v...@ukr.net writes:
If the system behaves in such an unpredictable way (freezing at a
random point), I usually check the following things:
- RAM;
- bloated capacitors on the Motherboard;
- bloated or dried capacitors in the power supply unit;
If your PC is only half a year old, it is unlikely that the
capacitors dried. But they could easily bloat, especially if they were
of bad quality or situated near some hot surface like heat sinks.
Testing the power supply needs not only visual analysis. It would be
good to attach the oscilloscope to the output and see the voltage
level. It should not have large peaks (voltage jumps). But this is
usually true for the old units with dried capacitors, as I said.
The power supply is older, I re-used it from the PC I had before this
one. I hope it causes the trouble, and will try another one this
evening. Thanks for this information, this strengthens my confidence
that I do not have to buy a new board or CPU. Now I am driving home with
a bag of three PSUs I had lent to a friend (and already forgotten).
If I were you, I'd tried to temporarily replace the memory with a 100%
working module, and if it does not help - replace the power supply
unit (if you do not have the necessary equipment to test it thoroughly).
I wish I had :) The RAM is okay, I think, I cannot imagine different
memory modules to suddenly go bad all at once. And memtest86 found one
error only after an hour, while the crashes happen after a few minutes
already.
And one more simple test: turn on the PC, enter the BIOS setup
utility and keep it running in this state. If it runs ok for some time
(like a couple of hours), I'd say the problem is in RAM.
It once crashed after ten minutes. That was not reproducable, but I did
not try that often.
Wonko
