- Dec 19, 2006
- 3,420
- 1
- 20,960
Hey guys got a question. I've got somebody who asked me to take a look at their gaming build.
Specs.
AMD FX-6300 6 core processor
ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z AM3+ AMD 990FX motherboard
16gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3, unsure of spec
Corsair TX 750 watt power supply
Unsure of video card, it is a very large 3 fan card with 2 power connectors and is manufactured by Gigabyte, I want to say though it's probably at least a GTX 670 or a Radeon 7950
Western Digital 320gb SATA hard drive.
DVD Burner
Here's the deal. They built this themselves about 3 months ago, had some parts for a few months before building however. The guy has Windows 7 for it. Long and the short, they built it, it ran for about 3 months and starts bluescreening. The guy wiped the hard drive, and tried to reinstall Windows. Still gets the blue screen. They called me wanting help. Here's what I've done.
1. Confirm the issue by trying to install Windows 7 from a different disc. Same result.
2. Reset Bios to defaults. Same result.
3. Was able to boot with Parted Magic Linux Live CD. Same result
4. Test with a known working hard drive. Same result.
5. Swapped Video card for a known working tester. Same result.
6. Moved sata cables to different ports on the motherboard in case the board didn't like the placement. Same result
7. Tried a tester power supply that is nearly new and known to be working. Same result.
8. Am currently running memtest86+ from a boot cd and it's showing no errors after 15 minutes.
At this point my options are pretty well exhausted, the system did run for 3 months. All components seem to be top of the line. At this point I feel like it is either the Processor or the motherboard, some of the blue screens show an error having to do with a clock interrupt error. Of course since they built it, they are probably going to want to go through whoever they bought their parts through to get replacements. So I don't have a way to test as I don't just have a new motherboard and CPU sitting around. However, I've built at least a dozen systems or so and have been a tech and network admin for a few years, never seen a system act this way, and I have seen a lot of systems. Am I right by following my gut and telling them it appears they've got either a bad processor or bad board? As far as I can tell I'm not missing anything and have eliminated pretty much every possibility but those 2. I know it boots to Linux, but I question how much of a load it puts on that processor to make it heat up. They are running stock cooling on this chip. I do not know if it has been overclocked or not.
Situations like this are why if I build a system for someone, I do not allow them to use their own parts, they tell me what they want, I get the stuff at Microcenter with 2 year warranties, that way, take it back and swap parts, no questions.
Specs.
AMD FX-6300 6 core processor
ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z AM3+ AMD 990FX motherboard
16gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3, unsure of spec
Corsair TX 750 watt power supply
Unsure of video card, it is a very large 3 fan card with 2 power connectors and is manufactured by Gigabyte, I want to say though it's probably at least a GTX 670 or a Radeon 7950
Western Digital 320gb SATA hard drive.
DVD Burner
Here's the deal. They built this themselves about 3 months ago, had some parts for a few months before building however. The guy has Windows 7 for it. Long and the short, they built it, it ran for about 3 months and starts bluescreening. The guy wiped the hard drive, and tried to reinstall Windows. Still gets the blue screen. They called me wanting help. Here's what I've done.
1. Confirm the issue by trying to install Windows 7 from a different disc. Same result.
2. Reset Bios to defaults. Same result.
3. Was able to boot with Parted Magic Linux Live CD. Same result
4. Test with a known working hard drive. Same result.
5. Swapped Video card for a known working tester. Same result.
6. Moved sata cables to different ports on the motherboard in case the board didn't like the placement. Same result
7. Tried a tester power supply that is nearly new and known to be working. Same result.
8. Am currently running memtest86+ from a boot cd and it's showing no errors after 15 minutes.
At this point my options are pretty well exhausted, the system did run for 3 months. All components seem to be top of the line. At this point I feel like it is either the Processor or the motherboard, some of the blue screens show an error having to do with a clock interrupt error. Of course since they built it, they are probably going to want to go through whoever they bought their parts through to get replacements. So I don't have a way to test as I don't just have a new motherboard and CPU sitting around. However, I've built at least a dozen systems or so and have been a tech and network admin for a few years, never seen a system act this way, and I have seen a lot of systems. Am I right by following my gut and telling them it appears they've got either a bad processor or bad board? As far as I can tell I'm not missing anything and have eliminated pretty much every possibility but those 2. I know it boots to Linux, but I question how much of a load it puts on that processor to make it heat up. They are running stock cooling on this chip. I do not know if it has been overclocked or not.
Situations like this are why if I build a system for someone, I do not allow them to use their own parts, they tell me what they want, I get the stuff at Microcenter with 2 year warranties, that way, take it back and swap parts, no questions.
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