It may seem weird to blame a motherboard for in-game random crashes and reboots, but after intensive testing I have narrowed it down to just that. What happens is, when I'm playing ANY 3D game, it randomly (usually between 5-30 mins) crashes my game either to desktop or restarts my computer without any warning, and follows up with a windows error report. This happens in all of the games I play including: Doom 3. Battlefield 1942, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 2004 & 2005, Everquest 2, Need for Speed Underground 2, and more.
Why I think it's the motherboard:
I went to my friends house who has the exact same MB and CPU as me (we bought it from same place, same time). I unplugged ALL unnecessary hardware leaving behind the MB, CPU, vid card, ram and HDD (on both computers). Then I took my CPU, RAM, vid card and HDD and plugged it into my friends motherboard while his stuff was plugged into my motherboard. I ran his computer with my stuff and within a 2 hour span of playing intense games crashed only once On the other hand, my motherboard with his stuff has crashed 9 times within that same 2 hour span, playing the same games.
I have done MANY other experiments to test other components of the computer with no avail. My last test was the one mentioned above which proves the motherboard is either faulty or damaged (which couldn't be the case as I am an expert in handling computer hardware).
Why it's not the motherboard:
After all that testing, I sent it back to ASUS for repairs. Got it back 25 days later and the same thing keeps happening. Did it ever piss me off! So I did more tests, and more experiments. Two broken knuckles and three hair transplants later, I narrowed it down to either the hard drive or the motherboard battery. I'll be testing those soon but before I go out to buy a new hard drive I wanna ask you guys.
One more thing I noticed is when I change settings in BIOS, it will save the settings at first, but after several shut-downs, restarts or crashes the settings have been reset to default.
I'll be posting updates here as soon as I test them...and here are my specs...
P4 3.2Ghz 800fsb
ASUS P4S800D-E
3 x 512MB PC2100
IBM 80GB 7200rpm 8MB cache
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro (sapphire)
Plextor DVDR PX-708A
Why I think it's the motherboard:
I went to my friends house who has the exact same MB and CPU as me (we bought it from same place, same time). I unplugged ALL unnecessary hardware leaving behind the MB, CPU, vid card, ram and HDD (on both computers). Then I took my CPU, RAM, vid card and HDD and plugged it into my friends motherboard while his stuff was plugged into my motherboard. I ran his computer with my stuff and within a 2 hour span of playing intense games crashed only once On the other hand, my motherboard with his stuff has crashed 9 times within that same 2 hour span, playing the same games.
I have done MANY other experiments to test other components of the computer with no avail. My last test was the one mentioned above which proves the motherboard is either faulty or damaged (which couldn't be the case as I am an expert in handling computer hardware).
Why it's not the motherboard:
After all that testing, I sent it back to ASUS for repairs. Got it back 25 days later and the same thing keeps happening. Did it ever piss me off! So I did more tests, and more experiments. Two broken knuckles and three hair transplants later, I narrowed it down to either the hard drive or the motherboard battery. I'll be testing those soon but before I go out to buy a new hard drive I wanna ask you guys.
One more thing I noticed is when I change settings in BIOS, it will save the settings at first, but after several shut-downs, restarts or crashes the settings have been reset to default.
I'll be posting updates here as soon as I test them...and here are my specs...
P4 3.2Ghz 800fsb
ASUS P4S800D-E
3 x 512MB PC2100
IBM 80GB 7200rpm 8MB cache
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro (sapphire)
Plextor DVDR PX-708A
