Strange pattern of crashes [Please help]

[El Asso Wipo]

I have a Tbird 800 running on a epox-8kta3 that I'm trying to clock at a very modest 950. However any time I try to overclock the same events occur. The system works perfectly for an hour, then it crashes. When I reboot in response to the previous crash, my machine freezes at the logon screen. Heat is not an issue for my CPU, 45C is the highest it has ever hit. I/Os voltages have been tested between 3.6v-3.75v and core voltages have been maxed out at 1.85v.

At this point I really don't have a clue what the hell is wrong. Maybe cooling on the chipset is insufficient. Perhaps I need to do a voltage hack. I don't really want to have to buy a blorb or solder resistors on my mobo though.

Any ideas?

[Hoot]

Give us your system compliment, starting with your power supply wattage. It could be overheating under the load. That's only one of many possibilities.

Hoot

[TT120]

It certainly sounds like a heat issue. Maybe it's a chipset or GPU heat problem as the CPU temp seems ok. Maybe you could put Blorbs on your GPU and chipset. They seem to work well for this application. Maybe better case cooling (more fans) would also help the problem.

[El Asso Wipo]

Okay the here's some general system info:
-300watt enlight PSU
-Epox-8kta3
-800mhz tbird
-192mb pc100 generic crap
-voodoo 5500
-2 Quantum IDE HDs
-Toshiba 4.8x DVD drive
-SBlive Value
-Generic Ethernet NIC
-Promise ATA 66 controller


As far as case cooling is concerned, I have dual 120mm sunon fans blowing 200cfm the internals of my case.

The voltage levels right now at stock cpu clock are:
+5v = 5.103v
+12v = 12.305v

So I really doubt I'm sucking up too much power. Another thing to mention is that I have the 686b south bridge. It use to be a problem until I did a BIOS flash, so I doubt that's it.

[Bender]

Sounds like heat but it could be ram. Athlon systems don't seem to like cheepo pc100. I have had some wierd memory related crashes when using cheep pc100. Your case cooling should be great but what kind of heatsink are you using? I highly recomend a fop32 with some good thermal paste. It isn't to expensive and not very loud. Good Luck.

[El Asso Wipo]

Bender (May 16, 2001 11:51 p.m.):
Sounds like heat but it could be ram. Athlon systems don't seem to like cheepo pc100. I have had some wierd memory related crashes when using cheep pc100. Your case cooling should be great but what kind of heatsink are you using? I highly recomend a fop32 with some good thermal paste. It isn't to expensive and not very loud. Good Luck.

I'm watercooled, and I have some artic silver compound on the cpu. What would be a good replacement RAM?