New Athlon system problems, but way worse this time...

[Duke 0]

For 2 days now, my newly acquired Athlon system, which worked great for about a week or so, freezes randomly. I suspected this was due to a lack of cooling or the 235W power supply.

 

So I bought a 300W power supply, 2 additional case cooling fans and a bigger CPU cooler, but it all didn't help.

 

I already have the newest BIOS, drivers etc., and tried to set the RAM clocking to 10/3 instead of 8/2, but it didn't help.

 

Config:

-------

Abit KA7 Mobo

Athlon/750

512 MB RAM

ASUS V6600 Pure GeForce

Adaptec 29160N Ultra160 SCSI

Intel Pro100+ NIC

 

OS: Win2000

 

Thanx in advance for any help.

 

Regards

[Dirty Harry 0]

Sounds strange, how often is occasionally ? Maybe you want to try to pinpint the problem by

 

- resetting CPU / videocard / memory

- using just one memory stick

- booting without Sound, LAN or SCSI card

 

H.

[gramaglia 0]

I read that both Athlon and Ge-Force are very power consuming alone, well both of them really need a good power supply....But a 300W should do...

Bear in mind also that video drivers also from Nvidia behave strangely, search in Games section to find what version is the most stable...

No other ideas, sorry!

[GHackmann 0]

Did you try the newest beta BIOS for your MB? It seems to be more stable (ironically) than the release version.

 

Also try looking at the unofficial KA7 FAQ for more information (http://go.to/ka7faq). (Why is it that unofficial FAQs are always more helpful than the official ones?)

[MR whistler 0]

yeh i had the same problem as you, but try increseing the voltage to your graphics cards,(3.5) This may help , but for some reason these boards don't like geforce graphics cards or its the agp port, i must admit it is the best board for overclocking, but if you want a stable board i would go for a asus k7v and that seemed to sort the problem for me. oh just one last thing the abit ka7 is very chosey on which ram is used, so that may be the cause. so try setting your ram to run at 100mhz instead of 133mhz if you running pc133 !

 

i hope this helps you !

[Duke 0]

Already tried flipping the 2 memory modules, and also running only one of them. Since the memory is pc100, I run them at 100 MHz.

[Laddyboy 0]

go to the cpu voltage settings an try upping the I/O setting...try 3.4 and then 3.5 and so on...I had to put mine to 3.5 for stability. 3.6 locked my system though..so don't go to high. If you lock at post...just shut off computer and wait 15sec and hold down the insert key and turn it on and after detection of the hard drives start go back into cmos and go down a notch. default is 3.3

good luck

[Ge0ph 0]

I have been told (so this is hearsay) that a good quality 230 watt power supply will work better then a cheap 300 watt power supply.

I am due to get a new box and I wiil probably go with an Athlon or Duron. I am also told that if you get the right combo of parts (key parts are power supply and quality memory) then you will have no problems with the new AMD chips.

 

[This message has been edited by Ge0ph (edited 14 July 2000).]

[Laddyboy 0]

go to the cpu voltage settings an try upping the I/O setting...try 3.4 and then 3.5 and so on...I had to put mine to 3.5 for stability. 3.6 locked my system though..so don't go to high. If you lock at post...just shut off computer and wait 15sec and hold down the insert key and turn it on and after detection of the hard drives start go back into cmos and go down a notch. default is 3.3

good luck

[Duke 0]

Thanx, but it got even worse:

Now the system won't start at all anymore, so I removed all PCI and the AGP grafx card cards to see whether it is one of the cards causing the problem. Not the case.

 

I tried with different memory and an older PCI grafx card (both of which I KNOW they work fine), but still - blank screen, no vga signal, no beeps, no keyboard blinking, just NOTHING.

 

So I suspected it's gotta be either the mobo or the CPU that's defective. But that's being tested at my local computer store right now...

 

Besides, I laid out 50 bucks for the power supply, so I guess it's a good one...

 

CU

[Ge0ph 0]

I have had motherbords that would ground out on the case. Sometimes the ground would happen out of the blue and kill the machine or it just appeared dead at start up. I know this is a stab in the dark but it is possable.

 

Jeff Young

[Duke 0]

... it's the mobo that's causing the problem; they checked the CPU and memory on different boards and also another CPU on my board.

So I'll give it back and get a (hopefully more stable) Asus K7V instead.

 

Thanx anyway.... CU