NZFF

FS2004 killed my PC

I had been downloading and installing addons (like the Geographix 75m mesh and Auckland City and Ardmore Scenary packs) and was buzzing around the city (read: crashing while inverted into Sky Tower) and noticed that there seemed to be some issues with the Auckland City scenary (namely the southern motorway being a bit screwed up.

Anyway, I wanted to see FS2004 in all its glory and cranked all the visual settings to Max. I was flying circuits around NZAR and then my machine reset itself... no big deal I thought, just couldnt handle the max settings... time to go to bed anyway, so I shut the machine down.

Next day after work, I went to start it up for some FS2004 action and my machine starts resetting itself left, right and centre...

Tried reseating the CPU/HSF, even WD40'd the chipset fan as I noticed it was spinning a bit sluggish and the system temp was up. Seemed to work OK, but after shutting down and restarting, it went mental again...

I think my mobo has died.

On the bright side, I now have a good reason to upgrade to a Athlon 64 X2 3800+, Geforce 7600GT etc.

Just hope the 'Financial Controller' doesnt notice the money I just spent getting a CH Flight Sim Yoke and Rudder Pedals combo from Ebay. Shipping from the US is !?@??# expensive!, Even surface parcel post was US$40 and I have to wait 4-6 weeks

i've noticed that too - i've often paid more in US shipping than for the item itself!

have you tried reseating the memory too? where abouts in the boot does it go mental?

where abouts in the boot does it go mental?

thats the problem... it's not in any particular place. Sometimes it makes POST and will even start loading XP (ie. Windows XP logo screen with the progess bar), then the BSOD flashes up for a split second and the machine reboots at which point it just seems to hang (ie. no video bios message, no bios screen etc)

other times it wont even make it past the bios screen to POST. I was even in the BIOS settings a couple of times and it did it then too. Which is why i dont think its RAM related, as I'm fairly sure the BIOS operates without using RAM.

So I figure its either something on the Mobo, the CPU or the PSU has given way. Although the times I made it into the BIOS, the reported voltages seemed fine. And the fact that it has actually made it into windows a couple of times and operated fine would seem to rule out the CPU.

So I'm really down to Mobo or PSU.

Unfortunately, socket 462 mobo's a bit scarce these days, and i'd rather not spend the $$$ just to test it and all our work PC's are HP desktops so they're all intel based so no luck there either.

As I'll need a new PSU either way, I might go grab a nice Enermax 535W Whisper II and see if that makes a difference.

Otherwise, I'll just build a new box from scratch and trademe the old bits and pieces.