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Well Scan have gone into ignore mode after leaving a voicemail saying ring them which they never answer of course.
Brief reminder that I bought a Motherboard and CPU from them and after a few weeks it started freezing at randomn intervals. I then started a long period of trouble shooting removing the other hardware bit by bit until the blame could be placed on either the CPU or the Motherboard. All the old stuff is in a new machine which has been working 24hr a day for about eight weeks now. Doesn't leave much room for doubt to be honest.
Anyway I checked online what the status was. I've made a note and replied to them today.
Scan engineer is in bold my response in normal text.
“The whole point of us using tools such as Prime95 is so we don't have to test board for weeks so as to get a fault. I have plenty experience in diagnosing hard to find issues - I have yet to see a faulty piece of hardware run 100% for more than an hour or so without showing signs of failure. And I did read the details you provided - thoroughly. As I said then as far as I can tell the Motherboard/CPU are fine.â€
The basic rule for testing with Prime 95 is at least 12 hours. I’ve known a machine go 48hrs plus running Prime 95 (I was busy elsewhere doing other jobs) and it didn’t fail.
Like you I was going to throw the machine back to the Customer as NFF luckily for the customer I had to leave the machine idling for a few hours due to other commitments. I came back to find a frozen machine.
Three hours isn’t really long enough to be 100% sure especially due to the intermittent nature of the fault.
“Leaving the system running for 7 days on 100% load isn't a fair test - a PC will crash randomly for eveyone sooner or later if left for this period under this ammount of stress. If I just want the Motherboard to randomly freeze I can do it without thinking given enough load they will all do it - it doesn't prove for one min that a fault has been faound. Data collection isn't stressing the CPU or Motherboard - you say so yourself. Is is it therefor not reasonable for me to make the suggestion that another piece of Hardware is at fault here? In my mind the I/O of the Hard Disk is more likely to be the problem! Be it IDE/SATA/SCSI or as you state USB. I have no indication in the original RMA that it was being used via USB. I have no doubt in this case that either the USB of the board is at issue or the Hard Disk itself. You have to understand I can only test based on info I am given - and I did.â€
If you look back to my emails I said the machine was basically doing nothing except for an upload to the Internet every five minutes I just suggested you leave it doing basically nothing. It never failed during a data transfer which fair enough I didn’t mention.
The I/O port of the board could be a problem as I was using the SATA controller. I swapped cables and ports but the fault remained. I did inform you that all the other parts are now in another System that has been 24 hours a day and has only been rebooted once after a Windows Update installation. This clearly leaves the other hardware fault free as the machine would have failed in Six+ Weeks.
Out of interest I’ve tested the USB device with a known faulty USB cable. This didn’t result in a frozen machine. The Program just reported a missing Weather Station. No lock up or unrecoverable error.
“You also have to understand that we have safety issues involved here that you don't - we aren't supposed to leave systems overnight let alone for weeks, due to fire hazards! Let alone over a weekend unattended. There is also a question of space - all of our benches are in use all the time - I can't use one up for this length of time as other customers require their items to be tested as well. And so I am left with a situation of Hammering the Hardware as much as I can in the time I have.â€
I wish that it was stated that your Department didn’t have the resources available to test computer hardware as more sensible approach could have been arranged. Namely arranging a swap out of the Motherboard and CPU.
However as you aware that the new Sales of Goods act stipulates that it’s up to the Company and not the Customer to proof that the goods are not faulty. I have already done weeks of diagnostics hardware removal, swapping before I sent the CPU/Motherboard back to you.
You now leave me with a problem. You state that you cannot test board long enough for the fault to appear unless you’re lucky.
If you ship the board back, FOC because of the above statement it’s likely to fail again and then I have added problem of shipping it back. If that case occurred you would have to refund the original costs of shipping and pay for the new costs incurred as you are legally required to do so in the first place.
It seems the best solution that you just replace the items and ship them back to myself as soon as possible. Please email me at
Brief reminder that I bought a Motherboard and CPU from them and after a few weeks it started freezing at randomn intervals. I then started a long period of trouble shooting removing the other hardware bit by bit until the blame could be placed on either the CPU or the Motherboard. All the old stuff is in a new machine which has been working 24hr a day for about eight weeks now. Doesn't leave much room for doubt to be honest.
Anyway I checked online what the status was. I've made a note and replied to them today.
Scan engineer is in bold my response in normal text.
“The whole point of us using tools such as Prime95 is so we don't have to test board for weeks so as to get a fault. I have plenty experience in diagnosing hard to find issues - I have yet to see a faulty piece of hardware run 100% for more than an hour or so without showing signs of failure. And I did read the details you provided - thoroughly. As I said then as far as I can tell the Motherboard/CPU are fine.â€
The basic rule for testing with Prime 95 is at least 12 hours. I’ve known a machine go 48hrs plus running Prime 95 (I was busy elsewhere doing other jobs) and it didn’t fail.
Like you I was going to throw the machine back to the Customer as NFF luckily for the customer I had to leave the machine idling for a few hours due to other commitments. I came back to find a frozen machine.
Three hours isn’t really long enough to be 100% sure especially due to the intermittent nature of the fault.
“Leaving the system running for 7 days on 100% load isn't a fair test - a PC will crash randomly for eveyone sooner or later if left for this period under this ammount of stress. If I just want the Motherboard to randomly freeze I can do it without thinking given enough load they will all do it - it doesn't prove for one min that a fault has been faound. Data collection isn't stressing the CPU or Motherboard - you say so yourself. Is is it therefor not reasonable for me to make the suggestion that another piece of Hardware is at fault here? In my mind the I/O of the Hard Disk is more likely to be the problem! Be it IDE/SATA/SCSI or as you state USB. I have no indication in the original RMA that it was being used via USB. I have no doubt in this case that either the USB of the board is at issue or the Hard Disk itself. You have to understand I can only test based on info I am given - and I did.â€
If you look back to my emails I said the machine was basically doing nothing except for an upload to the Internet every five minutes I just suggested you leave it doing basically nothing. It never failed during a data transfer which fair enough I didn’t mention.
The I/O port of the board could be a problem as I was using the SATA controller. I swapped cables and ports but the fault remained. I did inform you that all the other parts are now in another System that has been 24 hours a day and has only been rebooted once after a Windows Update installation. This clearly leaves the other hardware fault free as the machine would have failed in Six+ Weeks.
Out of interest I’ve tested the USB device with a known faulty USB cable. This didn’t result in a frozen machine. The Program just reported a missing Weather Station. No lock up or unrecoverable error.
“You also have to understand that we have safety issues involved here that you don't - we aren't supposed to leave systems overnight let alone for weeks, due to fire hazards! Let alone over a weekend unattended. There is also a question of space - all of our benches are in use all the time - I can't use one up for this length of time as other customers require their items to be tested as well. And so I am left with a situation of Hammering the Hardware as much as I can in the time I have.â€
I wish that it was stated that your Department didn’t have the resources available to test computer hardware as more sensible approach could have been arranged. Namely arranging a swap out of the Motherboard and CPU.
However as you aware that the new Sales of Goods act stipulates that it’s up to the Company and not the Customer to proof that the goods are not faulty. I have already done weeks of diagnostics hardware removal, swapping before I sent the CPU/Motherboard back to you.
You now leave me with a problem. You state that you cannot test board long enough for the fault to appear unless you’re lucky.
If you ship the board back, FOC because of the above statement it’s likely to fail again and then I have added problem of shipping it back. If that case occurred you would have to refund the original costs of shipping and pay for the new costs incurred as you are legally required to do so in the first place.
It seems the best solution that you just replace the items and ship them back to myself as soon as possible. Please email me at
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