ASUS A8N-SLI and the random reboots of death

Dr Bolouswki

Setup is this

AMD3700 socket 939
2x1GB OCZ PC4000
7800GTX (Dell) single gfx card (migrated from XPS600)
Asus A8N-SLi deluxe
Audigy XiFi Fatalaity soundcard
2x sata hard drives 2x DVD/rom/rw drives
Hiper 580W PSU

Basically the system reboots randomly (sometimes every 5 mins, otehr tiems it will alst for hours - type of applciations seems to make no difference)and frequently will not turn on

I have replaced with other components

memory (rma'd)
PSU
motherboard (rma'd)
hard-drives

left out optical drives on boot etc

The only components left untested are gfx card and CPU

My question is this - is there anything I have missed out on? Would the untested components (gfx and cpu) likely cause a problem like this? Anything I can do without getting replacement components to test it?

Thanks for any advice

Anti

Sounds to me like a over heating problem. Most likely your cpu. Have you checked the temps of it ? If they are over 60c when idle you know the problem, As that cpu should idle at about 38/42c max and around 50 under full load. With the stock amd hsf. I would suggest removing the hsf. Cleaning off the compound between yoru cpu and hfs, and applying some highy wuality compound, like artic 5. Which is about 5€ for a tube. If that fails, it could be your psu not outputting the correct volts to the rails and thus causing a instability. Since you have rma'd the ram and mobo. it is unlikely it is either of them.Best thing you can od is run prime95. This program will stress all components of your pc. Its a kind of stability checker. IT will help lead to find the problem behind this. Also run memtest86 to check the ram, Never know, it could be faulty.

Links-

http://www.memtest86.com
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

It also worth running speed fan to to key a eye on your temps

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Dr Bolouswki

nice one - I will try that with the CPU for sure

Does prime issue a log file that tells me where the failure ahs occured? And does it test only the CPU or other components?

Anti

It just stresses everything out, it will put the cpu under 100% load and ram too. And if it fails it will report to a .log file for you

Drapper

do a mobo monitor for a few hours¬ Asus have a utility that monitors your board!

Anti

Yeah that would work if the asus monitor actually recorded to a log. As soon as his pc crashes it of no use to him.

Cuddlesworth

anti wrote:

Yeah that would work if the asus monitor actually recorded to a log. As soon as his pc crashes it of no use to him.

I think he meant chipset temps.

Drapper

yup! and I think the Asus programme has a logg.....

Dr Bolouswki

reported the whole series of events to vendor adn they ahve rma'd the mobo AND cpu for testing/replacment...

ran prime for a few (well, two ) hours but it didnt act weird