First Self-Build: FAIL

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Gawd
Joined
Mar 30, 2006
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917
Specs in sig.

Well, I was very satisfied with myself up until yesterday evening, as I had assembled my own computer from the ground up for the very first time.

Everything was fine for the first 36 hours, until I decided to flash my BIOS on Sunday morning. I upgraded to the latest BIOS and things immediately became unstable. I got it pegged down to my X-fi Platinum, and pulled it. The problem is that while I was troubleshooting this instability I started flashing and re-flashing the BIOS on the motherboard. I think I must have a damagegd BIOS chip with all the flashing and re-flashing...

Eventually I settled on the newest BIOS and things were stable again. I worked all day Monday and Tuesday, and was excited to go pick up an X-fi Titanium which is supposed to work brilliantly in Vista.

When I returned home from picking up the card, my computer was waiting for me frozen on my Vista screensaver. First time that happened in more than 36 hours. It rebooted fine, so I put it down to Vista farting and went ahead with installing the X-fi.

After the X-fi install the computer became completely unstable. It would hang before or during POST. It would hang in Vista within a couple minutes. It would even hang in Express Gate SSD. The fact that it hung in Express Gate made me suspect my mobo. I removed the X-fi. I removed extra hard disks and unplugged unnecessary fans from the mobo to make sure it wasn't a power problem. I reseated everything, even panel connectors. I tried a few boots with different DIMM configurations, in different slots, and it would hang every time. Eventually I got a message that BIOS was corrupted and it would do an auto-install.

After the automatic BIOS recovery it would hardly post at all. At about 8PM yesterday I gave up and started setting up my old computer again.

Right now the new system is at my system builder, who put together "old reliable" which I am working on right now (although I've rebuilt it a couple times since then). They're going to strip the new down and test everything free of charge, even though I didn't pay the system assembly and warranty fee ($50, I would have paid it just for the warranty but they couldn't give me the warranty if I self-assembled). They said I could go get it back in working condition by 5 today but I can't believe they'll have a new mobo in stock and be able to have everything back together by then.

A few steps I didn't take that I will make sure to from now on:
- If you're a noob admit it and let someone else do the first build so that you at least can be assured there are no borked parts to start with. Who knows if I didn't static damage my mobo or something? Along those lines..
- Always unplug your PSU before adding or removing parts to the mobo
- If you really must flash your BIOS, do it once and be done with it!
 
Did you try disconnecting your CMOS battery for about 30 seconds then reseating it?
 
No I didn't.

Just talked to my system guy. They need to keep it until tomorrow. He sounds perplexed whereas before he was certain he could get it working today. Damnit!
 
lol, well hopefully he has an "ah-ha!" moment like most of us techs do out of nowhere, and poof problem solved. =)
 
Me too. Do you think there's any possibility it could be caused by my surge protector? It's an APC battery backup unit. I notice the lights in the room would dim ever so slightly when powering on. Wondering if that's some indication that I need a better or new surge protector.
 
Which specific model is it? How long have you had it for? (A surge protector shouldn't cause the lights in the room to dim. You may want to get an uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, instead.)
 
I said surge suppressor when I meant UPS.

It's an APC Back-UPS ES 650. I've had it for maybe three, four, five years. Can't remember but I'm gonna pick up a new one just to be sure.

I'm gonna snag this model. It has an LCD screen which can tell me all kinds of stuff I've always wondered about my UPS:
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0665000FS10088400&catid=

My spidey sense is telling me I won't get the system back until next week :( I'm dying to play some games!
 
After many 100KM round-trips to my system builder, we finally got this thing sorted. Main culprit, a Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W that the builder says was incompatible with the P5Q Deluxe, but after a bit more investigation and no fault of the builder I'm not sure if it wasn't my UPS.

Once I unplugged everything else from my Back-UPS 650, which only puts out 350 watts, things got more stable. Then when I installed a higher VA and wattage UPS everything worked like a charm. Currently running a modest O/C at 4.1GHZ, rock stable.

APC Back-Ups ES 1300. Puts out 950 watts, and has digital readout with some useful features. Best feature one the LCD is the watt-meter, whatever it's actually called, that shows the power draw on the UPS system. My current system takes about 420W playing Crysis at 1920X1200 w. 2Xaa and a mix of Gamer\Enthusiast settings. It's very smooth and playable and I intend to really get into it this weekend.

My system builder originally told me the 1000W Thermaltake Toughpower we started with was incompatible with my motherboard. This was before I figured it was the UPS. He swapped it for a Power and Silencing 610, which I pulled out and replaced with the 750W red version.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if the TT 1000W was incompatible, or simply damaged by being fed through my Back-UPS 650, which only put out 350W it turns out. I ask because I think I'd like to go back to the TT 1000W. It was so well cooled, silent, and modular. If nobody answers I'm gonna start a thread about this question.

Picked up an
 
PC Power and Cooling makes quality power supplies. Since the problem appears to be solved already, I suggest keeping the 750W PSU in place.

However, there really shouldn't be any reason why the Toughpower 1000W PSU would be "incompatible" with your motherboard. You may want to swap the power supplies out, temporarily, to see whether or not the Toughpower 1000W PSU was damaged.
 
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