Here's the offending part of the motherboard. USB items are circled in Red. 1394 items in Yellow. Notice that the USB1 label is closer to the 1394 connector than the text "1394" or the actual USB1 connector.
USB_1394.jpg
Nice that I got a picture of the evidence of my folly.
Here's the patient right before I hooked it all up and failed to launch. I wonder if I should flip the cpu fan to blow away from the processor.
6r39 7r199
Originally Posted by trigggl
Nice that I got a picture of the evidence of my folly.
Here's the patient right before I hooked it all up and failed to launch. I wonder if I should flip the cpu fan to blow away from the processor.
Yes but the fan may fail if it doesn't use ball bearings for shaft support. Sleeved bearing fans tend to complain when run upside down.
Technically, it's running vertical either way. It is a tower after all.
6r39 7r199
NM...
On turning the fan over. You then are pulling some of the warm air the upper case fan would have been trying to exhaust and blowing it back into the case past the CPU heatsink. While right now it blows downward where the case fan will try to exhaust it right out of the case instead.
So it depends on what the side of the case has where the CPU fan is blowing if turned over. Like another case fan blowing out/in or side louvers.
BOINC Sees it - BOINC DOES it!
Now I'm getting random restarts.
What's odd is that it has nothing to do with whether I'm running the boinc client or not. I shut it down to talk to my daughter on Skype and after a couple minutes of talking the computer just died. It took a couple restarts for it to get going again. I tried the Skype call again and after a minute, dead. I came home last night, screen was blank, mouse and keyboard unresponsive and couldn't get it to return a ping. It had the hard drive access light constantly on, but no other signs of hard drive activity. I disconnected the PATA hard drive just in case that was going out and causing it. It started up, but had the same symptom of lights on nobody home. I should mention all fans (CPU) were full tilt.
I left the side open and looked in. It looked like the motherboard power cord was getting close to the rear exhaust fan. I reached in to pull it away a little bit. That must have changed something because the computer instantly died and then started up normally with the CPU fan coming on at a low setting. So, I took the computer back to the bench (ironing board) and did my best to readjust the cables to be looser and not pushing against anything.
I hooked the computer back up and it started normally. I started running boinc and after a bit, it restarted. It's currently running since last night and I'm typing from it with boinc going full tilt.
Anybody got any ideas of what part could be causing this? Could it be a loose SATA connection, something pressing against a GPU? I'm not getting any S.M.A.R.T. errors. I'm not sure if something is shorting out or if something has a bad connection. I hate intermittent problems. Break or don't. It doesn't turn off and stay off. It dies and then starts back up sometimes working sometimes not.
6r39 7r199
Based on what you just stated, it sounds like there is a connector problem. Take a close look at both of the 24-pin (Main Power) connectors, male (motherboard) & female (PSU Cable). Check for signs of arcing/scorching/oxidation & misshaped pins. Also inspect the individual wires of the PSU cable, near/around were they enter the 24-pin connector. Look for melted/damaged/missing insulation or other signs of wear.
Edit: Repeat for the 4/8-pin Aux. power connectors.
Last edited by Fire$torm; 03-02-13 at 02:11 PM.
That leads me to believe it could be the Power Supply it's self ... When ever I'm getting a lot of shut down and then hard to restart I change the Power supple to either confirm it's the PSU or or it's not the PSU that's causing the problem ...It took a couple restarts for it to get going again. I tried the Skype call again and after a minute, dead. I came home last night, screen was blank, mouse and keyboard unresponsive and couldn't get it to return a ping
I finally got around to this. The 8 pin connector has a lot of heat damage and 3 of the pins are blackened. Basically, the power side has been getting hot enough to melt the connector. That's apparently why moving the connector around caused it to start and not start. The pins are blackened, so it wouldn't have had a good connection. Question is, why was it getting so hot? I tested the power supply before installing the board. I even checked for AC where should only be DC.
I used this PSU with the AMD X6, so I'm pretty sure it should be able to handle this. I'm going to re-configure where some connectors are going to and see if things can get more stable. It's actually been running pretty stable for the past week. There's an extra connector on the board that I didn't think I needed to connect to, since the PSU connects directly into the GPU's, but I'm going to hook it up, now. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to clean up the 8-pin connector.
6r39 7r199
That 8-pin connector supplies power to the PCI-E slots. So most likely its your GPUs that are cooking the connector. The other possibility is a faulty connection within the PSU or MB (or both) 8-pins.
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