Don't overlook the ZIF when troubleshooting !!!
Missileman
Orlando, Florida Icrontian
Exactly 1 week ago I received a shiny new AMD64-3500+ and an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum. I have been cussing this board/cpu almost since it first powered up. It has locked up, BSOD, hung during reboot before post, hung during boot before the splash screen, hung right before desktop display, etc... The point is that nothing really made sense or was consistent. I only changed the motherboard and cpu. It is watercooled so it's not too hot (47C full load), power supply is an Antec True Control 550W. It's adjusted to slightly over prime settings. Hard drives were all in full use in 2 RAID's on my IC7-MAX3 without issue. RAM was Corsair TwinX3700PT (512x2) and has been flawless. Voltages all looked good.
I initially set it up as default aggressive with Dynamic OC at Sarge. Went down to Dynamic disabled. Then too conservative manual. I could push the CPU to 2.8 Ghz from 2.2 and it would run prime and/or memtest all day then lock up when you tried to open my computer and/or hang during the restart. Decided to switch memory with some GEIL Golden Dragon 3200 2-3-3-6 stuff I had. A lot quicker, but problems seemed the same. I could OC to 2.8 but then it might not even post on reboot. Something wasn't adding up. Also during all this the disks would corrupt so I have reinstalled the OS like 5 times. Frustration was reaching the critical point. I went and got some Kingston HyperX 4000 and it would hardly boot with default settings. Went back to the GEIL GD and it returned to previous state. I still couldn't pin down the culprit. I was leaning toward the motherboard since the CPU clocked up so nice, but still kinda iffy.
Now I have been building machines since 1974 so I was runnig the list of common problems in my head and thought I'll reseat the CPU in the ZIF. It went in fine and I did my normal lever wiggle when mounting, but what the hay. 939 little pins (figuratively speaking). Maybe one wasn't making good contact and it would only take one floating ground to let in enough noise to make it act like this. I pulled the waterblock off. Cleaned the AS5 off everything, pulled out the cpu and inspected it. All was fine. Remounted it and made sure to push the cpu down and with the ZIF direction this time when closing the socket. Remounted the water block. That's all I did.
I am happy to report that after nearly smashing this motherboard to dust that it is now VERY stable and is running at 2.4Ghz with the GEIL RAM @ 2.5-3-3-6. All default voltages. I have beat it up for 4 hours now and it has been flawless(including prime and memtest) It is running Agressive timings and dynamic overclocking is also on. I may see how far I can take it for real tomorrow before reinstalling the OS for one last time (I hope).
The moral of all this is after fighting this setup for a week. Working a simple little lever back and forth a few more times is all it took. It's almost the simplest thing that causes the most trouble.
I AM OFFICIALLY 64 BIT NOW
I feel better now :celebrate
I initially set it up as default aggressive with Dynamic OC at Sarge. Went down to Dynamic disabled. Then too conservative manual. I could push the CPU to 2.8 Ghz from 2.2 and it would run prime and/or memtest all day then lock up when you tried to open my computer and/or hang during the restart. Decided to switch memory with some GEIL Golden Dragon 3200 2-3-3-6 stuff I had. A lot quicker, but problems seemed the same. I could OC to 2.8 but then it might not even post on reboot. Something wasn't adding up. Also during all this the disks would corrupt so I have reinstalled the OS like 5 times. Frustration was reaching the critical point. I went and got some Kingston HyperX 4000 and it would hardly boot with default settings. Went back to the GEIL GD and it returned to previous state. I still couldn't pin down the culprit. I was leaning toward the motherboard since the CPU clocked up so nice, but still kinda iffy.
Now I have been building machines since 1974 so I was runnig the list of common problems in my head and thought I'll reseat the CPU in the ZIF. It went in fine and I did my normal lever wiggle when mounting, but what the hay. 939 little pins (figuratively speaking). Maybe one wasn't making good contact and it would only take one floating ground to let in enough noise to make it act like this. I pulled the waterblock off. Cleaned the AS5 off everything, pulled out the cpu and inspected it. All was fine. Remounted it and made sure to push the cpu down and with the ZIF direction this time when closing the socket. Remounted the water block. That's all I did.
I am happy to report that after nearly smashing this motherboard to dust that it is now VERY stable and is running at 2.4Ghz with the GEIL RAM @ 2.5-3-3-6. All default voltages. I have beat it up for 4 hours now and it has been flawless(including prime and memtest) It is running Agressive timings and dynamic overclocking is also on. I may see how far I can take it for real tomorrow before reinstalling the OS for one last time (I hope).
The moral of all this is after fighting this setup for a week. Working a simple little lever back and forth a few more times is all it took. It's almost the simplest thing that causes the most trouble.
I AM OFFICIALLY 64 BIT NOW
I feel better now :celebrate
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Comments
Btw, 2.8Ghz is a beast of an OC
I've been mostly hitting 2.6 today. Memory is still a touchy issue to this board. One thing I have found I dislike is you can make bios changes to the board, freeze up or whatever, go undo your changes and set it to what was stable, but this time it won't be. Gotta reset to defaults and reload for it to come back even though the bios readings show correct. I'm running bios 1.37B1 BTW.
Gonna see if I can get some other type of cheap RAM and give it a go. When I OC I can't keep RAM stable at 1:1 unless I set the timing high and command setting to 2T which kinda defeats the whole purpose
At least it is running and making sense now. Playtime
So far the best REAL performance seems to be running at 1:1, 5X HTT, FSB at 218, and memory timing 2.5-3-10-3 w/1T. Only a 2.4 OC but seems to have the least "pauses" and runs stable. Pushing it much higher and the current draw goes up quite a bit. The GEIL RAM has been run at 3.0 or higher before. It's JAN 01 manufacture date so it is a little tougher than the newer stuff.
I'm gonna let it "burn" for a while at the above and let it settle in a bit before seeing if I can get a bit more out of it.
Can't go to high in normal use cause I've got 4 SATA disks and SATA1/2 don't lock so it will courrupt above 220 FSB anyways