Help TroubleShoot Silverstone

[Monkey-b0y]

Hello,
I tried to build a simple PC for my living room to stream internet radio/mp3’s through my main stereo and to access IMDB.com when I am watching TV and my wife says, “where do we know that actor from.” I am running the video out through the S-video jack into an Onkyo 780 Home Theater and then into our regular tv.

Assembled all of the parts over the weekend and have been trying to work the bugs out. It boots up and works fine for 20 to 30 minutes and then freezes up. Sometimes the screen will strobe and then give an error message about a video driver being in an infinite loop. More often it will just go black.

Any advice about what might be wrong is greatly appreciated.

Here is the list of parts…

Case: Silverstone LASCALA (incidentally, the fans are a lot louder then I expected.)

Power Supply: Cooler Master 420w

Motherboard: Mach Speed X-Caliber PT88AS Via Socket 478 ATX

CPU: Intel Celeron D 340 2.93GHz

CPU Fan: MASSCOOL 70mm Cooling CPU Fan 9T370B1M3 70mm Ball Cooling Fan/Heatsink (also quite noisy)

Memory: CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel

Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100583L-GN-H Radeon 9250 128MB

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar 160.0GB

DVD-RW: NEC Silver IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3540A

DVD-ROM: ASUS Silver 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DVD-E616P3-QT SLVR

Floppy: Generic floppy drive

Internal Card Reader: AMC AICR-01-SL 6-in-1 USB 2.0 Silver Internal USB Digital Card Reader/Writer

Wireless Keyboard: BTC 9019URF Wireless Multimedia Keyboard w/Dual Mode Joystick (I am really pleased with the keyboard)

OS: Windows XP (Service Pack 2)

Are there any obvious incompatibilities that might be causing the problem? Thank you very much for any help you can offer.

[Cricket]

The video card could be the problem.

The power supply could be the problem.

The motherboard could be problem.

Those three items are what stick out to me. If possible, try swapping in known to be working replacements to test with.

Cricket

[Monkey-b0y]

Thanks Cricket. The drivers for the video card have been upgraded, but as for the other two is there a simple way to do that without swapping them out for something else?

[Cricket]

Trying to find out exactly which part is causing the problem it's hard to do if you don't have compatible parts to swap in to test with. The problem you're seeing could be caused by anything...most common would be heat. You could try running the computer with the case sides off with a small fan blowing into it. This will help tell you if you have a overheating problem.

If the problem is a power related problem then it may be the power supply or the motherboard. Cooler Master power supply quality is suspect and if it's giving your system "dirty" power (unsteady or fluctuating) that could be the cause of the problem. Or maybe something inside the power supply is heating up and reaching a point where it's possibly causing some kind of power spike or dip and that's causing another component to cause the freeze. Swapping in a known to be good working power supply is about the only way I know of to test for this.

And I've seen that motherboard brand mentioned here quite a bit recently...unfortunately it's always because the computer is having some kind of problem and replacing the motherboard with a different one most times will fix the problem. Your motherboard may be heating up to a point where maybe a circuit trace is losing contact with resistor or capacitor or something and maybe that's causing the freezes. Hard to say.

Cricket

[trowand]

It sounds likely to be a heat issue like Cricket said. You don't have the HTPC in a cramped entertainment center do you? Is it sitting on top of your Onkyo receiver? I know my HT receivers always ran VERY hot. I'd first try what Cricket said about running it with the case open and a fan on it. At least that might tell you if it's heat related. Are you sure that all of your fans are working? Have you checked system temps with a program like Everest Home Edition?

[Monkey-b0y]

Speedfan was run and the temps range around 40 degrees. It never gets hotter than 42 degrees. It is not cramped in the entertainment center yet, but sitting outside of it. Also checked the voltage and where it should be 5 volts is is 5.03. So all of those are well within the normal parameters.

Since the mother board was the cheapest purchase all signs point to that being the culprit. Can someone recommend a comparable alternative to the Motherboard: Mach Speed X-Caliber PT88AS Via Socket 478 ATX?

Thanks again!

[trowand]

Originally Posted by Monkey-b0y Can someone recommend a comparable alternative to the Motherboard: Mach Speed X-Caliber PT88AS Via Socket 478 ATX?

Well I don't know much about that mobo, but I say get an Asus. Even if it is a cheaper, older Asus mobo, it'll do you good. Since it's just for an HTPC and you're not going to overclock it, you could just get an Intel.

[Panama Red]

Have you tried your HTPC connected to a regular CRT or LCD monitor? That's how I fist set mine up before connecting the TV thru the S-video. Mine is an AMD based system but I'm using a similar video card, Sapphire 9200 with an Asus motherboard with Via chipset. Via with AMD seems to work fine but most experienced folks here at PC Mech will choose an Intel chipset motherboard with an Intel cpu every time. This board would be a good replacement for the one you have.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131484

[Monkey-b0y]

i appreciate the recomendation on the motherboard replacement.

Is there any signifigant difference between the board that has been
recommended...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16813131484
(ASUS P4P800SE - $93 at Newegg)

and the following motherboard...

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/398...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG
(ECS 848P-A - $54 at Outpost)

Thank you very much for your continued help with this project.

[glc]

Heck yes - first off, Asus is quality and ECS is cheap. Secondly, the P4P800SE is an 865PE chipset, the ECS is an 848P, a stripped down chipset with no dual channel ram support. You get what you pay for. If you want a quality 848P board, get the Asus P4P800S-X.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...uctCode=240345

[Monkey-b0y]

Thanks for all the product suggestions, you guys rock!

My ultimate goal is to troubleshoot this without spending any more money. =) Is that a lost cause with this mother board?

This morning I noticed that my hard drive was jumpered to "Cable
Select" and it was showing up as "slave" with no "master" in the
start-up routine. Does that sound right to anyone?

I also looked at the BIOS settings to see if there was anything else
that could be a problem. Here are some things that might be a problem.

In general settings "Video" is set to ECA/VGA. Other options are CGA
40, or CGA 80, or MONO. Should it be changed? Should it stay the same?

In the Advanced Settings, "HDD SMART CAPABILITY" is set to DISABLED.
Should it be ENABLED?

"VIDEO BIOS SHADOW" is set to ENABLED. Should it be DISABLED?

In Power Management "VIDEO OFF OPTION" is set to ALWAYS OFF. Should it
be ALWAYS ON?

Also, VIDEO OFF METHOD is set to V/H SYNC+BLANK, Is that correct?

You guys are better than any tech support, and thanks again for all the suggestions!

[trowand]

I'll just answer what I'm sure about.

The HDD being set to "cable select" and showing up as a "slave" is fine. It will have no effect on performance.

I think the video on VCA/VGA is fine. You want it there.

HDD SMART is an automatic hard drive self-diagnostic tool that's supposed to monitor HDDs for problems/failure and give you a warning if it detects an upcoming problem. So you might want to turn it on.

In power management, "Video Off Option" should be set to always off. I think that's where you want it. I think that's refering to automatically turning the monitor off when you power down your computer.

I'm not too sure about the "video off method". I'm guessing it has to do with how the monitor gets turned off or gets put to sleep. It's probably set correctly. I say leave it there.