RAM keeps getting corrupted, BIOS keeps getting damaged

About three months ago I had gotten a virus from the net that damaged my RAM and BIOS and I ended up having to RMA the motherboard and RAM, now it's happening again and I scanned the PC with Avast yet again and found nothing. I don't know what to do. I can RMA the components yet again but I need to get to the bottom of this otherwis it'll just happen again. The RAM is Corsair Vengeance 4x4 GB and the the mobo is a Asus Crosshair V Formula 990fx.

Is it possible it's a power supply issue? And how would I check that?

 

Your ram can only get corrupted while the computer is turned on,after a restart your ram is wiped clean. A virus cannot damage your bios either so you have a hardware fault or your are infected which is not related to your previous problems.

By process of elimination your power supply is the most likely culprit of a hardware fault since your ram and motherboard are new.

But we need more information regarding the faults,please explain in more detail the errors your experiencing include as much detail as possible,if you have fault codes write them down and post them.

Can you confirm your using an up to date anti virus and software firewall,can you also post the model of your power supply,cpu and video card or create a report with this program and add it as an attachment with your next post.

http://majorgeeks.com/Speccy_d6358.html

 

Sorry for late reply hurricane sandy hit me hard so I had to wait for the library to come back up. This is what happened.

About mid August I was cruising the internet and was infected with a Java Agent virus I'll get you the virus names as soon as I can I just have to find the paper I wrote them on my power is out so I'm doing everything the old fashion way. I cleaned the virus with Avast it found them and I put them in the chest. I then proceeded to RMA the motherboard and RAM, I got them back around Sept 12 according to what Asus told me. Recently just before the hurricane hit my FIOS router stopped working I thought nothing of it so I waited it the next day I went to the library and did a live chat and the guy promptly restored service. everything was fine then I was playing EVE Online when it started crashing every few minutes. I did sfc /scannow found out I had a few bad OS files I manually replaced them and forgot to restore the original permissiosn which ended in a System Service Exception BSOD. I restarted and about 30 minutes after that I got the Bad Pool Header BSOD which is what made me do MemTest86+ and about 10 secs in found 8.9k errors.

Both times I received a Bad Pool Header BSOD the first time I also received a Memory Management BSOD the second time, recently, I have no idea if it would show up as I finished with the computer as quickly as possible. Also Each time the motherboard is corrupted along with the RAM, and the HDDs also seemed to get "shocked" in the sense that sometimes I'll get some corrupted files but as of yet they've showed no sign of serious damage. The only thing that I can tell that is being damaged to the point where it has to be replaced is the motherboard and RAM. The RAM always suffers from massive module corruption and the motherboard seems to have it's BIOS damaged each time. However the video card, sound card, and HDDs seem to good for better or worse. I have not RMA'd the power supply yet. This time I will along with the mobo and the RAM.

Up until the virus attack the computer worked fine. Though several months ago whenever I would go to shut down via the chassis power button "which I would only do in the case that windows froze" the computer would not stay off the minute I took my finger off the power button it would turn back on and only by flipping the switch on the PSU would it stay off. Also when I used it AIDA64 reported the VDDM voltage kept going down to zero volts though I believe the VDDM is the 3d card and I had two of them installed at the time, the second was almost never used by the computer.

I will update you with more information as I can get to it.

Is it possible the virus damaged the PSU and it turned around and fried the other components? Or that it fried all three?

 

No,malware does NOT damage hardware,period. There have been obscure virus's in the past that have managed it but not on modern computers. They especially do not damage the power supply as computer software has no control over it's operation.

Did you suffer from frequent power cuts or surges in your area before Sandy? If so are you using a quality surge protector with UPS? If not this alone could be causing corruption.

It does sound like a power supply problem,I would stop using the computer until your new power supply comes less it do more damage,do you know the model of your current power supply?

Stay safe

 

Yes, it is a A Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1,050 Watt PSU. The motherboard is a Asus Crosshair V Formula 990FX, the RAM is Corsair Vengeance 4x4 GB.

As for power surges, yep, this is New York. There is always occasional brownouts and rare blackouts. What is a cheap way to protect the PSU then? Is there any UPS for under $200 that will adequately protect my PSU?

When the power comes back on hopefully before next weekend I will immediately RMA the PSU along with the damaged motherboard and spent RAM. My concern is now is how to find a UPS. But I would need a UPS that provides battery back, power conditioning, and surge protection. Right?

Are there any cheap yet good UPSs that will work with a 1050 watt PSU?

Does a UPS draw additional power from the house?

 

That's an excellent power supply with a whole range of safety features, imagine it would take a very unstable power AC source to cause damage to your components including the psu.

http://www.ocia.net/reviews/ttgrand1050/page1.shtml

Your ups requirement doesn't relate to your power supply's maximum power draw it relates to your computers total power draw which can be roughly estimated by adding up the maximum wattage of your cpu and video card,plus any large numbers of ancillary components or by using a power meter un.der full load

The amount of safety and on battery run time you want and how much you wish to spend is something for you to answer.

You can then use a simple calculator like this

http://www.sizemyups.com/ajaxlib.php

 

The input and output voltage is that determined by local regulations? Rackmount and Sine wave whats the difference?

 

This is the UPS I was currently looking at I was wondering what you think of it?

http://www.apc.com/resource/include...1000&fnl=4605,2&fnl_basket=4605,3c&tab=models

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5774221

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842301290

This is the current PC specs:

-AMD Pehnom II X6 1100T Black Edition Thuban
-Corsair Vengeance 16 GB (4x4 GB) (Soon to be RMA'd to correct problem)
-Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050W PSU (Soon to be RMA'd to correct problem)
-ASUS Crosshair V Formula 990FX motherboard (Soon to be RMA'd to correct problem)
-Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD 6950 2 GB 880 MHz (long since took the second one out. Didn't need it.)
-COOLER MASTER HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Black Steel/ Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case
-Saitek Eclipse II Illuminated Keyboard
-Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K3000 HDS723020BLA642 2TB Hard Drive
-ASUS Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner BW-12B1ST
-Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Sound Card
-Seagate Constellation ES ST500NM0011 500GB Hard Drive
-Logitech G300 9 button USB optical mouse
-Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
-ASUS VW246H Glossy Black 24" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor
-And a old Western Digital HDD, who'se model number I forget now, holds my old computer's data that I carried over due to pure laziness.

 

Your looking at just under 500watts maximum power consumption with just one of your cards and no overclocking,those have a max power consumption of 670watts so are fine.

Your looking at a full load time of about 10 mins with those ups,so that would be during gaming you could continue for an estimate of about 20-30mins.

Rackmount is a form factor used for offices and servers so you don't want that unless your computer is in a server room:-D Sine wave is the type of AC output wave,all ac is a sine wave or close so it's pretty irrelevant detail to the consumer.

I'm not the best person to ask for buying advice on UPS's because I don't use one or live in the US. Gman runs a pc store and so I imagine he knows which ones are reliable and of good quality.

 

Good morning...

A quick caveat: a battery backup system (Uninterruptible Power Supply) is for providing power to a computer system for the purpose of performing an orderly shutdown in case of loss of power - nothing else.

IMO stick with a reputable brand that specializes in power conditioning and battery backup such as APC.

 

Hi my friend , as Caliban suggested apc ups is the best :wave

 

One last question. How much extra wattage would my UPS need if I was to put the second GPU in. As I'm wondering what kind of computing power I may need in coming years.

 

I think you would be better served by using this calculator to get a clearer idea of your system's power requirements - seems like it's a little more in depth as far as plugging in specific hardware. Add in any monitor and peripheral requirements - once you've got a good final number, then bump up the wattage by 10%-20% to get an idea of an UPS size (I always give myself about a 20% overhead, just to be safe).

Bottom line: you can never have too much capacity, but you can sure have too little.

 

How good are Powercom UPSs? APC is a nice brand I used them years ago on my old Win 95 computer and loved it but I can't pay the prices APC wants for their higher wattage UPS.

I was wondering if this UPS provides line conditioning. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...+(Back+Up+Power+Supply)-_-Powercom-_-42106116

 

Also where do I go to find out if my Toughpower Grand 1050W can handle a simulated sine wave UPS. And when searching for UPS do I have to take household fuse ampage in question?