What is a good way to test SATA Hard Drive?

[atifsh]

Are you saying the "high temp" one was copper? Mine is copper on the bottom too....

what im saying is one with copper was the one getting High temps since the system was bought, but never run this high, but it was always little on the high side, after changing the heatsink all went fine now. so yes though the copper one should be better, but in this case was not.

[atifsh]

ok just a test, ur side fan has a duct direct on cpu right? if u can pull off the side fan duct? try that

Symptoms of failing/overheating PS, cpu, or mainboard... take your pick..

1: heatsink
2: PSU
3: motherboard / Cpu

ur problem was shifted frm could be bad Hardrive to Heat issue, so i say it again, try some other harddisk or it could be motherboard going faulty.

[katzdvd]

Although my cpu temps are running high, I think there is more going on. The pc was powered down for about 4 hrs., it was "cold". When I turned it on, it got to the xp splash screen & then rebooted, just like you would have pressed the reset button.

This is a tough one...

[atifsh]

ok thats what iv done ........ from easy to little more harder, in terms of things to do....

1: change ur PSU get anyones to test for a day or 2.
2: then change ur hard disk, install xp+sp2, skip sp3 for now
3: try some other ram modules, rent it or exchange with a friend
4: try other display card or builtin display...
5: dude bad luck if ur thinking for num 5... motherboard / CPU


start with num 1 or 2 which one is easier for u

[Chewy]

why is the vid card operating at 30% is the question you guys should be asking

my bet is the chipset driver for the northbridge, or the chipset itself

[katzdvd]

Well, we have a can of worms here don't we?!?!

1. Substandard vid card performance
2. Overheating/hot running cpu
3. Random reboot issues
4. Random start up issues



I am in linux right now; I will boot into xp & check on the chipset drivers loaded.

[doctorhardware]

When a gaming computer exhibits this symptom of not loading the OS and or the game software and random reboots, or randomly resetting during game play. First, take a look at the chip set chips for discoloration, the center of the chip will appear to be darker than the surrounding area. This can cause the CPU to run hotter than what is normal. Also look at the capacitors that are on the motherboard. It is the round cylinders with the sliver tops. The tops of the capacitors should be perfectly flat. Also check the video card capacitor's, this will also cause the computer to not to boot the OS and random resets. What you can do is to disconnect all the drives and just have the motherboard, memory and video card. Just to see how the motherboard boots. Then hit the delete key to enter the bios setup. Watch the temperature and see what is is running at. If it reboots then this would narrow down the problem, to motherboard, memory or the cpu. It is also possible a power supply issue.

[katzdvd]

First, take a look at the chip set chips for discoloration

Also look at the capacitors that are on the motherboard

Everything looks good there.

my bet is the chipset driver for the northbridge

What driver should I be using? I went thru this before on another forum; Some say to use the drivers on the disk that came w/ the mainboard, some say from the mfg. website, others had different ideas. I would like to get that vid card up to speed.

BTW, running "Speedfan" today. Room temp is 80 F. Side of case is off, Speedfan reports 49 C at idle. No crashes yet today...

[Chewy]

load the latest inf/chipset from the mobo manufacture if you haven't already

the uninstall the video driver from add/remove and device manager and reboot load the latest or something recent from nvidia

2 steps

[katzdvd]

load the latest inf/chipset from the mobo manufacture if you haven't already

the uninstall the video driver from add/remove and device manager and reboot load the latest or something recent from nvidia

Yeah, I forgot; that will take care of the "XP" side of things, but when I boot into Linux, that will be another matter. Linux is using the latest driver from nvidia, but I don't know about the chipset drivers. I will have to check on that.

[Chewy]

I don't support penguin or heron issues

thank goodness

windows is bad enough

[atifsh]

I don't support penguin or heron issues

thank goodness

windows is bad enough

[katzdvd]

Chewy - I've been doing some monitoring over the last few days, watching things. I have had no crashes, that's a good thing!

But here is what I have observed; Room temps around 75 - 80 F the last few days. When I boot, the BIOS shows cpu temp at 35c - I know, that is before windows loads.

HWMonitor show cpu temp at 39c at idle, climbs a bit during some audio work (goldwave) maybe to around 44c.

Speedfan shows similar - right now at idle - 40c.

Coretemp shows - 53c at idle right now.

Do you think possibly that coretemp is reporting wrong with this cpu? The coretemp window that comes up & shows all the info is reporting this processor as "Toledo", & from my research, that is incorrect.

I am inclined to believe that CT is giving me false readings with this.

Your thoughts?

[Chewy]

I believe coretemp, there might be an issue with your bios, if you reboot immediately into bios after letting the cpu get hot how much lower is bios than what software reports

bios is probably the best comparison

[katzdvd]

Wow, I got knocked offline most of yesterday because of some construction issues in my area...another story...

Anyway...I did some audio work to tax the cpu, then rebooted right into the BIOS, & Core Temp still reported a different temp than all the others. As before, the other 2 monitoring pgms. are pretty close to what the BIOS is reporting, Core Temp can show as much as 10 - 15 warmer. I don't really know what to make of it all.

I haven't had any more boot/reboot/shutdown issues which makes it even more difficult to determine what is really going on. I was ready to fault the PS from the start, I still don't know. I am getting another PS, so I guess I could swap that it & run it for awhile to see if anything turns up.