I've been watching this thread for months, and in December I bit the bullet and built a new rig around the S3 (no D). I've recently started having problems, so time to join up. Let me know if I should post this elsewhere.
Problems:
- previous HDD had the entire boot partition corrupted (tho the data was mostly intact - I recovered the important stuff with a freeware program)
- occasional lockups (several while running installers; others while loading AutoPlay - now off; and a few random) - at least some of the time, the HDD activity light has remained lit just like the poster directly above me
- random noise through my sound card during HDD activity (not all HDD activity, only sometimes)
Current rig:
Case: MozartTX (plenty of room and cooling, temps are good)
Mobo: 965P-S3 (not D)
CPU: E6600
HSF: Scythe Ninja revB, 120mm fan
RAM: 2GB Ballistix
PSU: OCZ GameXtream 700W
Video: eVGA 8800GTX
Audio: SB Audigy 2ZS
Drives: Lite-On DVD-RW connected via IDE; Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA (currently on Intel's SATA controller)
OS: XP Pro, up to date
Nothing is overclocked or overvolted (aside from the USB polling rate kicked up to 500Hz, but I encountered these problems at the default polling rate as well).
Diagnosis so far:
RAM is memtest stable
CPU is Orthos stable
PSU is stable on all rails (tested repeatedly via digital multimeter)
What precipitated all of this was an event maybe a week and a half ago, when I got squealing static through my speakers and my computer rebooted (in the middle of a UT 2k4 game; fyi, I was running my old Radeon X850XT at that point). Everything seemed slower after that crash - bootup took longer, data access seemed slower - but all of my Sandra benches were exactly as expected for my hardware. Weird. I also noticed at that point that I had massive fragmentation on my boot volume (but not my application or data partitions). I went through several defrag cycles and kept a worried eye on the rig, especially as I started having random (but rare) crackling through my speakers and my mic (clanmates could hear it over TeamSpeak even when I couldn't). After a few days I d/led Seagate's HDD diagnostics and ran them on the drive; I know HDD diagnostics aren't really definitive, but I figured something was better than nothing. SeaTools (silly name) found no problems, but then my rig started repeatedly rebooting. (It would POST, run down the IRQ screen, then reboot upon finding no bootable HDD.) Voila, I had no more boot partition.
I ordered a new 320GB 7200.10 - heck, I eventually wanted two anyway - and fired up my old IDE drive to check out the broken install. Partitions 2 and 3 were fine, but the boot partition was unrecognized by Windows; I had to reconstruct some of the directory information with PC Inspector to get any data off. (There wasn't much I needed, since it was just the boot partition, just stuff like my Firefox folder and Gothic 3 savegames.)
So...new HDD arrived on Thursday. I've now had to reinstall Windows to the new one 4 times, due to errors (first with Giga's driver installer, then with Creative's driver installer) that hosed the system. (Some of the errors were repairable, I'm sure, but I figured it was better to just reinstall clean since the install was only an hour or so old anyway.) I actually had to switch to Gigabyte's SATA controller (rather than the Intel SATA controller) just to get the Creative drivers to finally work. Since Sunday morning, when I finally got XP Pro up and running, I've had several (apparently random) freezes, including but not limited to optical drive access.
This is the fourth or fifth rig I've built, and it's the only time I've had continued problems after the initial shake-out period. I guess I had it coming. :lol: But my big concern right now is that maybe SeaTools were right and there's nothing wrong with my first HDD; maybe the problem lies with the mobo. Some of the symptoms suggest heat issues, but the HSF and case are both rock-solid; my temps are all fine.
Is there any precedent for such problems on these mobos? (I haven't found anything via Google or searching here, but I'll admit I've only slogged through about half this thread.) Any suggestions on narrowing this down? <i>Something</i> clearly needs to be RMAd, but right now it's tough for me to figure out what.