P35-DS3L Endless rebooting on powerup.

[barab]

Hey, I've had quite a frustrating few days. Over a week ago I put together a new system. (Components listed below) Worked wonderfully for 5 days or so, until I get home from work Wednesday and when I powered it on it would start to boot up for 2-3 seconds and then shut down, another 2-3 seconds later it'd power itself back on again, shut down.. you get the idea.

Anyways, I did some research and asked questions on the net and was told it was probably a PSU or mobo problem. Luckily, I had a new PSU coming the next day, that did not fix the problem. So I talked to Newegg and had them overnight me a new motherboard for a replacement. Got that on Friday, and still the same problem.

I have a friend with very similar components, so we swapped parts back and forth trying to find out what was faulty. Nothing of his would work on my board, including the CPU and fan, PSU, Videocard, and RAM. However, my videocard and CPU worked in his system. Leading me to believe that they are OK. We found that one of my two ram sticks would cause his system to show the reboot symptoms, but the other one worked fine.

So it looks like I'm sitting on two bad motherboards and 1 bad RAM stick. Has anyone seen anything like this before? Is it possible this RAM went bad a some point and then fried both boards I tried it in (yet left my buddy's board intact?)

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
Core 2 Duo 6750
CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-6400
SAPPHIRE X1950PRO

 

[akhilles]

It's not impossible to damage a part cuz they're delicate. i.e. if you set ram voltage to 2.4v & keep running at that for a while, at first you wouldn't notice anything wrong until the ram gives up the ghost (overheat). Same thing for other voltages. The only thing that would "fry" the board is running at very high voltage on the northbridge. The other thing would be some molex power cables dangling in the case & shorting out something like the board. Or a crap low quality generic psu.

Were you overclocking the pc? What were the settings especially voltages? What is the make & model of the psu?

 

[barab]

No overclocking or anything. Never touched anything to do with voltages. Just worked fine for almost and week and then poof.

I've tried 3 PSU's - an Antec, Thermaltake and a generic one my friend had. IM sure shorting is not a problem, I took the board completely out of the case and it still has the same behavior.

 

[akhilles]

After the fact, it doesn't matter where you put the board. If it's shorted, it's shorted.

The best course of action right now would be to send it back to the dealer, if they won't help, then rma it to gigabyte. Takes about 2 months.

 

[barab]

I RMA my boards and memory back to Newegg. I hope I have better luck next time.

 

[tlmck]

If you used low end PSU's regardless of brand, you will most likely fry the new stuff when it comes in. Low end Antec's would be the Basiq and Earthwatts. These are fine for low end machines, but not for yours. If you did not pay at least $130 for the Thermaltake, it is low end. They only make a few good models, and they are not cheap. And of course, generic is generic.

The lowest cost PSU I would trust with that system is the Corsair 450VX.

 

[barab]

Thanks for the advice, im going to invest in a better PSU.

Also, I was wondering if this was a problem. I noticed that the voltage for the RAM i had was 1.9 volts, I read on the board here that 1.8 is the default for my motherboard, could this have caused my problems?

 

[tlmck]

No. You can actually run that ram up to 2.1v safely on this board. What could be the problem is the PSU supplying the wrong voltage. The only way to actually check it reliably, would be using a digital volt meter. Also, if the voltage is fluctuating a lot, that can be another cause of "reboot syndrome".

 

[fiask0]

You could try upping your RAM voltage to the required 1.9V from the default 1.8V. Also, you mentioned that you swapped out ram. Have you tried using your system with only 1 stick of RAM, whether its your friends or yours? Im leaning more towards RAM being your problem than a power supply, based on the fact you said that you put your ram in his machine and it also rebooted. Double check your RAM, and if possible, try to run Memtest, if it doesnt reboot, and see what it tells you.

 

[boner]

reset the CMOS