PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Sometimes I just completely hate computers. It's the moments when they just keel over for some reason or another that really wear my patience thin at times. I'm not saying we have problems with lots of crashes. On the contrary, our systems normally run fantastic, but now & again a hardware component's lifespan comes to a sudden end for no apparrent reason, which can be a maddening experience. To give an example of what I'm rambling about here, approx' 3 weeks ago one of our systems began to crash & bluescreen irregularly after having been working perfectly for months. The symptoms really looked like the memory had went t*ts up, but after A LOT of hassle buying & trying different sticks of ram (due to not having another rig running the same ram), it turned out not to be that at all. After eliminating almost all possibilities (including a mobo replacement) I was almost at the end of my patience threshold when I realised it could only be down to a faulty PSU. Replaced that & it worked straight away. It was so strange because the symptoms did not seem as if the PSU was faulty. Anyway it was & boy did I curse at the thing before f**king it in the bin. So, like I said, that was a few weeks back. Then last night in the middle of listening to Coldcut's essential session from earlier this year, the bloody Scope rig decides to just die. It literally just switched off & wouldn't switch back on. It was too late to start pis*ing around with it last night, so we just left it. Went to switch it on today & it powered up first time. WTF?? thinks me .. It stayed on for about 5 mins & switched off again & again wouldn't start back up. mmmmm. Left it 5 mins, tried it again & again it worked, this time for less than 5 mins (probably 3 or 4) Well, with those symptoms at that point I was thinking the CPU must've been overheating & triggering the mobo's COP function due to either a faulty CPU fan or faulty PSU supply to the fan. So, opened 'er up & sure enough the CPU fan wasn't running. Unfortunately yet again it's a chicken or egg scenario, as it could easily be the fan, the PSU, the mobo....

Computers can be such a pain in the arse at times

Yes my PSU died a few months ago - luckily i have a three year warranty, although i'm not sure it was even a year old at that point. Are we seeing a pattern here?

I hate them too. They really suck up creativity.

These days I just pay up the extra cash for primo parts, it seems to cause less stress over the course of the computer's life. Of course it's not fun forking out £80-120 (or more) for a PSU or £200+ for 1GB of matched Corsair RAM but IMHO it's worth it.

Well it's back up & running and seems stable for now. I replaced the CPU fan & PSU at the same time by ripping almost new ones out of another machine that's less important. Unfortunately, they're not great quality, so that's something that we'll need to invest in next month or as soon as we can afford it, as the pattern emerging is one of problems with OEM/unbranded PSUs by the looks of it. Time to look at some nice silent ones

If you ever suspect your memory again, save yourself some time & trouble and run memtest over it:

http://www.memtest86.com/

It's excellent.

That looks superb,

cheers