suspect behaviour

[Hadesdude]

Hi,

in July last year I ordered different parts from different places to assemble a powerful computer myself, with the help of a friend.

It has the following:
*Mobo: MSI Z77A-GD55
*CPU: Intel i7 3770 - 3400MHz (socket 1155)
*PSU: OCZ ZT550W
*Graphics: 1GB Geforce GTX 670
*RAM: 2x 4GB 600-788 RipjawsX
*Arctic Freezer cooler for CPU
*1TB Hard drive Western Digital
*1BD Writer
*Casing: a nice blue PS06-B from Silverstone
*OS: Windows 7 Premium 64 bits

Internet and (surround) sound are controlled by the mobo. I love that word. Mobo.

Notice that the Mobo supports OC but the CPU doesn't, so I leave that off for safety.
Also the GPU had a minimum power requirement of 550W, which I chose to limit power usage.

Anyway, a few months ago, the pc suddenly didn't want to start up.
Absolutely no reaction, although the current was on and the socket/wire worked fine. But no lights, sounds or whatsoever.
So I opened the case and made sure everything was really well connected, and started it up again. Indeed it did!

Now a few months later it does it again...
I opened the case, there was barely any dust to see, just to note.
Everything was still tightly connected, I pushed the button, no reaction.
I removed one RAM-card since it's the easiest part to remove and pushed again. This time the power light of the mobo lit up. And faded.
I removed the other RAM-card, leaving the pc without memory. Now it started! But not really, it rebooted constantly. I guess it needed that memory...
So I put them in again and tested it, well sir it worked just like it used to, after connecting the back panel to the stuff I booted it up again and it's still working as I type.

So my question is -since I really love this pc- is there any suspicion I should have about some component? Because this was pretty weird. Maybe an almost faulty cable I pushed a bit in the right way?

 

[johnb35]

Sounds like it could be a ram issue. Next time it happens you may want to assemble the motherboard outside of the case on a piece of cardboard and see what happens. It's possible that the motherboard is shorting out against the case. You have installed the brass standoffs in the correct places between case and motherboard? Also try resetting the cmos, there may be a corrupt setting somewhere.

 

[Deviousmind]

My brother had a similar problem with his pc he too had the same psu i believe, he found it was a bad connection on the moduler cable connection to the psu

 

[Twiki]

I would suspect a bad connection somewhere and you bumped it making it work. I would check the power connections to the board and check each wire into the plug. One might had lifted slightly.

 

[Hadesdude]

Hi, thanks for the replies.
Apparently my RAM still works fine, at a point I was using 5GB out of 8.
I haven't checked the motherboard connections on the back plate, but I'll do that as soon as there's another case of this. Normally I should've taken care of that at mounting.

A friend of mine said it couldn't be the CMOS because there was absolutely no reaction. I don't know who knows best.

I'm also planning to upgrade the hard drive, since it currently brings the windows score to 5.9, the next minimum being at 7.6 (memory and processor).
I hope an SSD for an OS drive will fix this!

PS: I noticed I used "suspect" in the title instead of "suspicious", apologies!
And the Video card is 2 instead of 1GB apparently.

 

[Twiki]

I wouldn't put much stock in WEI but it does show how well the OS work with the components. I have a new Seagate Constellation drive with SATA III connection and it only went from 5.7 to 5.9. My old drive was a WD green, SATA II and only a 5400 rpm model. The new one is 7200 rpm.