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Building a wooden case pc


ithel

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I did that last night, Baddcog (yes, the posts are in that corner, thankfully) and things seem mostly okay. I installed Windows 7 and the motherboard drivers. The one issue (and it's a bad one) I've been having is the display driver failing within 10-15 seconds of Windows coming up (seems to recover the first couple times in a row before going to seemingly permanent blackscreen). I've uninstalled and installed six nvidia drivers so far and still get these black screens (from 301.24, the latest beta driver all the way back to 275.33). It's perplexing. If I can't find a driver/bios solution, I may try the card in the other pci slot. But because this is a custom case, that will mean some disassembly! :) If that does the trick, then I'll RMA the motherboard.

 

If anyone has other suggestions, please teach me. It's a Gigabyte GTX 560 TI with 1gb memory on it. The motherboard is an MSI Z77MA-G45.

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From my recent build issues I have learned to always breadboard first.

 

ie:

 

Build the system up on a table. Put it on cardboard so it doesn't get static. If everything runs fine then assemble.

 

I wonder, are you using offsets or anything on your mobo? I don't think you want the mobo actually touching the wood. Don't know if that matters much, but I'd only want it touching spacers under the bolt holes, not anywhere else.

 

Other than that (the typical questions):

 

All new stuff right? So untested before. Do you have another card to put in and test?

 

Is your card in firmly?

 

Does your card need power cords? Are they plugged in? good?

 

 

 

Sounds like it works fine with the onboard graphics. So I'd say it's either the card, the pcie slot (test with another card), power to the card... I'd think drivers would be less of a bet, especially if you've tried several.

 

---------

You haven't over clocked yet i imagine.

 

 

Idk, I'm no pro, those are the things that come to mind.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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The motherboard is offset from the case wall by three strips of wood. It's actually offset from the strips by a few millimeters as well. You're absolutely right about the "breadboard" concept. I really should have done that, but case-construction zeal overcame me. :) Yes, it's all new stuff. I don't have another card to test. I have double-checked the seating of the card and it does seem pretty firmly lodged. However, I don't recall any sort of "click" like you get when you seat ram. The card does need power cords, two of them, actually. Those, too, seem firmly in place, but it won't hurt to unplug them and set them again.

 

No, no overclocking. I've never done it and don't really quite understand it at this point. Tomorrow afternoon, I'll take the top off the case and move the card to the other pci slot (both are x16 pci-e slots, so it shouldn't matter....just means I'll have to mount the optical drive somewhere else.) Of course if it does work fine in that slot, then that tells me the first slot is bad and I just need to get the MB replaced.

 

Thanks very much for your thoughts.

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Mmm, why do not you check the temperature of the system and video card? (using for example the program SpeedFan)

 

"The one issue (and it's a bad one) I've been having is the display driver failing within 10-15 seconds of Windows coming up (seems to recover the first couple times in a row before going to seemingly permanent blackscreen)."

 

The system isn't staying stable long enough for him to do anything with, by the sounds of it.

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The motherboard bios has a temperature gauge. The CPU reads 42-47c. The "system" reads a few degrees lower than that. The back isn't even on the case yet, so I'm quite certain this isn't a temperature thing.

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The motherboard bios has a temperature gauge. The CPU reads 42-47c. The "system" reads a few degrees lower than that. The back isn't even on the case yet, so I'm quite certain this isn't a temperature thing.

 

Yes, but the gpu temp?

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There isn't a separate reading for the gpu. But I think you're barking up the wrong tree. The computer has been off all day. I just plugged it in, turned it on, Win 7 pops up inside of 15 seconds. Blackscreen display driver error another 10 seconds later. 25 seconds of power just isn't going to overheat it, even if it were encased in 6" of insulation. :)

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Alright, I tested the card in the other pci-e slot. Same problem, although I noticed that it was able to recover from the failures a bit more frequently (still blacking out about every 10 seconds or so).

 

I double-checked the power connectors: snug and secure.

 

The mb bios utility has an overclock menu and a "green" menu. I haven't done any overclocking. But as I poked around in the bios, I noticed that under the green menu it reports a "GPU voltage" of 0.037v. Now I don't really understand what I am looking at, but that sounds like a low number. I'm not sure if that is even a live reading or some kind of proposed setting. It didn't appear to be a number that could be changed. Is that a correct/typical number?

 

I'm trying to find a local friend with a machine I can test the card in, to eliminate that possibility.

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A quick search of your mobo didn't produce any results for settings. But it Bios settings so it might be hard to find on the web.

 

It does seem low though I'm no expert. That's green so it should be lower.

 

One thing you can do is reset cmos. If your mobo doesn't have a switch you can probably jump it with a screwdriver. Unplug power, jump for 5-10 seconds. Or remove the CMOS battery for 5-10, jump the power switch with a screw driver (to clear residue energy), replace battery and see what happens.

 

(thats stuff i was told to go through when trying to get my Bios up and running... it amazes me that these new mobos have all these bios issues- my current one was set to use onboard video, but i don't have an HDMI cord, so I had to boot from my GPU, but it wouldn't detect until I changed it in Bios, so seeing Bios on screen... well what a pain.)

 

--------

Did your mobo not come with a manual? The last two I got had pretty in depth Bios menu manuals.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Aluminium is one of the most conductiest things that there are. Most aluminium isn't aluminium though - it's a sandwich of aluminium and aluminium oxide; the latter being a very good insulator. Temps may still be an issue, but it will be a small issue rather than a big one.

 

Even Aluminium oxide charts in around 30- Roughly 200x that of wood.

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Sorry, Echelon, I guess I forgot to post that before. It's a Rosewill Green Series 80+ RG630-12 (630watt, 12v single rail). It isn't modular. I think you'd suggested a different psu, and it happened to be a model I'd already ordered, but the vendor contacted me to say they had to put it on backorder as they ran out of stock. So I picked this as an alternative, in the same price-range.

 

Anyway, I think I have solved the problem. I found a thread on the Nvidia forums that mentioned an issue with some cards incorrectly throttling down voltage under Win7/Vista...but when a second monitor is hooked up, it forces the cord to go full performance. I am probably not being as precise as I should be. So I borrowed a monitor from a family member and hooked them both up to the card. Bingo....the display problems are gone. So I then tried going back to a single monitor and the problem returned within seconds of powering up, so I think that thread is on to something. Since I don't want a second monitor, one solution is to put a "dummy vga" in that second port on the card. It's actually a dvi port, but I have a dvi-vga adaptor. Basically, I will next try putting a 100ohm resister in the correct vga holes (following a guide I found online), and it will fool the card into detecting a load on that port and powering up to where it should be.

 

I'm just glad it doesn't appear to be a defective card or motherboard. I do need to install something that places a heavy graphics demand on the card to make sure. This means I have to remember how to get steam and doom3 on this machine so I can get TDM back up. I'm very excited about catching up on missions and jumping back into the creation of my own.

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Alright, tested with a 100 ohm resistor shoved in two particular holes of the VGA adapter and it works perfectly. As a test, I went into the Nvidia control panel and see that both monitors are displayed (though one doesn't exist). The moment I uncheck the non-existent monitor, I get a display error and recovery. When I rechecked it, the system is stable again. STRANGE!

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Wow, I would have never guessed that would be a problem.

 

To all the AMD naysayers and Nvidia luvers out there ;P :D

 

Nvidia has GOT to have a fix for that. It's nice to have the ability to run multiple monitors but being forced to, that's bad.

 

Good to see you've got it pinned down though. (And it's not the case!)

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Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Totally agree, there definitely needs to be a fix from Nvidia for this! It's about the nuttiest problem/solution I've ever heard of, and there is no way that I'd have figured it out without scouring dozens of threads on various forums.

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