Hi everyone,
My computer has a bit of history but I will try keep it as brief as possible. I basically started with a small crappy HP Pavillion maybe 5 years ago... As I got older and got into gaming I decided I'd start upgrading it and learning as I went.
The first thing I changed the was the graphics card as well as a new power supply.
I put in a 650 watt Antec Power Supply. The card was an EVGA FTW Edition 1.5GB GTX 285. A beast considering what I was putting it in. Basically, it barely fit, was horribly jammed into the mobo and I needed to leave the side of the case off otherwise it wouldn't have fit.
My problems started a 6 months later, Basically I would turn on my computer and it there would be extreme graphical distortion on the screen. I would force a reboot a few mins later and it would run fine. (It was as if it needed to warm up). This got to the point over a period of a year or so where it was eventually happening everyday. So the routine was let it warm up, reboot once or twice and we were good to go.
Eventually I decided it must be the heat, so about a year after buying the card I bought an RA Ikonik Case, with 13 fans, etc. Plenty of room. I built it all and it worked fine but the problem very soon came back to the same extent. This lasted about 6 months before I decided the problem was a newer card, sitting a much older mobo, ram etc.
So (a year ago) I decided to upgrade the ram, motherboard and processor.
This was the final build,
Intel Core i7-950
Intel Mother Board...X58 I believe.
8GB DDR3 Ram
OverClocked FTW Edition 1.5GB GTX 285
650w Antec Supply
Ikonik RA Sim Case
The problem continued, within 6 months it got to the point where the distortion wouldn't go away no matter how many times I rebooted. I dusted the insides, reconnected the card to the mobo, it wasn't the monitor either. My assumption was that the card is simply dead from being in the tiny box and jammed on such an older mobo for so long.
I made an impulse decision and bought a new gaming beast pre-built. I then left this aside and decided I'd soon sell it without the card since most of the hardware was quite new. It sat in my room for 6 months until just the other day when I decided to give it a test run, put a new cheap card in it and sell it...
But guess what? It appears to be working fine...But now I am stressed, I don't want to sell it if it will soon have problems again. So basically my question is what should I do? What tests should I run? I tried a few tests online and the graphics seem to have no problems 3d Fur being the graphics test I did...
Any advice is appreciated, sorry for the text wall. If any more information is needed please let me know.
My computer has a bit of history but I will try keep it as brief as possible. I basically started with a small crappy HP Pavillion maybe 5 years ago... As I got older and got into gaming I decided I'd start upgrading it and learning as I went.
The first thing I changed the was the graphics card as well as a new power supply.
I put in a 650 watt Antec Power Supply. The card was an EVGA FTW Edition 1.5GB GTX 285. A beast considering what I was putting it in. Basically, it barely fit, was horribly jammed into the mobo and I needed to leave the side of the case off otherwise it wouldn't have fit.
My problems started a 6 months later, Basically I would turn on my computer and it there would be extreme graphical distortion on the screen. I would force a reboot a few mins later and it would run fine. (It was as if it needed to warm up). This got to the point over a period of a year or so where it was eventually happening everyday. So the routine was let it warm up, reboot once or twice and we were good to go.
Eventually I decided it must be the heat, so about a year after buying the card I bought an RA Ikonik Case, with 13 fans, etc. Plenty of room. I built it all and it worked fine but the problem very soon came back to the same extent. This lasted about 6 months before I decided the problem was a newer card, sitting a much older mobo, ram etc.
So (a year ago) I decided to upgrade the ram, motherboard and processor.
This was the final build,
Intel Core i7-950
Intel Mother Board...X58 I believe.
8GB DDR3 Ram
OverClocked FTW Edition 1.5GB GTX 285
650w Antec Supply
Ikonik RA Sim Case
The problem continued, within 6 months it got to the point where the distortion wouldn't go away no matter how many times I rebooted. I dusted the insides, reconnected the card to the mobo, it wasn't the monitor either. My assumption was that the card is simply dead from being in the tiny box and jammed on such an older mobo for so long.
I made an impulse decision and bought a new gaming beast pre-built. I then left this aside and decided I'd soon sell it without the card since most of the hardware was quite new. It sat in my room for 6 months until just the other day when I decided to give it a test run, put a new cheap card in it and sell it...
But guess what? It appears to be working fine...But now I am stressed, I don't want to sell it if it will soon have problems again. So basically my question is what should I do? What tests should I run? I tried a few tests online and the graphics seem to have no problems 3d Fur being the graphics test I did...
Any advice is appreciated, sorry for the text wall. If any more information is needed please let me know.
