Abit NF7-S gone screwy
I have a few probs with my Abit NF7-S, firstly I have a 512mb stick of Corsair Platinum 3500 C2 & because I needed a bit more ram I bought some cheap Elixir 3200 C3 ram the otherday (also went into bios & lowered my ram timings to spd so the new ram could handle them) but after 1 day in my PC I got single long beep errors whilst playing RTCW.
I rebooted & got the same long beep error & couldnt get it to POST, finally it stopped beeping after a few restarts but then the bios reported my cpu was unusable as it had reset to 1100mhz (I have an XP2500+ barton but run it as a 3200+ @ 200fsb) so I went into the bios soft menu but the cpu was set at 3200+ (?) so I saved that & after a few more memory error beeps it finally booted but then said NTLDR was missing.
I figured out that somehow the bios had changed from boot from SATA which was why I got that error & now I can load windows ok (I'm only running the cpu @ the 2500+ default now).
Figuring my new cheap stick of ram was faulty I took it out but now the PC wont boot with the Corsair in at all (all slots) ! & gives the long beeps error, I'm using the Elixer ram now.
Puzzled I took the ram over to a friend with a NF2 Gigabyte board & allthough both sticks will run together in his we would get a lot of blue screens with both sticks in but it runs fine with each stick on its own or combined with his his 2 256mb sticks of normal PC3200 ram.
This is just the latest fault I have developed with this board, I also had 2 wd120gb ide drives in it & both of them have corrupted a couple of times (once while both were connected to the same IDE channel & once whilst one was connected via the SATA converter connector you get with this board) I sold one of the drives though & its been fine in the KT7-333 system I put it in which points to the errors not being the drives fault.
Also I have took the SATA convertor off the ide drive as windows wont load with it on & plugged into SATA 2 (gets too the windows loading screen but its sort of transparent & just sits there)
Also I took the remaining WD120 to my friends yesterday & strangely a zip file which was corrupt on my PC extracted fine when I plugged the drive into his, also when I write to this drive I get a few corrupted files so I rarely use it but as it is quite new I think the problem with it stems from this board not the actual drive.
I'm thinking my board has a major problem & tbh I'm about ready to just sell it & buy something new (I havent even ran F@H for about a year because I dont trust my PC enough to run it 24/7)
So my questions are -
Has anyone experianced the sort of symptoms I have?
Any idea what on earths wrong with it?
Is it common for different brands of ram to be incompatible?
Why wont it boot with my PC3500 ram?
If I buy a new PC what M-board should I look at getting that I can use my AGP 9800pro/3500 memory in.
I havent kept up with the latest cpu's so what socket should I go for (939 754?) I looked at a store & the 754 looked the best because of the lower 90nm compared to the 939's which were 130nm.
If I bought a new MB CPU combo can I use my SLK800 HSF combo or are they a different size?
I have a limited budget of around £200 for the build if it comes to that, I'm not fussed on getting a cutting edge system (dont want to pay the premuim that comes with that) but I want something that eclipses my 3200+/NF7 combo but uses most of the salvagable parts of mine (My heatsink/fan, case, power supply, memory, graphics card, 1 SATA drive, 1 IDE drive, DVD writer).
I rebooted & got the same long beep error & couldnt get it to POST, finally it stopped beeping after a few restarts but then the bios reported my cpu was unusable as it had reset to 1100mhz (I have an XP2500+ barton but run it as a 3200+ @ 200fsb) so I went into the bios soft menu but the cpu was set at 3200+ (?) so I saved that & after a few more memory error beeps it finally booted but then said NTLDR was missing.
I figured out that somehow the bios had changed from boot from SATA which was why I got that error & now I can load windows ok (I'm only running the cpu @ the 2500+ default now).
Figuring my new cheap stick of ram was faulty I took it out but now the PC wont boot with the Corsair in at all (all slots) ! & gives the long beeps error, I'm using the Elixer ram now.
Puzzled I took the ram over to a friend with a NF2 Gigabyte board & allthough both sticks will run together in his we would get a lot of blue screens with both sticks in but it runs fine with each stick on its own or combined with his his 2 256mb sticks of normal PC3200 ram.
This is just the latest fault I have developed with this board, I also had 2 wd120gb ide drives in it & both of them have corrupted a couple of times (once while both were connected to the same IDE channel & once whilst one was connected via the SATA converter connector you get with this board) I sold one of the drives though & its been fine in the KT7-333 system I put it in which points to the errors not being the drives fault.
Also I have took the SATA convertor off the ide drive as windows wont load with it on & plugged into SATA 2 (gets too the windows loading screen but its sort of transparent & just sits there)
Also I took the remaining WD120 to my friends yesterday & strangely a zip file which was corrupt on my PC extracted fine when I plugged the drive into his, also when I write to this drive I get a few corrupted files so I rarely use it but as it is quite new I think the problem with it stems from this board not the actual drive.
I'm thinking my board has a major problem & tbh I'm about ready to just sell it & buy something new (I havent even ran F@H for about a year because I dont trust my PC enough to run it 24/7)
So my questions are -
Has anyone experianced the sort of symptoms I have?
Any idea what on earths wrong with it?
Is it common for different brands of ram to be incompatible?
Why wont it boot with my PC3500 ram?
If I buy a new PC what M-board should I look at getting that I can use my AGP 9800pro/3500 memory in.
I havent kept up with the latest cpu's so what socket should I go for (939 754?) I looked at a store & the 754 looked the best because of the lower 90nm compared to the 939's which were 130nm.
If I bought a new MB CPU combo can I use my SLK800 HSF combo or are they a different size?
I have a limited budget of around £200 for the build if it comes to that, I'm not fussed on getting a cutting edge system (dont want to pay the premuim that comes with that) but I want something that eclipses my 3200+/NF7 combo but uses most of the salvagable parts of mine (My heatsink/fan, case, power supply, memory, graphics card, 1 SATA drive, 1 IDE drive, DVD writer).
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Comments
Are you sure that your power supply is solid and that nothing is loose?
As far as new hardware, 939 will give you room to step up later. There are a number of NForce3 mobos with an AGP slot. BUT, I don't know how far you will be able to upgrade CPUs in the future with the NF3 chipset.
As for memtest no I havent ran it on either stick as the Elixer works so far on its own, & as for the Corsair I cant boot with it in to test it.
I could take it to a friends & run it on the corsair there but as I said I think the memory is fine as its worked for ages before I got the new stick & it ran fine in my friends PC.
I have checked everything is corectly seated & whilst my power supply isnt a great make it seems ok (550w +3.3v=max/peak 20a/30a +5v 35a/40a +12v 15a/20a) & its only running a DVD-RW/9800Pro/1x200gb Sata/1x120gb Ide/3case fans & cpu) & I dont really want to goto the expense of buying a new PSU unless I really have too.
Oh one extra bit of info I just thought of that may be relevent is you know that little power connector that goes to the board just above the main power connector, well I ran this board for about 6 months without even knowing it was there so didnt plug it in.