Hey Guys
My first post on TechSupport, and I have a weird issue to troubleshoot. To explain it clearly, I'll break it up into separate problems, which I think might be related to just 1-2 faulty components:
System Config:-
AMD Athlon 5600+
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H Board (Rev 1.0)
G-Skill Pi Black DDR2 800 MHz RAM (2 X 2GB)
WD 320 GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 (Dual Slot) 512 MB
CoolerMaster extremePower Plus 500W (Dual Rail, 18A on each rail)
OS: Windows 7 64-Bit
Problems:-
1. When I start up my PC, I hear no POST beep or see anything on the monitor for quite a bit of time. Sometimes it takes more than 2 minutes for the POST beep to sound. The strange part is that the time required for the beep to occur reduces as the weather gets warmer (or the room temperature increases). :4-dontkno . I, for one, have never heard of a computer needing warming up before booting
.
Also, sometimes after pressing the power button, if I wait for 3-5 seconds and press the Reset button 2-3 times in succession, the POST happens immediately
2. While playing certain specific games, my system restarts after some time into the game. The game need not be a high end one. For instance, the system restarted while playing both NFS Hot Pursuit (2010) as well as some Harry Potter game
. The system logs did not give me an indication of what's happening, and just make a mention of an unexpected system restart.
3. My motherboard's eSata port has stopped working inexplicably (I'm not sure if this problem is related
)
What I've done so far:-
- Checked my RAM sticks for any errors using memtest (ran it over a night through multiple passes)
- Stress tested the CPU, RAM and Gfx Card for a considerably long duration, to rule out the possibility of overheating
- Updated drivers and BIOS (I don't think an updated BIOS for my Gfx card is available)
- Removed my Graphics Card and ran the system on onboard graphics. While the startup problem remained, the restart did not happen while gaming for over an hour
- I tried using my Gfx Card and PSU in an old AMD Athlon64 3800+ machine. This obviously isnt the perfect machine to test these components, as the CPU creates a huge bottleneck. Nevertheless, the startup was fine, and the game (NFS Hot Pursuit again) ran ok till a buffer overflow occurred and gave me a BSOD (possibly because the CPU was ill-equipped to run the game
I'm stuck here, as I cannot pinpoint the particular component which is faulty. The Motherboard / CPU, PSU or even the Gfx card could be responsible. Please help!!
Apologies for the huge post
