Hard crashes, instability, please help find the cause

[Cogitation]

Please, if you're a technician/professional/skilled user, take a look at my story, as I've exhausted what I can figure out on my own. (Also, if I should be putting the post somewhere else, let me know.)

I built my own power machine about a year and a half ago, and I've done nothing but suffer with it. I'll try to keep the description of the issues as brief as I can, but there's a lot of backstory/specific issues.

First, I'm an A+ certified tech, and I built the machine myself, so I've done a bunch of investigating already myself. I've become convinced the motherboard has to be the problem, but I've been burned multiple times, and I'd really like to be certain before I shell out *another* 200+ bucks.

Here's the system specs:

Gigabyte DQ6-X48 mobo
2 x 2 GB OCZ Platinum PC3-10666 ram (ie DDR3-1333) back at stock speeds
Intel Core 2 QX9450 2.66Ghz, was at 3.40Ghz, back at stock
Radeon 4870 1GB video card (was previously nVidia 9600GT)
Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro soundcard
2 x 750 GB WD Sata II drives in Raid 1 (part of the story)
1 x 250 GB IDE WD
1 x 200 GB IDE Seagate
LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD reader/dvd burner
2nd DVD/CD burner
Corsair TX650W power supply
CoolerMaster Cosmos Case with 4x 120mm fans

Legit Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3 with all updates
Latest update of DirectX 9 installed

Tests I've done on my own:

CPU Burn-in x 4 - Passed with flying colors
MemTest86 - Passed all tests twice
Video card stability test - immediate failure with both ATi and nVidia cards
HDD Health on drives - All drives in excellent condition

Now to the problems. First, the two 750GB drives used to be set up in a raid 0 array, instead of raid 1. Several months back, my machine did a hard freeze in the middle of watching a blu-ray movie, I heard the pc speaker beep once, and rebooting the machine resulted in the raid 0 array showing failed.

I thought one of the hard drives had failed. After testing in another machine, I learned both hard drives still worked fine, and HDD health reported them as in excellent condition.

I tried reinstalling windows on the drives in raid 0, using the raid boot disc on the Intel ICHR9 raid controller, and windows blue screened during installation (more than once.) Using the gigabyte raid controller (the motherboard has two sata/raid controllers, intel having 6 ports and gigabyte having 2) which is exactly what I was using before with the drives when the raid 0 array failed, I was able to install windows without problems, resulting in the current raid 1 setup.

Since then I've had repeated crashes, identical to the first (always under load on the hard drives from uTorrent, or load on the video card from a game or something), where my system will hard freeze, sometimes with a beep and sometimes not. These last few crashes resulted in blue screens, with windows reporting a problem with either a non-specific device driver error, or the latest time, a display driver error.

Because I'd also been having some non-fatal, but noticeable issues with with video (specifically, any time I run a game in 1600x1200 resolution (and only this resolution) I will get green speckles that flicker along the edges of polygons and spread over the screen. Note that running a game in 1920 x 1200 (or any other) resolution does *not* result in this speckling, to my great confusion.

But even still, with the device driver/display driver blue screen messages, the in-game distortion and the fact that I got the 9600GT card cheaply and the PCB on it is a little warped, I became convinced it was the video card. So I figured I'd fix the problem and upgrade the card at the same time, getting the Radeon 4870. I uninstalled the old drivers, used driver cleaner in safe mode to clean everything out and then installed the ati card, downloading catalyst 9.3 drivers, not using the ones on the disc.

Playing a game in 1600x1200 resolution *still* results in the exact same green speckling all over the screen, (while 1920x1200 still does not) and it still freezes quickly, even playing something as old as Diablo II. The only positive, is that Ati's VPU recover seems to help to some degree, because now when it crashes, I don't have to reboot, the driver just resets.

So, if both video cards produce the same results, that means it's the motherboard, right? I can't see what else it could be, save maybe the power supply, but though the radeon 4870 draws serious watts, the 9600GT didn't, and this was happening well before the radeon was installed. 650W (and it was not a cheap model) should be plenty for a single video card, yes?

What I want badly to know is whether I can be certain it's a bad motherboard, because if that's the case, I'll just replace it and rebuild the machine (even though I really loved the features the board offered and you can't even buy a DQ6-X48 anymore.)

Is there something I'm missing though? If I replace the motherboard for $240 for like an Asus X48 model and I still have problems I might go bald at an exceptionally young age.

[Joshua]

If the data on a hard drive has even the most minimal value to you, then it is imperative that you do not open the drive. Data recovery companies often get calls or e-mails from people who felt they had the right equipment and know-how to perform something as serious as a head replacement. Once they've removed the hard drive's protective case, more often than not, the damage is irreparable.

Working with the internal components of a hard drive requires at least a Class-100 clean room. A clean room does not mean a room that you just vacuumed and dusted (believe it or not people say that to us all the time). A clean room is a special work area in which air quality is heavily controlled and it is vital to hard drives during the manufacturing or assembly process. The air in the room is regulated in term of air particles, temperature and humidity. A Class-100 clean room means there exists no more than 100 particles that are larger than 0.5 microns in one cubic foot of air. Opening a hard drive in air meeting anything less than the standard listed above will mean certain death for your hard drive and any data contained therein.

[Cogitation]

What are you talking about? I don't have failed hard drives... and I'm not attempting data recovery.

Someone, please... I know my post is long, but I really need help!

My machine is crashing, in windows... I don't know if it's the motherboard, or maybe something else, like the power supply.

[gygabite]

Your doubt may be right. Motherboard might be the problem. Although with so much explanation, I am really confused over exactly which hardware has problem and the ultimate doubt is on motherboard only. But before buying new, you should consult a hardware specialist because I think this problem needs to be analyzed practically. Then only one can comment with sure.

[Cogitation]

Okay, I appreciate your comments gygabite... is there an expert on the board though maybe, who could take a look and tell me what they think?

I think it has to be the motherboard... everything pointed to a display driver error/hardware problem...so I replaced the video card, and completely new (and different brand!) drivers were installed with the new card, and zero problems were fixed.

Could it be the power supply though? Or the sound card, despite nothing seeming to indicate that? I've spent weeks of time on this over the last year, and I've never been able to find the real cause.

[Cogitation]

MAJOR UPDATE:

Upon the advice of someone on another board, I decided to try to isolate potential problems. His advice was to strip everything non-essential out of the system and attempt to get it running with the bare minimum.

I planned to follow that advice, but I thought a better initial test would be leaving everything in, but installing XP on one of the IDE drives, and first, seeing if the video card stability test crash/failure still occurred. If it did, then strip stuff out, to try to see if it was the power supply, and not just previous xp install, or the raid 1 array.

XP installed fine on the 200GB IDE drive. No hitches installing motherboard drivers, avast, catalyst drivers, .net 2.0, sound card drivers and firefox, in that order.

Trying video card stability test produced different results. This time, upon starting the test, an identical several second system freeze immediately occurred, with a motherboard beep almost immediately. Just as quickly as it froze, the test suddenly jumped from 0:02 seconds completed to 0:14 seconds completed, and started running. I let the test go on for 10 minutes, then stopped it. During the run, nothing seemed abnormal, and checking the video card temps in catalyst control center resulted in average, even low temperatures with low fan spin speed throughout.

So still something definitely up, but improvement. Don't know if it was just chance that it ran better this time, or the difference of new xp install/IDE instead of raid.

Then I decided to think I was getting clever, and thought I would try to overclock the system to the same levels as it was completely stable at initially, to try to test the power supply. System booted, got to the windows startup screen and froze. Shutting down, waiting and restarting resulted in the PC failing to get into bios, with no beeps. It automatically shut down and tried again before I realized it hadn't booted and hit the switch on the back of the PSU.

At this point, I disconnected all non-essential things, including both optical drives, removed the sound card and disconnected the raid hard drives. Turned system on, failed to boot into bios. Turned off, waited, turned on, got into the bios, reset to stock speeds, let it reboot, and got into windows, whether coincidentally or as a result, without trouble this time.

Despite my earlier thinking, this does seem to scream "Power supply!" in a rather loud, hard to ignore voice. General agreement? Is it just my stubborn thinking/worrying that makes think there's still a possibility it's a motherboard issue, or potentially both the motherboard and the power supply, with different problems for each?

[Charlton]

The DQ6-X48 Board has been identified as to be the worst board ever made by gigabyte corp. One of my friend had same issue with the same board.
Power on, boot, post, windows is loading and finally it restarts. The cycles vary from one to as much as six restarts before it overcomes the Windows loading screen.

At first I believed it was a problem with the HDD. But after trial and error with as much as two other drives, I still encountered the dreaded restart cycle.

He is not happy with Gigabyte.