Problem

[Rookie]

Hokay, here it is:

I own a fairly high end system - Athlon 64, 1gb RAM, Radeon X800GTO, yadda yadda. Up until a few months ago, it was running on an ASUS A8S-X mobo, which displayed a number of performance issues - sometimes it failed to boot into XP, it crashed a lot and generally wasn't too reliable. I then chose to upgrade to an ABIT AT8. Now, this motherboard exhibits even weirder symptoms - sometimes it point blank refuses to boot; I have to reset it or power down and then back up again. It also has an annoying habit of crashing whilst I'm gaming for longer than, say, a few hours. It's also developed an annoying stutter, which affects games, music, movies, whatever I happen to be doing at the time.

Naturally I was worried about what this could mean, so a Google of the symptoms brought me to your site, where I read up on "capacitor plague". I've opened her up and checked all the capacitors on the board, and they seem fine - they're not deformed, bent, twisted or oozing brown crap out of them. I'm pretty sure the PSU is the source of my problems, since the symptoms only really develop once the system comes under heavy load. System temperatures also seem well within tolerance.

I therefore come before you asking a second opinion: Mobo or PSU? Replacing either wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ @2.2GHz
1gb Corsair XMS
ABIT AT8
Samsung DVD+/-RW DL
36.6gb WD Raptor
160gb Maxtor DiamondMax 10
Radeon X800GTO
ThermalTake 430w "Silent" (but not fanless) PSU.

[tiresias]

Re: Problem

Welcome Rookie, always nice to see another fellow Englishman

All of your symptoms are relatively generic, and could be caused by a whole variety of either motherboard or PSU issues. Heck, even a quirky stick of memory could do this.

Still, by far the most likely culprit now, I would say, is your PSU. If for no other reason than simply because the problems were not solved (they were actually exacerbated) when you tried a new MB.

If you have a multimeter closeby, you could take voltage readings of the major output rails (3.3, 5, and 12vdc), both when the CPU and GPU, or other power-hungry components are idle, and when they're "maxed out" as far as power consumption is concerned. CPU power usage is highest when you use such a utility as BURNK7...

...

PS. Unless you're bound by warranty issues or such - could you check which output capacitors your thermaltake brand PSU is using?

[davmax]

Re: Problem

Certainly check the system voltages. Do you have monitoring software loaded into Windows? Most motherboard manufacturers supply this utility. Check the voltages at different system loads keeping the monitor software running. See if any voltage drops with load.

I hope you have tested the memory thoroughly eg using Memtest 86?

[Rookie]

Re: Problem

Yeah, I have ABIT uGuru installed - when idling the voltages seem okay (give or take .01 or .02 of a volt), but I haven't checked them when it's under load.

I'm pretty certain it's not my RAM, since I left it to crunch MemTest overnight and it managed multiple passes without a single error. I'm going to swap out the PSU with another one (which should be here tomorrow, but I'm on holiday from then so I'll sort it when I get back) and see if it makes any difference.

Cheers for the responses guys.

[kc8adu]

Re: Problem

post the brand of psu.it could be most anything causing the symptoms but a crap psu is one of the top suspects.
hell pop the top and have a look.

[tiresias]

Re: Problem

post the brand of psu.it could be most anything causing the symptoms but a crap psu is one of the top suspects.
hell pop the top and have a look.

ThermalTake 430w "Silent" (but not fanless) PSU...

The output caps in there could certainly do with checking.