[Help] Motherboard Issues

[Onil]

Hello,

First of all, here is my hardware info:

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.9GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Motherboard: Asus P7P55D Deluxe
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250
Sound Card: Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional series
Sound Driver Provider: PAX By Robert McClelland


As many other Creative X-Fi users, I had blue screens every time I used the sound card in PR in Ultra High. That was until I installed the PAX driver which seemed to fix the problem. After that I played with X-Fi on Ultra High without any issues, until a few months ago when I started to get some blue screens from time to time as well as both my screens going black as if the the graphics card had just shutdown.

I started playing with the sound on Hardware High and that stopped the issue. I can't figure out what is causing the problem but it sucks that I can't use my best sound setup anymore without the above issues. This motherboard has the sound card under the graphics card and it has very little space for the vent of the graphics card to blow away the hot air. I though that perhaps it was a matter of the graphics car heating up too much due to how close the sound card is and how hot the sound card might become when its used with its best setup while it is also getting all the heat from the vent of the graphics card. But I don't know much about hardware.

Recently I also started to hear some weird sounds which I believe come from the motherboard. The type of sound that you hear when either the motherboard or a hard-drive is starting when your computer is starting. The sounds were constant and sometimes one of my hard-drives would disappear from my computer as if it wasn't connected.

I disconnected the hard-drive and the sounds stopped. I don't think the issue is the hard-drive. I believe that the issue is either with the motherboard perhaps being damaged or not getting enough power. My power source is the same as it was before the issues started. It's a 550w which I was told to be enough for the hardware I have which includes 4 hard-drives.

I had a UPS protecting my computer from power spikes and shortage but it stopped working after many years of use, I'm not sure if after that the computer might have suffered from one of a few power shortages which tend to cause power spikes when the electricity comes back on.

Anyone has any ideas?

[SnipeHunt]

Swap the sata ports that the 'affected' hdd is plugged into.
If the noise follows the drive then you'll know it is the drive.
If it stays with the sata port then.. well that won't exactly tell you it IS the motherboard, but will rule out a bad hdd.