unusual crashing

I'm still nervous with it. Just running it through some endurance tests now, but it's holding up.

It rendered a 3D scene for several hours and the CPU never got over 47 degrees C. All the RAM is running at 2100 right now, but I'm going to try OC'ing that and the CPU if it continues performing.

Again, thanks for all your help. And, yeah, who would have thought an optical drive could have done so much harm.

sadkkf wrote: Xaltar wrote: Thanks for letting us know what the problem turned out to be and as Wardog said, sorry it was literally the last thing left to try  I spoke too soon. After a few days of work, it crashed again. I got another error about not being able to save something to memory. Next, I couldn't delete something, getting an I/O error. Now, when booting, it gives the old BootMGR is missing and Disc Read Error. I'm going to try a fresh install of Windows, but I'm not holding my breath. EDIT: I would like to try a fresh install, but the BIOS no longer sees the SSD as a boot options. It DOES see it when going to the boot menu, however. Seriously, is this all a problem of the motherboard? What else would it be?

Sorry, but I have no idea what you meant by:

I would like to try a fresh install, but the BIOS no longer sees the SSD as a boot options. It DOES see it when going to the boot menu, however.

It sees the SSD, "... when going to the boot menu..."?

If you are installing Windows again, why do you need to have the target OS drive listed in the boot order? You boot from your installation media, not the target OS drive, right?

When you install Windows again, if you do, ONLY have the OS drive connected (or powered up) to the board.

Let's go back to your first post in this thread. What happened? The PC just stopped working suddenly.

You got to the point where you began replacing parts, including the board, memory, and CPU. Now you have a more powerful power supply. That worked for you, until this latest problem.

My theory was the initial problem was a catastrophic failure of some kind, that we now are 90% sure took out the board, CPU, memory, etc. That is normally caused by a power source problem. Examples are a power surge through the AC lines, lightning strike, or the PSU itself failing, but its own built in safety features did not activate, or were unable to prevent it from sending a damaging voltage to all the components in the PC. That is, all of them.

Your 850 EVO was in the PC when it had the main disaster, right? While it only uses the +5V rail for power, it is not immune to damage from a power problem.

Assuming all the damage you suffered was caused by a power supply related problem, personally I would not trust ANY of the components that were in the PC at that time. In that case I would assume all parts are guilty until proved innocent of being damaged. Sorry to say that is.

I hope the EVO is not damaged, but I would not assume it was untouched by your disaster.

Try installing Windows again, and select a Custom installation. That will display the 850 EVO, which is one test to see if it is functioning. It will have existing partitions on it, which you should delete before proceeding with the installation. That is also a test of the SSD, will it interact and function normally.

When you finish the installation, and if it does not seem to work right, that is yet another clue the SSD was damaged. If you have another PC you can put the EVO in (or do this before installing Windows again), do that and run the Samsung SSD Magician software on that PC, and see how it reacts to it. Does it read its attributes fine, does the SMART data appear normal, can you run a Samsung benchmark test on it with normal results?

Windows installed successfully and is now checking for updates. I will probably let that go overnight.

I have unplugged all other drives so Windows found this right away. There were no partitions, but I reformatted it before installing.

Also, running Samsung SSD Magician, it tells me the drive is OK. Authenticated and has the newest firmware. SMART data looks fine.

Hey, everyone--

Just thought I'd wrap this up for anyone who's interested.

After totally giving up on this, I contacted tech support to see about an RMA.

We exchanged several emails (one of which seemed vaguely offensive) and I eventually discovered having my bootable drive plugged into SATA3_0 was the problem. Apparently, single drives need to be plugged into S_SATA3 ports. SATA3 ports are reserved for RAID drives.

Can anyone please tell me where in the f*ing manual it explains this? All I've seen is the SATA3 ports are RAID compatible, not for RAID use only. I've looked on other forums (one of which actually said it didn't matter where single drives were connected) and no one has ever said this.

Sorry, but I'm really angry about this. I've spent nearly a year battling this as well as hundreds of dollars replacing parts that didn't need replacing all because the manual is so poorly written.

And to add further insult, the new PSU I purchased came with a rebate that was denied because the rebate company claims I never submitted the UPC, which I did.

I think if this computer fails again, I'm melting it down and starting over.

But, again, I do thank everyone for offering their suggestions.


Edited by sadkkf - 02 Dec 2016 at 4:52am