[NBLUG/talk] The dreaded random crashes!!!

[Lincoln Peters]

On Thursday 08 February 2007 19:18, Troy Arnold wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 04:16:24PM -0800, Bob Blick wrote:
> > Also, is this the same machine you mentioned the other day running with
> > all the PCI slots filled? You could have too much loading on the PCI bus
> > and get data errors randomly that way.
>
> This brings up a red flag for me.  What kind of power supply do you have in
> this box ?  I'd also make sure your various fans are spinning, esp. if your
> video card has one.

I can't remember for sure, but I think it's 450 watts.  I used to have a 
600-watt power supply, but one of the fans failed, and since I wasn't at all 
coming close to using its full capacity (I checked a while back by hooking up 
an ammeter between it and the surge protector), I decided to save some money 
and go for a upper-midrange replacement instead.  (I probably could have 
replaced the fan, but my spare time for such things is increasingly scarce 
during the regular semester.)

I actually have two video cards (for a dual-monitor setup).  Neither video 
card has a fan, but the tower has 8 fans, and none of the exhaust fans seem 
to be blowing air that's noticeably hotter than the air outside the tower (a 
radical departure from my previous tower, which ran hot and was very noisy).

I haven't checked the CPU fan, but if it were not spinning, I doubt I'd be 
able to type this e-mail right now.


-- 
Lincoln Peters		<sampln at sbcglobal.net>

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side?  And hain't that a big
enough majority in any town?
		-- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"