OT: Appeal for insight. Need help.


mindlord

Notices Two Things
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Well. I have a really annoying problem. Either my Power Supply, Video Card, or Motherboard was damaged back when Sandy dumped snow on us and the power grid went wonky. It's been quite flaky after reboots ever since. My computer finally decided that whatever the problem is, it is unstable with Video Card installed.


I'm stress testing the MoBo to hopefully rule it out, but without being able to stress test the PCI-E BUS I can't rule it out completely. And with the video card out of the system, the PSU isn't getting taxed as much as it would with it. So I'm stuck. I need to replace one of the three things, but can't exactly determine which of the three needs to be replaced.


Obviously, I'd like to avoid spending money on the wrong part since I'm saving up to upgrade my Pandora.


To add to the puzzle: When tinkering with the machine, I noticed a series of pops would come out of the speakers if I unplugged the PSU and let the computer sit for a few seconds. The pops would start soft, grow in volume, and then rapidly die off. A total of 7 or 8 in total. This happens if the Video card is not installed, but doesn't when it is. To me it suggests the MoBo or PSU has a failed capacitor, but I checked both thoroughly and can't find any damaged caps.


Anyone seen similar behaviors?


By unstable with the video card in, I mean sometimes will boot to Windows, sometimes won't even get grub to load, Windows with blink the monitor and still be running without any video output. Music is still playing, for example and it can make things ding by clicking the mouse.Ubuntu just hard locks at random. Occasionally Windows will return stating the kernel mode driver stopped and was restarted.


The Video card is a Geforce GTX 465


The PSU is a 750W Diablotec


The Mobo is an ASRock 880GM-LE AM3
 
Remove all parts and start testing from a minimal hardware.


Remove and check the bios battery.


Try to get a PSU to test from a friend.
 
@Wally - I did just that, and pushed it as hard as I could using FurMark and Fallout NV on maximum settings. Eventually I was able to make it hard shutdown which tells me it's most likely the PSU.


@Linux-SWAT - When thinks started getting flaky a couple of weeks ago I unplugged everything and have been testing ever since. I had only just narrowed it down to one of the three.
 
If his GFX is better than yours, then keep it and give him back yours.


Just my two cents on "how to cheaply get a better PC".
 
I can say within 90% certainty that it's the PSU now since the computer will power off on its own running just the onboard video. I have to reserve 10% just in case it is the CPU or MoBo, but I doubt it because it isn't producing excessive heat. PSU is ordered and on it's way.


Thanks for the input guys.
 
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