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Sudden system instability.

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Megaptera

New Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2003
Location
San Diego
*Long post, please bear with me* :p

Hey guys, new poster here. This forum kicks ***! :)

Here is my situaion. About a year ago, I build this system:

AXP 1600+ (Palomino) w/ Volcano 6 heatsink
Soyo K7V Dragon + mobo
1024megs PC2100 RAM (1x512 in slot 1, 2x256 in slots 2 and 3)
340w power supply

All has worked fine up to this point, but a few days ago I decided to upgrade to an XP2100+ and buy a new heatsink. So I buy and install them, update the bios to the latest, and boot the box up.

Everything boots up ok, but I have apps crashing or the box freezing/rebooting now and again. So I go into the bios and load the safe setting, and change nothing except the CPU frequency to 133 from 100.

After this the box runs fine for hours with no problems. Then I went and changed the memory speed to 133, boot up the box and it starts freaking out again. I figured it was maybe a bad stick of memory (although I had no problems for a year running the 1600+ chip) so I took the memory out of slot 2 and 3 and try again. Yey, everything works fine.

So I start swapping out sticks to see which one is broken, but none of them cause errors when running by themselves. So I add the 512 back in slot one, then add a 256 in slot 3. All works ok. Then I add the 3rd one in and the box freezes. So I took the 2nd slot out again, but this time it freezes with just the 2 in there.

So after much frustration, I put the 1600+ chip back in to see if maybe it is just a faulty CPU. I also put all 3 memory sticks back in so that the setup would be the same as it was for the past year (with the exception of the Volcano 7+ replacing the volcano 6).

I boot the system up and it crashes!

I took the memory out of slot 2 and it works fine. I then take out the 512 stick and put the 256 from slot 2 in to slot one (leaving 256 in slot 1 and 256 in slot 3) and it is working fine.

*Almost done, take a deep breath!* :cool:

SO! This leaves me confused as hell because a setup that has worked fine for a year no longer works correctly. I saw on the other posts that people have been having some instability issues with excessive memory and these mobos, one specifically with a 2100+ chip.

Anyone have any suggestions or questions?
Is there any software out there that can test your memory to see if it is functioning correctly?

Thanks in advance!
-Mega
 
Well, I found Memtest-86 and cranked all my RAM through the tests. No errors came up so I tried putting all 3 back in to place with the 1600 chips. 3Dmark03 cant go for more than a minute or so before getting booted back to desktop, and IE was nice enough to crash on me when I came here to write this :p

Question, is it possible that the heatsink (Tornado 7+) could be causing errors? I dont think that the PSU is the problem because I did a majority of these tests with just the HD hooked up.

Thanks again :)
-Mega
 
Same here.

SY-K7VTA Pro Flashed Bios. 1024k PC133. 2000+XP

And not as stable as before.

Before when I had Athlon 1.33 and 256k PC133 it was rock stable. Then switched between the 1024k PC133 and the 256K and learned that more memory was unstable. With Factory Bios.

Did the Bios flash and 2000+XP and with 1024K PC133 and even more unstable.

My first theory was that software wasn't really writen to run on 1024K. I found some programs worked fine while others didn't.

My theory on the 2000+XP is the system was not design to run that fast to begin with. But they gave us the option to flash up.

Add both together and its not so stable.
 
Found an easy solution for this!

While trying to get a big fat Volcano 7+ on to the mobo, have the heatsink slip and hit the core chipping the corner of it. Then you have no choice but to go back to the 1600+ and there is no debate :p

Oh well, I suck :)
 
chip off the corner is usually survivable, been there done that,
your problem might have to do with the ram voltage, psu getting older not keeping up with that many sticks,also check your ram timings have to be pretty relaxed with so many sticks. plus the new bios for some of these soyos really sucks, default settings
are no good.
 
ps. 2 things changed, cpu and bios, then **** hit the fan, 2100 ocs better at lower multis default is 13x. i had better luck with an older bios in my board
 
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