Smoking video card, failing memory, beeping motherboard.

phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
edited June 2006 in Hardware
Please help me... this computer seems to have some serious problems.

Okay, I picked up this computer from a guy... he's got a Gigabyte P4 motherboard (GA- 8S648FX-L) with 1 gig of mem (which is currently failing Memtest86 on tests 5 and 7 - 131939 total errors). He has a NVIDIA Quadro FX 500 (128mb ddr) by PNY.

The guy complained about his PC not booting... When I first plugged it in, it showed the bios screen, but keyboard had no response (or lights on)... so I tried again, this time PC booted all the way to Windows splash screen, then BSOD. So I detached everything (including drives) except the video card and one mem module. Restarted. No video and the computer beeped once and then beeped very rapidly for a bit, then one solid beep until I turned it off. So I took out the PNY video card, and replaced it with an old vid card that I had laying around. Tried to boot, PC still not booting correctly (i think it did the beeping again). So I took my vid card back out and put his back in... started again. THIS TIME THE COMPUTER STARTED SMOKING, a closer look revealed that a small black chip on the card was smoking. So I took that card out, put my vid card in and ran MEMTEST86 with both modules in... the mem failed (as listed above). Please help. Thank you.

COULD THE MOTHERBOARD BE FAILING EVEN THOUGH THE COMPUTER SOMETIMES WILL BOOT ENOUGH TO SHOW VIDEO AND RESPOND TO THE KEYBOARD?

Comments

  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited June 2006
    Are the capasitors on the motherboard leaking ?.
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited June 2006
    GrayFox wrote:
    Are the capasitors on the motherboard leaking ?.
    Not that I can see very easily... I'll give it a closer look, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no...

    Also, I ran memtest a bunch of times... each module passes with flying colors when tested individually, however, when tested together, they reliably fail :confused2 which leads me to the same question I asked earlier... could the motherboard be the problem? It keeps seeming more and more like the answer might be yes.

    At this point I have an MSI 5200 vid card in the AGP slot running fine (I think for now)... and all the drives are plugged in and it's booting into windows with no prob. What the F***??????
  • WuGgaRoOWuGgaRoO Not in the shower Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    i have a feeling that its the motherboard and it might be sending too much voltage to whatever periphial...i suggest getting a diff mobo and runing the mem tests on the new moboas for the smoking card, its toast..pun intended
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2006
    Yeah, I concur with Wugs about the mobo too. Try the ram in another mobo and see if it gives memtest errors on it if that is possible. Like he said about the smoked vid card, that guy is SOL on that score.
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited June 2006
    Can anyone perhaps recommend a motherboard that I could replace this with? It certainly doesn't have to have very many bells and whistles (ie. current hard drive is IDE)... here are the specs I am matching...

    Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz
    AGP Video card (maybe the same one that got fried... PNY NVIDIA FX500)
    2 x 512mb (1 GB) of PC3200 DDR400
  • WuGgaRoOWuGgaRoO Not in the shower Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    hmmm... look up abit, they should have some mobos like that...they are usually pretty stable too....i have a soyo dragon p4x400, don;t know if it supports 2.8ghz
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited June 2006
    Asus P4P800 SE has always been a great board in my experience.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2006
    Yep, I also recommend the P4P800 SE too and you can still get new ones from Newegg. I recently built a desktop Dothan system with that mobo for my brother and it's a good choice. Last I looked, they were selling for around $90 at Newegg.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    Both the Asus and Abit i865 and i875 chipset boards are very good. The Abit IC7 series are excellent both in performance and quality. Don't know if they still make them.
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited June 2006
    Is it at all possible that the power supply is underpowered?
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    It could be the PSU is inadequate or is failing, but that would not account for the smoking video card. It is unlikely that a surge would take out the video card but leave the motherboard intact. Perhaps the PSU caused a surge and took out both the video card
    and
    motherboard. What is the brand, model, and specifications of the PSU in that system?

    BTW, the listed specs of the computer do not indicate a system with a high power draw.
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited June 2006
    Grr.. this computer is frutstrating. So, in response to the previous question.. you are correct the PSU is not the problem.. I was surprised to find that when inspecting the convenient sticker on the side of the PSU, I learned that it is not really that bad... I can't remember details now, but I checked the amperage on the rails and it appeared to be good enough... but OF COURSE, before I checked the PSU, I went out and bought a new one to replace it and installed it (also bought a new vid card). Installed the new PSU, tested the mem... still fails when both sticks of mem are in. So, as stated in the previous post, I am inclined to believe that the motherboard is the problem. On a related sidenote: I noticed when unplugging the PSU from the motherboard, that there was a brown mark on the plastic plug around four of the pins... makes me think that something might have gotten "semi-fried" (enough for the computer to kind of work but fail mem tests, refuse to boot occasionally, etc)
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2006
    I would not turn on the computer even one more time with that motherboard. It's time to pull it and rebuild. I hope you haven't damaged any other components. Sounds like the boards voltage regulators went bad.
  • phuschnickensphuschnickens Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
    edited June 2006
    The saga continues...
    I replaced the motherboard, so now, with a new PSU and a new motherboard (still the same processor and memory) I ran memtest86... it still failed. I took the motherboard back to the store (b/c if I didn't do it today, I think i wouldn't have gotten my refund)... and now I am re-testing the memory one DIMM at a time in an attempt to find one DIMM that is bad (with the new PSU, old motherboard, old processor, old memory)..

    Question: Since I am testing DDR ram, is it possible that one of the DIMMs is bad, but will test fine alone, but when used as dual channel, it produces errors... ie is it possible that all i need to do is get new memory??
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2006
    I would think it's possible, but kind of unlikely though.

    I have one question though. Are both sticks of ram identical. There have been cases where non-identical ram just doesn't play together well. Either stick will run just fine by themselves but you can't get any ram stability with both installed.
Sign In or Register to comment.