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When booting up, PC will restart after few seconds, and then work fine

Last response: in Systems
December 1, 2010 5:50:06 AM

Hey, not sure if this is the right forum, but anyway:


Quick system specs:

i7 920 running at ~2.66Ghz (not overclocked)

Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme mobo

9GB of OCZ DDR3 RAM (this was recently upgraded. I had 3x1GB and recently added 3x2GB too)

800w PSU

5 HDDS (these were recently upgraded. I was running just one 1TB HDD but when I upgraded my RAM I added some more. Now I have one 1TB, one 500GB, one 2TB, and two 1TBs running in a RAID0 array.)


Okay so this has happened every time since I added the new RAM and HDDs. When I boot my PC up from a full shutdown, it will turn on for maybe two seconds (it powers up, the fans all start spinning round etc) and then it will turn itself off and stay off for about 4-5 seconds. Then it will turn back on again, and work perfectly fine from then on. This doesn't happen if I use sleep mode though - if i put it to sleep and bring it out of sleep, it turns on just fine.

As this happened when I upgraded my RAM and HDDs it obviously has something to do with that. I don't know too much about this sort of thing, but think it may be the PSU as perhaps it can't handle that much power going through it at once. But as it works fine after the little restart, I'm not too sure.

So has anyone encountered anything like this before?

Thanks in advance!
a b B Homebuilt system
December 1, 2010 6:59:33 AM

It's happening most probably to flush the RAMs which are of different capacities and maybe timings.
That's my conclusion though.
You can try removing all the 1Gb sticks and just leave the 3X2Gb sticks in and try to restart a few times and then post an update.
December 1, 2010 9:31:16 AM

Okay thanks, I'll have a try of that and give you an update. So flushing the RAM isn't actually anything bad though I assume?
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December 1, 2010 10:07:09 AM

Okay that didn't make any difference. I just had the 3x2GB in there and it still did the same thing.

On boot, all the HDDs start up as well, and then obviously stop and come back on. Surely this isn't good for them?

I should also mention that one (or maybe two) of my new HDDs are making a clicking sound every so often. I think it may be the two 1TBs in the RAID. Now I know that clicking is usually the reader hitting the 'stop' when I can't find what it's looking for - would this actually have something to do with the problem I've got here?

The clicking sound sometimes happens when I'm accessing the HDDs for the first time in a while, but doesn't happen every time. The two HDDs in the RAID are for video editing and all the footage and files on there is backed up a number of times anyway, so it's not gonna be a huge problem if they die, but what are the chances of them suddenly not working in the near future? And the chances that they're causing the problem?

The clicking sound is usually just one or two clicks, and nothing more by the way.
a b B Homebuilt system
December 1, 2010 12:05:53 PM

The clicking sound is really bad from my experience. It's an indicator that one or x number of HDD making that sound are/is going to fail soon.
It also has that problem if the power is dropping all of a sudden......
Tell me after you removed the 3X1GB sticks from your mobo, did you replace the 3X2GB RAMS in the right slots on the mobo??
Cos it's not like we can go on populating and un-populating RAMs in anyway we wish.
The Mobo manual will have the exact placement for the RAMs...
Usually it's A1B1C1 with the same kind and if only 3
Other wise it's A1B1C1 with all the same types and A2B2C2 with all the same type but different capacity RAMs..... although we never advise this..... usually all the slots should be populated with the same type models make and capacity of RAM, exceptions are made.
Check a few BIOS setting and if you're not sure, reset the BIOS to default and then reboot..
Will wait for an update, also better install a HDD checking software..... like CrystalDiskInfo and make sure the drives are healthy....
Will wait for a feedback....
December 1, 2010 4:44:18 PM

I think the 3x2GB sticks are in the right slots. They're in the slots the mobo manual says to use when only using three sticks, and so the 1GBs are in the remaining three slots.

I've downloaded CrystalDiskInfo, but it doesn't show my RAID array in there. Would it usually show it, or is that normal? There's a lot of data in there that I don't understand, but my other three HDDs all says "Good" for the health status.
December 23, 2010 4:48:43 AM

So just to let you guys know - I underclocked my RAM a bit (as my 3x1gb were slightly overclcocked to match the 3x2gb), and now there power-up problem has gone.

I presume it's the psu that is causing the problem, as i did a number of memtests and there were no errors coming up there. The psu probably just can't handle it, although it is an 800w (but it's fairly old now, and was quite cheap.) Guess i'm gonna have to buy a 1kw one in january..