depending on what it was. My dualie just had memory that was too cheap and died a few months ago. A better quality of memory with a good heat shield for 24/7 computing solved that problem, and it is back among the living.

It's definitely not a memory module problem as far as I can tell, but I'm pretty sure it is memory related. I've got six 1GB sticks of Crucial Ballistix 1066MHz DDR2 kicking around in total, which gives me two spares. It's high-quality stuff, and no matter what combination I put in the machine, ranging from 1 stick to 4 in various combinations, the machine is still unstable. It'll run for a bit, and then just blue-screen with memory errors. I even tried upping the memory controller's voltage a notch, but that didn't help either. So... maybe a dry solder joint somewhere in a memory-related section of the motherboard?

If the machine is overclocked too high, it will do that strange stuff. What happens if you back off to stock mem voltage and clock speed? I also had a machine overclock fine in the winter, but the summer room temperature was a bit too hot for it without overcooling the whole house, so I had to back off.

Yes, if memory dies, it tends not even to boot up.

very possibly. ... blow the dust out??? ... get a better fan?
The dualie has one of those big Zalman fans in there, not the little dinky CPU fan. Add a case fan in addition to the power supply fan, also a good idea. They are very cheap, and will drop the temp a few degrees.

tough to prove ... let's rule out some of the simple stuff first.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

10/27/09 0:068:08:31:13 168,940 281

Statistics Date/Total Run Time/Points/Results
____________(y:d:h:m:s)_Generated_Returned


daily run time, approximately top 50 vulture days in run time order, 70 days, 15 hours, 31 minutes or more through Thursday, October 22, 2009

daily points, approximately top 50 vulture days in point order, 156,316 or more points through Tuesday, October 27, 2009

5/29/07 0:149:00:19:05 234,322 849 1st with Base Camp contribution
5/28/07 0:150:21:19:23 229,296 770 2nd with Base Camp contribution
10/12/09 0:087:04:20:54 220,580 367 3rd a vulture only record
10/19/09 0:084:21:44:16 214,636 356 4th
7/26/09 0:101:19:41:28 212,074 535 5th includes Leomas' server kick
10/21/09 0:082:08:07:53 204,720 337 6th
2/6/09 0:095:10:01:25 201,864 364 7th includes Leomas' server kick
6/10/09 0:090:00:31:03 197,507 725 8th with Leomas' server kick
10/18/09 0:077:15:11:19 197,050 310 9th
7/8/09 0:078:22:22:57 192,638 365 10th with statistical anomaly
10/13/09 0:078:23:29:33 191,897 321
10/14/09 0:074:00:42:09 189,160 308
10/15/09 0:072:03:34:10 187,808 295
6/23/09 0:074:08:51:24 185,420 383
10/11/09 0:070:09:07:42 182,508 281
10/16/09 0:071:07:51:34 180,306 289
6/20/09 0:072:17:18:05 179,850 392
2/20/09 0:087:20:33:55 178,417 314 includes Leomas' server kick
10/10/09 0:072:00:18:17 178,266 260
6/27/09 0:074:02:31:09 177,600 372
6/21/09 0:071:20:52:52 176,653 350
10/20/09 0:071:17:58:00 176,640 285
10/22/09 0:076:02:58:04 175,812 299
10/25/09 0:069:10:33:24 175,160 303
10/8/09 0:070:11:05:30 174,781 279
10/17/09 0:069:04:09:51 173,819 279
10/5/09 0:076:00:46:52 172,416 275
10/7/09 0:069:05:23:05 170,785 275
10/27/09 0:068:08:31:13 168,940 281 <-----
5/3/09 0:073:15:09:23 168,588 276
6/25/09 0:068:16:54:23 168,182 334
9/17/09 0:072:11:34:28 165,663 262
5/5/09 0:075:01:08:33 164,751 262
8/6/09 0:071:09:36:51 164,285 316
9/12/09 0:070:23:52:26 164,279 237
6/28/09 0:069:05:35:01 163,977 336
9/26/09 0:072:20:00:28 163,961 247
1/28/09 0:076:14:16:54 163,835 286 includes part of previous day
10/23/09 0:067:09:33:47 163,477 281
9/15/09 0:067:16:01:12 163,320 256
7/3/09 0:067:10:52:31 162,459 304
6/18/09 0:066:07:03:22 161,665 321
10/9/09 0:069:05:33:28 161,395 263
6/15/09 0:071:22:39:00 161,164 359
8/4/09 0:068:13:00:14 159,217 307
9/25/09 0:065:14:41:48 158,967 245
10/2/09 0:074:10:31:46 157,535 241
6/26/09 0:065:09:54:54 157,270 325
8/24/09 0:070:06:59:01 157,152 236
5/30/09 0:064:03:22:01 156,756 616
9/30/09 0:070:15:30:42 156,588 254

results, approximately top 50 vulture days in result order, 377 or more results through Sunday, July 26, 2009

Going to stock clocking didn't help. Interestingly, the RAM is actually slightly underclocked, because of the way that that CPU overclocking panned out.



Definitely not an overheating problem that I can detect, if that is the case. I designed it from the ground up explicitly for 24/7 overclockability and quietness at constant 100% CPU load. The CPU cooler is regularly cleaned and is absolutely enormous - it has a 12cm fan and more than a kilo of heat-pipes and fins. The fan runs by default at 1000 RPM (quiet), but has another 1000 RPM of capacity that runs on a linear scale if the CPU crosses a certain temperature threshold. So... you can literally hear if the CPU is getting hotter, as the fan speed increases after a certain threshold.

The RAM has it's own dual fan module clipped over all the of the DIMM sockets. On top of this, the system has three 12cm fans, and an enormous side ventiltaion port.

The only thing in the system that probably does get reasonably hot is the northbridge, as it's cooled passively with a heatpipe and heatsink array that spans the southbridge and the PWMs. The temps are well within spec, but it's not "overcooled" by anything I've added on... the only air that crosses these heatsinks is what comes off the CPU cooler fan and the usual airflow due to system fans.



Difficult to prove indeed, and very frustrating. There's not much more I can do right now, unless I had some more spare stuff to swap out. I'm fairly certain that the motherboard is dying somehow, but it'd be nice to swap out the graphics card and other bits and bobs just to rule them out for sure.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

10/29/09 0:064:16:18:53 151,350 246

Statistics Date/Total Run Time/Points/Results
____________(y:d:h:m:s)_Generated_Returned
Total Run Time (y:d:h:m:s) (Rank) 210:214:00:11:26 (#122)
Points Generated (Rank) 110,290,249 (#124)
Results Returned (Rank) 275,259 (#117)

daily run time, approximately top 50 vulture days in run time order, 70 days, 15 hours, 31 minutes or more through Thursday, October 22, 2009

daily points, approximately top 50 vulture days in point order, 156,589 or more points through Wednesday, October 28, 2009

results, approximately top 50 vulture days in result order, 377 or more results through Sunday, July 26, 2009