4 PVR-150 MCE cards. Totally not working. Advice?

[deria]

Hi,

I decied to replace my three PVR-250 cards with four PVR-150MCE cards. I wanted to do this because my PVR-250 cards were mismatched and I would occassionally get a defective recording.

So... that wasn't such a good idea.

I ran hwclear, the cards installed fine, they all get a strong signal, but when I start four recordings they all work for about 20 seconds and then the video freezes (the audio continues for a few seconds, then dies as well).

Now, when I took the cards out, they were HOT. Not warm, HOT. This was after < 5 minutes of uptime and < 2 minutes of recording.

So, some questions:

1. Does the PVR-150 normally run hot? My PVR-250 cards all work fine in this system. They don't seem to generate anywhere near as much heat. Could heat lead to messed up recordings like I'm getting?

2. Could I be overloading my PCI bus with data? I wouldn't think so (four 12mbps streams doesn't seem particularly excessive). The same seems true of the disk subsystem. Its just ATA100, but again we're not talking about a huge amount of data.

3. Motherboard issue? My motherboard is an Asrock K7S8X.

4. Something else I haven't considered?

I'm somewhat stumped. I find it impossible to believe that I got 4 defective cards. The problem has to be my system somehow. I just don't know what, though. I thought the PVR-150 was basically just a better version of the PVR-250.

Anyone have any ideas?

[ben_95sl1]

have you tried one single pvr150 first...then if that works, keep adding one and test...then reboot and add another? Since it takes 20s to find the problem, then that should be pretty easy to do. I don't think my pvr150 gets very hot: you should atleast stick a fan on them.

[Opus4]

Does the mb have a Via chipset? I believe people have reported problems with the 150 & 500 on some Via chipset boards.

- Andy

[idvsego]

my 150s get fairly warm so I put a fan over the PCI slots. but I had 3 at once with no problems.

[deria]

I ahve not tried the cards one at a time. I will do so when I get some time (always tricky since its a live system).

In terms of cooling, I'm not sure what more I can do with the case that I have. I have the power supply fan, an 80mm fan below that, and then I also have an 80mm side-mounted fan. Short of taking a metal cutter to the side of the case and mounting fans that way, I'm pretty much out of options. I thought about a PCI blower, but all five slots are full. I suppose I could get a different case, but I just don't see why the cards should run that hot. Its wacky. I suppose I could test it easily enough by taking the side of the case off and point my 18" rotary fan at the cards. If that can't keep them cool, nothing can. I'll give that a try.

Opus4, to answer your question the chipset is an SiS 746FX.

[blade]

Originally Posted by deria

Opus4, to answer your question the chipset is an SiS 746FX.

I know at least some of the SIS chipsets have problems with the PVR-500s. I don't know how they do with multiple 150s, but it would be worth looking into IMO.

[idvsego]

I did install mine one at a time. made source setup much easier. and I decided years ago that I would only use intel or Nvidia chipsets. VIA and SIS have led to too many little issues that I don't have the patience for anymore.

[deria]

Originally Posted by idvsego

I did install mine one at a time. made source setup much easier. and I decided years ago that I would only use intel or Nvidia chipsets. VIA and SIS have led to too many little issues that I don't have the patience for anymore.

I have to agree. I've never had bad eperiences with SiS (though I've only had one board with an SiS chipset) but VIA has been a constant source of frustration to me. I'll never -- ever -- purchase anything with a VIA tag again. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I have a spare system that I think I'll put the cards into so I can at least work on the system without having to do a great deal of shifting things around. If the issue is a heat-issue, I'm really not sure what I'll do. If its a motherboard issue, I see an nforce board in my future at some point. My daily-use system has an nforce chipset in it and I really like it (alot). Installed the board, inserted the CD, waited, and I was done. Everything just worked immediately. Only has 2 pci slots though because its a pci-express system.

I suppose optionally I could put two of the cards into my daily-use system and use a network share to watch stuff from my regular PC. I'd have to buy another SageTV license, but I could live with that since it would cost less than buying a new motherboard and memory. The daily-use system has a Sonata II case, so its pretty much stone-cold all the time. Maybe these cards will raise the temperature enough so that my power-supply-fan kicks in so I can see if the silly thing even works or not. I've never seen it spin. That would (at least in theory) eliminate any heat issues.