Upgraded my cooling, now I crash at stock

K

Kaldskryke

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 1, 2004
Messages
1,346
I upgraded from a big typhoon in a P180 to watercooling in an A05. Of course the first thing I did was run Orthos. Temps are great but after 5 minutes I had an error. Tried again and the whole rig crashed and rebooted itself. I'm running stock on a E6600.

I'm not sure what could be causing this unless I damaged something while building. How can I diagnose the problem?
 
Kaldskryke,

What were your temps and what were you using to measure them?
 
Temps were 29 idle, 36 load in a warm basement. Using Coretemp. This is down from 55 idle 70 load with a lapped Big Typhoon so I'm more than pleased with the results temperature wise. I just wish I knew why it's unstable now.
 
Worse news! When I booted up today after coming home from work Windows told me that my hardware configuration had changed significantly, therefore requiring reactivation. But I haven't changed any hardware. I went to go find out how to deal with this and promptly discovered that the ethernet port is no longer functioning.

Does this sound like a fried motherboard? I'm not sure how this could have happened... I had a small spill setting up the watercooling but that was straight distilled water and I let it dry for hours before putting power through it. Maybe I nicked a trace with a screwdriver? I can't see any damage.

I haven't replaced a mobo in a long time... do I need to buy a new copy of Windows or is there some provision for motherboard failure?
 
Kaldskryke said:
Worse news! When I booted up today after coming home from work Windows told me that my hardware configuration had changed significantly, therefore requiring reactivation. But I haven't changed any hardware. I went to go find out how to deal with this and promptly discovered that the ethernet port is no longer functioning.

Does this sound like a fried motherboard? I'm not sure how this could have happened... I had a small spill setting up the watercooling but that was straight distilled water and I let it dry for hours before putting power through it. Maybe I nicked a trace with a screwdriver? I can't see any damage.

I haven't replaced a mobo in a long time... do I need to buy a new copy of Windows or is there some provision for motherboard failure?
Click to expand...

Sounds like you need to call MS. What does it show in device manager for your ethernet port?
 
My concerns are two-fold:

1) You did not get all the water cleaned up, and while it may be distilled (and theoretically non-conductive), there may have been something on the board that allowed electrons to flow and short something out.

2) By switching to WC from air cooling, you are no longer properly cooling your power MOSFETs on the motherboard.


Can you go back to air cooling temporarily to see if everything works that way?




Reactivation is easy, as long as your copy is legal. Just right-click My Computer and choose "Properties." At the bottom of the dialog box is a little activation area. It should give you the option to "call Microsoft." You then punch in the activation code to your copy of Windows on the phone...and it will either read you back a new number...or will send you to tech support who will get you a new number. I had to do this after replacing all my HW in an upgrade, and installing Vista x64 on the new setup (I wiped the old drive and made it part of my storage for another computer).
 
Justintoxicated said:
Sounds like you need to call MS. What does it show in device manager for your ethernet port?
Click to expand...
The device does not show up in the device manager anymore.
rainman said:
My concerns are two-fold:

1) You did not get all the water cleaned up, and while it may be distilled (and theoretically non-conductive), there may have been something on the board that allowed electrons to flow and short something out.

2) By switching to WC from air cooling, you are no longer properly cooling your power MOSFETs on the motherboard.

Can you go back to air cooling temporarily to see if everything works that way?

Reactivation is easy, as long as your copy is legal. Just right-click My Computer and choose "Properties." At the bottom of the dialog box is a little activation area. It should give you the option to "call Microsoft." You then punch in the activation code to your copy of Windows on the phone...and it will either read you back a new number...or will send you to tech support who will get you a new number. I had to do this after replacing all my HW in an upgrade, and installing Vista x64 on the new setup (I wiped the old drive and made it part of my storage for another computer).
Click to expand...

1) I suppose that's a possibility. 2) I don't believe that's an issue since the sidepanel is off and there's a fair amount of airflow through that area. I'll put another fan in there and test anyway, though.

Thanks for the info about reactivation. Hopefully I'll get this sorted out tonight when I'm home from work.
 
If a water spill was involved, and something "magically" stopped working...

...Occam's Razor would suggest that something shorted out.



Or, an oddity...have you checked 1) The eth0 port lights on the back panel (Link and Act)? 2) That the eth0 port is enabled in BIOS?
 
I've determined MOSFET temp is not an issue. I went into the BIOS to make sure everything was enabled. Still no ethernet. I've noticed something odd. The Device Manager seems to think I have two 1394 controllers, but I don't think that's the case. Perhaps the device manager got confused and thinks my gigabit LAN is 1394 now? Very strange. UPDATE: the BIOS didn't fail checksum but apparently something was messed because when I flashed it again my ethernet came back. Huzzah! Now I just need to see if that fixed my stability issue too...

Update 2: Damnit, it still fails Orthos at stock speeds.
 
rainman said:
What are your memory speeds / timings?
Click to expand...

2GB corsair at stock (by SPD), 400MHz (2:3 ratio) 4-5-4-12 timings.

While writing this reply I had a hard crash again :S. Also, the ethernet port switched back to a 1394 port according to the device driver. Disabling the gigabit LAN via BIOS, rebooting, then re-enabling it seems to clear it up. :confused:
 
sounds like you've got a bad motherboard...one reason I've never seriously considered water-cooling.
 
Soul.Survivor said:
sounds like you've got a bad motherboard...one reason I've never seriously considered water-cooling.
Click to expand...
Aside from disappointing temps with the Big Typhoon my big reason for switching to watercooling was for the fun of it. It was a pleasant challenge to stuff a double-rad loop into that tiny little case, and it was fun trying to cut out the top with a dremel. I've lurked here long enough to see plenty of water cooling setups and I guess there's a bit of e-peen envy, but I just love telling my coworkers that I'm watercooling my computer and they look at me like I must be insane.

I guess I'll pop over to the motherboard section for suggestions :-S
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top