Hello everyone! I am at my wits end with my newish (four months old) computer.

First, the motherboard seems almost certainly faulty--When I first built it, it suffered from random reboots that didn't go away until I updated the BIOS. Now it will boot from my SSD and CD-ROM drives, but if I plug any HDDs (new or old) into SATA ports 3 and up, the computer won't start at all. If I plug cards into a certain PCI slot, the computer won't start at all. So I'm planning on replacing it, I'm just waiting on a service call from Gigabyte to see if they're willing to replace this one for freesies before I go out and buy one.

In the meantime, the computer will boot up. After all the prior issues it wanted to reinstall Windows, so I have just started with a fresh install. BUT, if I do anything remotely demanding, like opening a bunch of browser tabs or playing a video game, it will slow down more and more until it gives me a lovely Windows 8 ":(" BSOD. Says it's collecting information about the failure, then shuts off and doesn't turn on again.

My event log looks something like this:



So, I am wondering if this new BSODing problem is also related to the motherboard? Or could it be an issue with Windows 8 not installing properly, or something else? I'd really like to get it semi-working until the new motherboard shows up. What do you guys think?

Love, Thrawns

Try running memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com), and see if there's anything wrong with your RAM. If it shows everything as fine on the test, I would recommend taking out all of the RAM modules, place one in, test it, and repeat as needed until all of the sticks have been tested. I recently had a system come in that had a bad RAM module, but it didn't show until I tested each individual one.

That was actually one of the first things I did back when I put it together--one of the sticks read as faulty so I took two out. Hasn't seemed to solve the problems though.

Does the computer get warm? Is the fan blowing hot air out? Also, what is showing up in Task Manager when you try to play a game? Sort by CPU then by memory. What are the top processes? If you took one of the sticks of memory out, how much memory does that leave you with? Have you tried flashing the BIOS with the latest version?

No warmth or hot air that I can detect. I have flashed the BIOS. If I take another stick out I've got 4GB left.

I'll try and spy on the task manager, but I don't think there's anything untoward going on in there D:

It sounds like your SATA controller is busted. That would explain the boot and port issues, as well is IO issues messing up your windows 8 installation.

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Take a dump on it and charge people to watch so that you can afford a mac

That actually sounds very plausible. It doesn't explain (with my limited knowledge at least) why plugging a wireless card into a PCI slot would also cause the computer to fail to boot, but maybe the board is doubly busted, haha

If you had any chance to test out your components on another computer, you could rule out if any of them are responsible or also damaged, but yes, it definitely sounds like a bad mobo (maybe a short?). I'd stop using it or you might risk damaging something more expensive.

Unfortunately I don't have another rig to test them with, but I've done enough to rule out the GPU and the RAM. Fairly certain the PSU isn't the issue either, since I still had boot problems with no GPU in at one point.

Anyway, got an RMA number for the mobo and I'm mailing it tomorrow inshallah!