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**willawake** · 02-15-2005, 09:14 AM

elixir is shit ram. i have seen one fail after some months of use. You have tried a few rams though.

forget about memory tests during boot, they are mostly useless. check ram in dos using a utility like doc memory from http://www.simmtester.com/ you will want to see no fails at all. Tell us if you get fails.

open up the psu to check the caps inside the psu

find another psu which you know is good for better testing. if you buy a new psu, recommend 460W because you have a lot of devices.

tell us more about all the caps on the board which are 1000uf and higher. Are any looking bad? Tell us the names of the caps as well. Forget about the rubycons they are good.

**MD Willington** · 02-15-2005, 10:58 AM

Check the amps on your power supply, you need plenty on the 12V rail with your setup, since you have all them HDD's...you power supply is probably not making it through spinup and the capacity takes a dive.

Whats the true capacity of your power supply? What I mean by that is not whats written on the side like "400W" I mean what are the amperage (A) specs for each voltage on the side of the power supply for:
3.3V = ?A
+5V =?A
+12V =?A
+5VSB =?A

MD

**RoadKill** · 02-15-2005, 02:39 PM

Before you do anything, look at the rest of the board, and see what caps are on it.

If all is apparently good, replace PSU and see what happens.

**willawake** · 02-15-2005, 02:53 PM

MD : some of the crap that is written on the sides of PSUs is BS. Better to check with a multimeter

**RoadKill** · 02-15-2005, 03:08 PM

Originally posted by willawake

MD : MOST of the crap that is written on the sides of PSUs is BS. Better to check with a multimeter

Fixed for truth. El-Cheapo PSU manufacturers label their PSU specs at low temps that are unattainable in regular use, and other such tricks to make their PSUs look good.

Plus they use crap parts which will screw up within no time, which would be okay, if it didn't have the oppurtunity to take out the rest of your system.

**MD Willington** · 02-15-2005, 04:48 PM

The sticker WILL give some indication of what you have to work with there...

Yes the sticker will show the Theoretical operating capacity at room temperature, for a cheap ass supply the rating will really take a dive when the temperature goes up.

Voltages will give some indication ie the voltage will increase in the power supply as the output tries to push current to the device, so yes you can use a voltmeter to read the voltage and get a picture of what's going on...

I don't know of many people that are going to cut one of their lines and put each end into an ammeter though...

MD

**bushytails** · 02-15-2005, 06:09 PM

No line cutting involved. DC clamp meters are your friend.

(mine usually needs to be whacked a couple times to get it to work, but for what I paid for it, quite fine by me...)

--Randy

**willawake** · 02-16-2005, 01:28 AM

no cable cutting required or even a clamp multimeter. important to test it under load because when all the hdds spin up you can see the prob.

this is not a good howto (no pinouts, doesnt mention amps) but gives some ideas.
http://www.driverheaven.net/guides/testingPSU/

(noob warning - dont try that unless you have researched and are sure about the pinouts.)

i got a antec psu tester which just provides some load and a switch to turn the psu on. i jam the multimeter into that also for general checking outside the comp. i gotta get a clamp multimeter cos it is a lot safer.

**damtech** · 05-27-2005, 12:08 PM

Excuse me

Hi guys,
excuse me if I have been absent for these months but I have had troubles with the power supply of this computer, a QTEC BigFan PFC 400W... I changed it with an old Enermax I had in the garage and now it works very well even with my A64 3400+ overclocked with 250MHz FSB. I tried changing that cheap ass 350W powersupply but no changes. I changed everything, all components, so I think the problem is on the mobo. Now, with 133MHz no OS starts (DOS also hangs on booting) and with 100MHz I have "data lost" messages very often, compromising Windows registry and making system unusable. I will try to disable Highpoint HPT370A controller but I don't think that it could be the problem. Capacitors are 2 Rubycon e 6 (or 5?) Nichicon for the CPU Power Supply.
Thanks for your help.
Diego

**willawake** · 05-27-2005, 04:06 PM

firstly q-tec is not a great psu. if you have similar distribution as us in greece i would recommend a fortron 460w or 550w. you have way too much components for your replacement 350w.

from the information you have given it cannot be determined whether you have badcaps. rubycon is an extremely reliable brand. Nichicon is also unless you are unlucky and have the HN(M) or HM(M) series in which a large batch had early failure. other nichicon caps we do not see data of early failure.

there should be no crc errors at all. if there are you should reduce the overclock and stop running the components so far out of spec. because in the end it will probably damage the components.

your hdds are pretty old, are you sure they are still reliable? why not get a cheap 40gb+ seagate ide and stop messing with these old drives.

i think that in your case there are too many variables. find another mobo to test that your other components are good before you blame the mobo

**damtech** · 06-30-2005, 07:45 AM

Re: ABIT KG7 with bad caps?

hi,
all system components work perfectly... the system is now running with an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe in Dual Channel Mode with no problems of data loss or anything. And at 133x2MHz FSB. All great. Reinstalling ABIT Mobo -> can't boot anything. It was a great mobo, with RAID controller onboard but I decided to take it away.
Thankyou for support and sorry for my english.
bye
damtech

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ABIT KG7 with bad caps?

ABIT KG7 with bad caps?

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