PCI-Express woes

Hello All

About a year ago I purchased a pc for general use but since I have become somewhat of a gamer. I now realize my mistake because I purchased an Emachines I have upgraded a few things and installed an ATI Radeon X800 PCI-E basically as soon as I learned how much the onboard graphics didnt meet my needs. Slowly overtime the computer developed rebooting problems. If the computer was cold it would usually boot up fine but if i tried and reboot after a few hours of use, i would get nothing.. the monitor would just go into powersaving mode. Also every once in a while i would notice graphical glitches in games which lead me to believe my vid card was dieing. The time finally came where it wouldnt boot at all so I pulled my ATI X800 and tried an old IDE vid card and it booted just fine.. even when hot. So i figured my problem was solved. Bad video card. So i went and bought a new card.. an ATI Radeon x1950 and after installation I still get nothing when i boot. I take the brand new card out and it boots fine. I was searching around and someone said maybe it was my power supply so I installed a 500w unit and I am still having the same problem. Does this sound like a motherboard problem? I only have 1 PCI-Express x16 slot.. there is no AGP slot. Here are my specs.

CPU: AMD Athlon™ 64 3400+ Processor (with AMD 64 technology)
(2.20GHz, 1600MHz system bus, 512KB L2 cache)
Operating System: Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
Chipset: NVIDIA® nForce™® 410
Memory: 1GB DDR (2 × 512MB), 400MHz dual channel
Expandable to 4GB
Hard Drive: 200GB HDD (7200rpm, 2MB cache)
Optical Drive: 16x DVD±RW multiformat double layer drive
Media Reader: 8-in-1 digital media manager (Secure Digital™ (SD), smart media, micro drive, memory stick, memory stick PRO, compact flash, multimedia card, USB 2.0)
Video: NVIDIA® GeForce® 6100 GPU
up to 128MB of shared video memory
PCI-Express® (PCI-E x16) slot available
Sound: 6-channel (5.1) high definition audio
Network: 10/100Mbps integrated Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port)
Modem: 56K ITU V.92-ready fax/modem (RJ-11 port)
Peripherals: Premium multimedia keyboard, 2-button wheel mouse, amplified stereo speakers
Ports/Other: 5 USB 2.0 ports (4 in back, 1 in media reader), 1 VGA external connector, 1 serial port, 1 parallel port, 2 PS/2 ports (keyboard and mouse), 5 audio ports (2 in front, 3 in back)

Any help/advice would be appreciated. I wish i could just dump the Emachines and get a real computer but I am on a budget.

 

Here is an interesting issue. I saw someone else on another forum have trouble with an ATI card (X800GTO) with an Emachine. What are you getting on your screen when you boot with the card? If nothing, go into BIOS and make sure your card is enabled. If that doesn't work, update BIOS.

What I have come to find out is that OEM boards are not good for upgrades and such. Emachines tend to have proprietary devices which will not allow certain upgrades. This is a potential pitfall when buying any off-the-shelf system.

 

When I boot I see nothing on the screen.. My computer will shut off immediatly if i press the power button (normally i have to press it for about 8 seconds). I have made sure that my onboard card is disabled and my PCI-Express card is enabled. I also flashed and updated bios. I dont know if I should return the ati card in exchange for a nvidia card or swap out my MB. If it is just a compatability issue then i dont mind going with a different manufacturer of vid card. I just dont want to get another card and then find out its the MB that is having the issues.

 

Like I say I saw someone with an Emachine that had the EXACT same issue with the ATI card. He actually did the stupid thing of trying to insert the card after booting up ok while the system was on!! It worked (amazingly didn't fry card and or system), but it never worked with a normal boot-up. At this point you only have the option of checking the card on another system to make sure it isn't the card and then I would say it has to be that Emachine has proprietary devices that don't allow for certain ugrades. That would be your mobo .

On the new 500W PSU.....Please tell me what the Amps are on the 12V rail. You can tell by looking at the label on the PSU under 12V. It should say, for example, 20A, or whatever.

 

Essentially you can! What makes an Emachine an Emachine?- The motherboard (and its ALL INCLUSIVE limitations-BIOS ect.). All the other components are just that- components that can be used by any compatible system. Once you rid yourself of that board, take all the RAM, HDDs, vid cards, and optical drives out and put them on another board and you don't have an Emachine anymore. You are a motherboard away from having a custom system. You can use all your old components if they are compatible with your new board- so if you want to minimize upgrades, find a board compatible with your processor and RAM and vid card. That should be no problem (I forgot your specs but...). What I did notice is that your processor may bottleneck a good vid card a bit, but you can upgrade that when you have the $$$. Right now I would suggest getting a new board. Try newegg.com- great deals.

 

Sorry for so many posts, but I post 'em as I think of 'em. One more potential issue could be your IRQ address for the device. If your BIOS is sending the device to a wrong or used IRQ address and both devices try to use the IRQ line at the same time, machine will freeze. You would have to check that in BIOS, if you even can with limited Emachine BIOS. You would have to manually change IRQ address for the vid card. That can be complicated for someone newer to computers, but you may want to check with support to find out. It is very possible that is an issue and another pitfall to off-the-shelf systems.