I have been building a PC over the last few weeks designed specifically to be used for music production. I have choosen a high spec machine but I am having a problem with it that I have never experienced before. I have been working with PC's (building, networking - the usual) for many years. I don't profess to be anywhere close to being an expert but normally manage to solve whatever hurdle the machines throw at me, well that is until now........... Here's my spec: Asus P4C800 mobo P4, 3.2Ghz, 800 f.s.b (northwood) 1Gb PC3200 Kingston Ram Seagate Barracuda 120Gb hardrive LG DVD/CD-R Combo Burner Antec SL350P PSU Zalman Flower Sapphire Radeon 9200SE Graphics card (128Mb) Creative Audigy 2 Platinum Soundcard Win XP Pro I checked that all of these parts were compatible with each other, especially the CPU, Memory and Mobo! The Problem: Every time I run windows update the machine power's down! Now I had this problem 10 days ago and spoke with ASUS tech support in the states who assured me that the issue was with my RAM and that it was faulty.. I have since replaced the RAM and tested this new RAM to confirm that it is not faulty and I still have the same problem. I have the memory installed in the correct slots (confirmed by ASUS tech support) but I am completely stumped as to why I am having this issue. I have also looked at the PSU and there seems to be no issues there so I am at a loss as to how I can correct this issue! The machine also power's down when I try to install large music apps so it seems to happen only when the machine is being stressed which obviously is no use for music production!! Can Anyone Please Help Me??!?!
That's your problem. You take a heat mongering chip like the P4-3.2 and you shove a flower on it? -- For some reason I dont think that would quite cut the cooling requirements. What temps are you running before it clicks out?
I don't know. I haven't been monitoring the temp at those times. I have the heatsink that came with the chip so I can put that on.. That is if I can get the Zalman off after sticking it down with thermal paste! I'm using the Zalamn in an attempt to keep the noise of the system down. Do you not recommend using them on a chip of that speed? And thanks for the quick response
Fortunately you can easily run the Asus PC Probe (how I wish it would work with any brand MB!) Being an AMD guy, I don't know The Flower but Praetor is very knowledgable. Zalman PSUs are top-quality (and expensive here in Canada). I would rather use a higher-wattage unit, perhaps a 465W Enermax which is a quality unit with reasonable price. Surely your problems must be either cooling, power-supply, or BIOS related... Good luck and let us know what happens
1. LOL sometime you're gonna have to explain to me the desire by (damn near everyone I know) who wants a quiet (read: danty, fragile weakling) computer ;-P I'm a student and supposesdly need quiet but I like to run my tower loud (its a baddass and everyone in acoustical range knows it ) ah well to each their own 2. Turn the machine off for ~40 minutes. Turn it on and go into the BIOS there should be a tab labeled "Hardware Monitor" -- what are ur CPU and MOBO temps and for reference sake, what is the ambient temperature of the room? 3. I suppose I can buy the sheer need for quiet however, no offence or anything, that Flowering thingy might be taking it a tad too far -- especially if you are running the top end chip in there. BTW which model of the Flower are you running? (All copper, Mixed, etc). 4. Ive said this before but ill recap: copper is an excellent material for heatsinks and such however it loses its effectiveness very quickly without active cooling (i.e., fan). Although the Flower may be a testiment to effective all copper passive coolers, perhaps the 3.2 might be a tad beyond its effective capacity. The reason I asked about ambient temps above was that, with passive coolers, ambient temp plays a much more important role (which it shouldnt). 5. If you want quiet and effective, heatpiping is an excellent route to go ... whereas the Flower may be the pinnacle of that generation of passive cooling, heatpipes are much more effective and they can make use of fans -- if im not mistaken you cant attatch a fan to the flower (without jury-rigging it) even if you wanted to? Some quiet configs I would suggest: Thermaltake Silent Tower CL-P0025 http://www.thermaltake.com/coolers/cl-p0025/cl-p0025silentTower.htm An excellent setup making use of the highly effective SilentBoost fans -- it makes a huge difference if you use two fans instead of one. This is an excellent balance between noise (which is minimal, weighing in at 21db -- prolly less than most good power supplies except maybe the Vantec Stealths) Thermaltake DIY Tower112 http://www.thermaltake.com/coolers/comboCool/cl-p0024tower112/cl-p0024tower112.htm This is my sweetheart of the entire series .... This config destroys the prissy little Flower P) setup using sheer quantities of copper. Note that this setup is most likely only effective if you use the monster fans as opposed to the silent ones but its still worth a shot and may be quite effective/feasible if your ambient temperature is low. Super Loud Mode: Silent Mode: Thermaltake Fanless 103 http://www.thermaltake.com/coolers/cl-p0019Fanless103/cl-p0019fanless103.htm Now if you're absolutely nuts/insane about keeping your computer SILENT -- not quiet -- silent this is something you might want to consider. Using a silly number of fins this thing somehow stays cool using just the airflow generated by the rear exhaust and PSU intake fans.
I have the mixed Zalman. To be honest I wasn't knowledgable about the Flower before I go this one. I have been on this site: http://www.quietpc.com/uk/p4cooling.php#7000a Have a look at this Zalman Cooler; CNPS7000A Super Flower Cooler. See the spec as this one is said to be able to handle upto 4Ghz P4. In answer to your question about the quest for less sound. This machine is for music production, so you can't have a really loud machine in the background as it may be heard on any tracks you are recording!! That's why you need a quiet machine. I have realised now that the model I bought wasn't really for P4 chip's (I just saw it mentioned on the site I have put the link to!) and that's obviously the problem. I'll let you know if it solves it! I did want to know whether there is anything I need to know about taking off this cooler and replacing it with the standard Intel cooler? Thanks for all your help.
Just so that you know here is the Cooler I am using: http://www.quietpc.com/uk/amdcooling.php CNPS6000 Flower Cooler - The Mixed one. You'll see here that the spec shows this cooler suitable for P3's!! I wish I had read it before!
UPDATE: I just changed back to the Intel heatsink, I ran windows update, and the machine shut down! Powered straight off Is it the PSU? or maybe the CPU??
Ok here is the info: I turned the machine on after it being switched off all night and checked the temps from the Bios at boot up. I noticed that the CPU was listed as being 47 Degree's Centigrade, which is 117 Farenheit!! That's not good is it??! Well the temp was 44.5-C when I turned the machine on but it rose to 47 within 1 minute. When I have been using the machine previously - especially when I first built it the CPU was runnig at 40-C but now it seems to run much hotter. The mobo temp was a steady 23 centigrade (73-F) I also booted up and ran the Asus Probe for a few minutes and took screen shots for you. Although this did give conflicting data as the probe showed the CPU running at 40 and below from the moment I ran it?!??! Here are the screen shots: (img)F:\temp.bmp(/img)
well I can't get the screen shots loaded!! Is that because I'm useless or because you can only load pics off of websites??? If it ain't possible I can email them over. Let me know.
Everyone on the thread has been looking at the temperature of the CPU and nothing else - this is fine, but unless you have the power management set up to shut down your PC when the processor gets too hot (and the processor temperature is set to less than the max temp your processor reaches) then it is unlikely this is the problem. The CPU temperature is a little high, but it is still under 50 degrees, I wouldnt start to get overly worried unless it is rising towards 60-65 degrees (although I would recommend as other people have done, to get a different heat sink as the temp should be idling around 30-35 degrees; also be careful with the amount of thermal paste as this can also cause problems.) Have you considered that it may be a software problem? Have a check in Control Panel-System-Advanced-Startup and Recovery and look to see if your computer is set to automatically restart on system failure. If this is the case, untick the box and now use the computer as you do until you get the restart. Instead of restarting, Windows will give you a debug screen with a problem description. If you get one of these, it could be a bad memory problem (did you protect yourself against ESD when fitting the memory?) or may just be a program eating into your resources because it is not functioning correctly. A blue screen normally appears when a program tries taking resources from a program which is already running - sloppy programming is normally at fault. Check in the Event Viewer within Administrative tools, this will give you an idea as to what the problem could be and if it is hardware or software related (also what time the error occured so you can trace the errors back and see when they started). There may well also be a link to Microsofts website with an explanation of what the problem is. Hope you get the problem sorted, let me know how you get on with this. Weasle.o
Well I disabled the Automatically restart at system failure option in the advanced system settings and the same thing happened! I also checked the CPU temp at re-boot and it was 40-C. I did have 'System Thermal' activated in the Bios which is now disabled but also the same thing happened, which is for me to run the windows update and the machine to power down. I do have Service Pack 1 on it already.. I am stumped! I didn't have an electro-static strap on when I installed the memory but I downloaded a memory test program and ran it and the memory passed with no errors. I got the test from: http://www.memtest86.com The CPU temp seems not too be too much of an issue. Is it the PSU? The unit came bundled with the case I Bought. It is an Antec PSU though: http://www.ebuyer.com/ Type in this code into the search bar: 49275 That is the case and the PSU. Is there any way for me to test the PSU to see if that is the problem. Or is there a diagnostic program I can run that will help to pin-point the problem? I have looked in the Event Viewer int he admin tools and can see some entries at the times when the machine shut's down. Here they are: In the 'Applications' category: Event Type: Error Event Source: EventSystem Event Category: (50) Event ID: 4609 Date: 30/05/2004 Time: 13:28:10 User: N/A Computer: NUTTER Description: The COM+ Event System detected a bad return code during its internal processing. HRESULT was 8007041F from line 44 of d:\nt_qxp\com\com1x\src\events\tier1\eventsystemobj.cpp. Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services to report this error I can see this log at every instance when the machine shut down. I also get 4 logs in the 'System' category at every instance too. Here they are: Event Type: Error Event Source: DCOM Event Category: None Event ID: 10005 Date: 30/05/2004 Time: 13:28:10 User: NUTTER\Maxx Computer: NUTTER Description: DCOM got error "The service database is locked. " attempting to start the service ccPwdSvc with arguments "" in order to run the server: {DBA28A20-5CE1-4E8D-AD35-418B62269E54} For more information, see Help and Support Cente Event Type: Error Event Source: DCOM Event Category: None Event ID: 10005 Date: 30/05/2004 Time: 13:28:10 User: NUTTER\Maxx Computer: NUTTER Description: DCOM got error "The service database is locked. " attempting to start the service EventSystem with arguments "" in order to run the server: {1BE1F766-5536-11D1-B726-00C04FB926AF} For more information, see Help and Support Center Event Type: Error Event Source: DCOM Event Category: None Event ID: 10005 Date: 30/05/2004 Time: 13:28:10 User: NUTTER\Maxx Computer: NUTTER Description: DCOM got error "The service database is locked. " attempting to start the service netman with arguments "" in order to run the server: {BA126AE5-2166-11D1-B1D0-00805FC1270E} For more information, see Help and Support Center Event Type: Error Event Source: DCOM Event Category: None Event ID: 10005 Date: 30/05/2004 Time: 13:28:10 User: NUTTER\Maxx Computer: NUTTER Description: DCOM got error "The service database is locked. " attempting to start the service ImapiService with arguments "-Service" in order to run the server: {520CCA63-51A5-11D3-9144-00104BA11C5E} For more information, see Help and Support Cente
Very true but I wanted to verify that it wasnt a heat issue because (a) it's summertime and (b) the cooler is a Zalman passive cooler and ASUS boards do have overtemp shutdown builtin. But now that we have some numbers I can say that heat is not an issue. So that rules out one of the more popular causes. I have this settting enabled in my system but Ive never seen it work without first presenting a box of some sort (heck ive never seen it work period but thats another issue altogether -- good call though) To help rule out a memory problem: 1. Run the extended memory test on bootup 2. Run a couple memory benchmarks a couple of times ... sure this isnt perfect but its a decent test
I have run a mem test on numerous occasions in the last 2 days and everytime the mem passes with no errors??!?
Im not familiar with the P4C800 but that might work and you might want to check the bios (it would be under Advanced Settings prolly).
There's isn't the option to run the memory in single channel mode. And 3 I can' put the mem chipsin the unpaired slots3 as tht will cause a boo-up issue. The only way I can think to do it is to disable to hyper-thread. But I have decided to change tack quickly. I am re-installing windows from fresh. The reason I am doing this is because i had partially installed the OS with the last set of Ram which I have now replaced and that may have caused an error in the install process. i also think this may be a good idea because the OS isn't operating in the way it should. It's only a small thing but the machine never keeps the folders to the same settings that I select. Every time I boot up the icone in the system tray that i have slected to always hide are alwas thereon boot up and other small settings like that aren't working properly even though I have selected the folder options to remember the folder settings of each individual folder. We seem to be elliminating the hardware as the fault as the memory is working properly, the CPU ain't overheating and the PSU seems fine. The memory has alos been fully tested with the ASUS P4C800. look here: http://www.ebuyer.com here's the product code: 49296 I'll let you know how it goes.....
