Ok, I'm thinking I've got this one figured out, but thought I'd ask for opinions from some of you more knowledgable folk.
Back in Feb I built a new system.
AMD Athlon XP 1600+ w/ Thermaltake (or Thermalrite?) SK6 HS w/ 7k delta fan
MSI K7N420 Pro board - nForce chipset
256mb Crucial PC2100
Maxtor 7200rpm 40gb hdd
Teac fdd
52x Sony CD-Rom
Antec case/PSU with 3 intake fans / 2 exhaust fans running (+ PSU fan)
Box ran great for a month, then the temps started rising. To make a long story short, the HSF wasn't mounted properly, shifted a little when I used the can of air to blow any dust out it, and the chip fried. Apparently it took the CPU fan header on the mobo with it, as we tried a brand new chip that my friend had and 5-6 fans and none worked. RMA'ed the board, bought a new chip (1g duron, couldna afford another XP at the time).
Get the board back, install the chip and HSF (properly this time), put it all together, and nothing. So take it all down cept the chip/HSF, remount everything, double check all connects (had'em right to start with), hit the power, nothing. Was going to RMA the board again, but missed the window cause I took my time getting the box back up (read had to wait a couple weeks to buy a new chip).
On a side note, I got the impression the board I got back from the RMA was one someone else had returned and they sent it back out.
Ok, so I'm thinking my RAM mighta gone bad. Got a wild hair, moved the RAM from slot1 to slot3 and hit the power, just to see what would happen. To my surprise it booted up just as pretty as you please. Everything seemed to be running along nicely.
Started up EQ, played awhile, system froze up hard. Screen went black, monitor led still green though, no input devices working. It was kinda like I had hit the reset button but it stopped as soon as I released the button. Hit the reset button. Thought it mighta been just a quirk, it wasn't. On very rare occasions the screen goes scrambled or just freezes whatever is on it. Two or three times since the first lock up the machine has rebooted itself whent this happens, but only 2 or 3 times.
Thought it mighta been a software problem, as I had only noticed it in EQ. Talked with the EQ techs, sent him the tech type files he asked for (dxinfo, an eq log, system info in text format), and only thing he could find was the pop3trap and webtrap of pc cillin might be freezing EQ. Shut down PC Cillin completely before starting EQ, still get the random lockups. That was the day I got the first one in AH, then another one in AH about 30min later. Eliminated it being an EQ software problem.
Updated all the drivers for the hardware/board. No cure there.
Heat, HS cool to the touch when running under a load. Checked it playing EQ, AH, and running Prime95 stress test. Don't think that's the problem. PC Alert's highest reported temp under load was 42c. Also ran with the case open and a floor fan pointed into the system, even though my case has massive airflow, just to be sure. Still locked up.
Tried moving the RAM to different slots. Still had the lock ups, but now the system will boot with the RAM in slot1. Weirdness.
Ran Prime95 in stress test mode and left it running when I went to bed. Woke up in the morning and checked, Prime95 had stopped after 4hr 37min. Pretty much eliminates any video issues, unless slow scrolling text in a notepad looking window will trigger a video issue.
So now I'm left with the board as my primary suspect from when I first brought the box back up. But I haven't been able to eliminate the RAM as the cause. Tried memtest86, but every disk I've tried to boot from gives me the bios initialization error on the fdd (according to memtest86's readme anyway).
So, any thoughts suggestions on anything else to check? I did add a GF2 GTS to the system instead of running with the onboard video. My performance improved, but it didna solve the lockups.
