Then I guess you can rule that out.
Actually, DeepT, if you read the whole thread and my last post, you’ll see that I’ve pretty much wrapped things up. But thanks for the belated advice. :)
Hmmm…this is good info for me as I just built a system that has a similar problem.
Mine hard locks after about 10 minutes of a cold boot and is fine thereafter until I do a cold boot again.
I just sent back the video card and issued an RMA request on the mobo, the new video card will be back This Friday, and if the problem ensues, The mobo will go back, I’m temped to try another brand, but I’ll give this gigabyte 650 board one more try.
I’m pretty sure that my problem is poor/inconsistent solder on one of these components (mobo/videocard).
Here is my build.
GIGABYTE GA-N650SLI-DS4 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
Kingston HyperX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KHX6400D2LLK2/2GN
EVGA 640-P2-N825-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6850
OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI ATX12V 700W Power Supply
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
LG 18X DVD±R DVD Burner Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model GSA-H54NK
Hanns·G HG-281DPB Black 28" 3ms Widescreen HDMI LCD Monitor
Which EVGA board did you get?
Yes, in other words you don’t have anything helpful to offer him and your attempts at getting him to give up like a little bitch aren’t really funny. MAN UP!
Plenty of other people (some of which on this very forum) have successfully gotten Vista 64-bit running very nicely with a number of different Nvidia cards, motherboards, etc.
Not to sound like a smarmy smart ass here, but this story has caused me to never build my own system ever again. Sure, I know how to do it, and sure it’s mostly painless, and yeah you save a bit of money. But if something goes wrong, god help you. Of course, I’ll probably end up buying a Mac anyway.
Yeah, just turn in your geek card right now, please. Seriously, if you can’t troubleshoot a system then you might as well use a Mac which is an over-glorified appliance that can’t do anything interesting, can’t be upgraded, and costs three times as much as a comparable PC. Shit, why not go for broke and get a laptop Mac, so you can cream about how much money you just set on FIRE.
… but whatever, apparently the 360 is good enough for you for gaming. Great. If you like console games and don’t ever yearn for something with more depth than a joypad can adequately arm you for (you know, like modern simulation, role-playing, MMO, proper FPS games, etc).
Although that’s a total sidebar, because he asked for help with his VISTA 64 problem, not with his HOW DO I BUY MAC problem.
As long as you aren’t trying to play Portal or do anything awesome.
Yes, or you could have saved a lot of money by building it yourself and reading about the reputations of all the components before you let someone else choose for you. Or you could look at from the viewpoint that if you had saved the money and bought the components yourself, you would not be doing the VAR reseller’s job for them by verifying that the system was running prior to shipping it.
Thanks, I might just order that one if my problem does not disappear this weekend with the new video card.
eVGA’s customer support and warranty are top-notch. I have a 650i Ultra mb.
Though, had I done it all over again, I would’ve picked up a Intel P35 chipset. Proabably a ASUS P5K or a Gigabyte.
Looks like the video card is not the problem as the problem persists with the new card.
Guess, I’ll be returning the mobo and getting this one. I’ll post an update next week when it comes in.
Actually, I picked every component myself and had the store assemble it (free of charge). The store didn’t muck up the installation in any way. My only complaint was that some of the drivers were outdated (although they had all the Windows updates installed). They did burn in the system but the ram was tested for many hours before it finally coughed up errors – easy for an overnight burn to miss. The motherboard, which seemed to be the major culprit in crashing, showed no particular issues when run outside of games. Sure, they could have also run a few 3D benchmark programs or demos long enough to duplicate my problems and I can fault them for not doing so, but even I had three days of completely crash-free behavior. Why the stars aligned for those three days I have no idea.
So in the end, I do agree with your basic argument that the store could have done more to find the problems before I picked the system up. And since I had to remove the motherboard to install the 3rd party HSF, I ended up pretty much assembling the system myself, anyway.
The next time I do this I will build the system myself but I will probably revert back to what I usually do, just replacing parts as I go rather than getting a completely new PC.
I’ve heard the 680i chipset can be a little flaky with 1333 FSB CPUs, so make sure you flash your mainboard with the latest BIOS update.
One of the first things I did. :) I couldn’t actually set the CPU multiplier to its proper value until I flashed the BIOS (was maxing out one step too low).
Hey thanks for the tip on that board, CN. New board is in the system and it is rock stable, or at least the 10 minute crash is gone. Haven’t really done much with it yet as I’m adding once piece of software at a time and looking for the crash issue.
First was just a boot to windows, no drivers for anything…tested okay.
Then added all the driver and the hardware tab is clean…tested okay.
Today norton goes on and first time to the internet and all the windows updates, but again thanks, testing will continue. Oops, still need to flash the bios too.
And yeah, I wish I would have waited for the new intel chip, but at some point you just have to pull the trigger