Unstable IC7-G in dual ddr mode

I put together a new system for a friend the other day. I decided to with the IC7 and a 2.8 800 fsb p4. He also got 2x256 corsair xms3500 dimms.

I haven't been able to get the board to run stable with both dimms, and bumping dimm voltage to 2.8 didn't help. It will typically run for short period of time 15-60 minutes or something like that. Then it either instant reboots, goes black screen which forces me to reboot or just shuts the power off like I had been holding the power button for a few secs.
With just 1 dimm the board runs fine, but offcourse that is quite unsatisfactory since he bought 2 dimms specifically for this board.

I am beginning to suspect that his powersupply is a bit on the weak side. It is a Q-tec 350W model which supplies 16A on 12V rail.

The system has 3 harddrives, 2 optical drives and 3 80mm fans besides all the regular stuff. The OS is windows 2000 with service pack 3.

So my questions boils down to this, is it worth to try and buy a new PSU or should I just rma the board and/or ram ?

thanks in advance
Jakob

You definitly are going to need more power with all those drives... Can you run HW monitor and see what kind of power fluxuations you are seeing while in windows.. I would suspect that you are getting some good voltage fluxuationgs causeing instability... If you happen to have a good P4 PSU somewhere I would try that first... It is possible that you have a bad board... Their was a run of boards with random problems in the begining and you might have one of those... Also try runnig the system with just a Video card and one HDD... Kept the case open and only have the CPU fan and NB fan running.... the current PSU should definitly be able to handle those few components.... If it's not able to run stable bare then I would consider RMA'ing the MB... I seriously doubt that it could be the ram...

Also are you trying to get this stable at STOCK speeds??? You want to make sure you are stable at stock speeds and do a clean install so not to have driver problems...

Just had another look at the system. The PSU has a diagram of what loads it can handle etc.

On the +12V rail it says peak 16A and max 12A

Another indicator that we are running short on power ?


Edit: everything is running stock, I even bumped the mem settings a bit back. The system isn't going to be overclocked

Then try striping everything off and trying to run it with just the minimum components to make sure if it is a PSU issue or a hardware issue...

Also make sure you flash to the newest 1.3 BIOS.... That could be causeing some hartache if you are runing the 1.0 BIOS that came on the board..

1.3 bios on the board now. Ran for about 2 hours then insta rebooted and locked up so we had to cut the power. This was with 1x512 pc2700 ram. and Memory was set at 5:4 ratio. I'm beginning to give up, would kinda suck to go out and buy an expensive psu just to find out that power isn't the problem.

you have a PM

also try putting memory timings manually... go 2.5-3-3-7... this is just to make sure the RAM isn't the problem... Kept the 5:4 memory ratio... Also put the memory at 2.65 volts... Also put the processor at 1.575v.... It's possiable that the processor isn't getting enough juice...

Maglin said:

also try putting memory timings manually... go 2.5-3-3-7... this is just to make sure the RAM isn't the problem... Kept the 5:4 memory ratio... Also put the memory at 2.65 volts... Also put the processor at 1.575v.... It's possiable that the processor isn't getting enough juice...

Click to expand...

Maglin.....your spec is similar to mine.....whats your CPURAM running at.....as i could only get my setup (2.4C IC7-G, Corsair 2 x 512 DDR3500) to run at 3:2 ratio it wouldn't boot with a 5:4...any tips?

DaWolf
I have my CPU at 1.575v @ 275 FSB. My Ram is at 2.8v at timings 2-3-2-7.... Once I get a good HSF on my NB I'm going to try for a 300 FSB running my ram at 2-2-2-6... Currently I can get any higher than 275 without pumping my CPU voltage to 1.65 which drasticly increases my temps so I'm sticking with what I'm running at now as I'd rather have decent temps then a tad bit more performance...

cheers

will try it when i get home....i got the little brother of the 7000cu cooler the 7000alcu....i had it up to 3.5 but it rebooted half way through rendering...iam happy with 3.3 though as long as i can get the most out of my memory........will be posting some 3D studio Max benchmarks

The 7000-CaAlu is definitly a good cooler... It performs almost as good as the Cu ... 1*C diffenence between the two with only half the weight of the Cu.....