Also dont go cheap on your PSU. Stick to the high quality product like the Seasonic 560W 80+ gold. Those things are rock solid, you don't want to skimp on that part. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4217/seasonic-xseries-560w/1
So this is how it went today. This morning I removed 2 of the GPUs and 1 of the RAM, pulled out the battery from the mobo, waited 30 seconds and reinserted the battery. I powered on the PC and it worked fine. Following this, I switched it off, inserted the 2 GPUs and the second RAM and booted it up again. All worked like clockwork. The temp. was stable at 50C and I used it for a good 6 hours. When I came back after a few hours, it had shut down and the same issue arose. I switched it off and on again. It powered up and sounded 3 short beeps (3/4 times) and failed to boot up (same as yesterday). So far, I have come to this conclusion. The temp. and cooling seems to be ok (in contrast to yesterday) and are not the problem. The problem only occurs when the system shuts down. I'm not too sure which way to go, but I will try and diagnose the RAM in the morning to see if that is the issue. Everything else seems to work fine. Maybe even the RAM is ok, but instead it's something else that is the cause whilst rebooting. Any and all help appreciated at this point. Thanks
I spent the last week laying around the house fighting some kind of cold/flu. I was surprised at the last post on this thread when I finally got to my computers. What's the status of the "Son of Sam" now, have you derived any new conclusions? Sam, you may need to update the bios to get fully functional I believe this was Tiki's point. As far as I can tell the three beeps seem to point towards RAM issues. But I haven't actually found a beep code chart for the MoBo. That said, you may try one stick of RAM and see if the issue persists,,,, then try the other (single) stick . Being the Mac Man that you are :eek: I have to ask if the computer actually shuts down or is it in hibernation/sleep mode. I did read "some-things" about waking from PCIe issues and settings for such (in the bios). Although I don't understand what that exactly means, others may be able to elaborate on that. But they described issues similar to yours with RAM,displays and boot-ups.
WF, hope you're feeling better now. In regards to "The Son of Sam", I tried out the RAM by swapping them out and trying each with both the slots. The RAM AND slots seem to be working fine. This is how things seem to be working for now. If I put the PC to sleep (manually or otherwise), it will give me the 3 beeps (which indicate RAM issues via the ASUS beep codes). However, if I shut it off, then it will boot up perfectly fine. What I have done for the moment is to leave it switched on. I have put the sleep function to "NEVER", so the only thing that shuts of is the monitors. I think updating the BIOS might be the fix, but I haven't gotten round to doing that yet. I've never done it before, so it will require a little reading. In regards to the speed, it is lightning fast AND i'm using a wireless USB rather than hardwired ethernet. I'm getting a constant 9-10 Mbps (which is what I'm subscribed for) with no lag
The wireless N standard is pretty good. The speed on all my computers are in par with as if they were hard-wired into the router ports.
Boli, in my early days of building this box, you had encouraged me to go this route, but I kept on thinking that surely this would not do the job. The same was the advice with the video cards. They all function beyond my expectations. I love the fact that you are a minimalist! Thanks for the great advice
I am a minimalist???? Ha! I have been called a lot of names before but this will be the first! Are you sure? Have you seen the picture of my trading room? If not I can post a link... I just like to spend money where it matters. e.g. I don't like to spend money on buying fancy multi-mon mounts. I created my own cheap solutions.
Multi-core processor blues... Doesn't seem to matter how many cores you have. If your trading app is not designed to take advantage of that, it will tax one core to death and your charting is still lagging. Such was observed around Fed's announcement today. TradeStation. Only one core was used. Hyperthreads are dead.
In comparison, when you run the Passmark Performance Test software (how your processor is ranked), it uses all available cores and hyperthreads to do the test. It feels like buying a 8 cylinder engine car but only 1 cyclinder can be fired.