Finally, I think my A64 is stable.

[Shade00]

I got my Athlon 64 stuff back at the end of December, and I've been struggling with it ever since. Initially I was attempting to run the rig on my Antec SL300 PSU, but after running into stability issues, I bought an Antec SL400, thinking the added amps on the rails would add some stability. Well, it did help some, but I was still having serious issues. The two power supplies also gave me the same voltage readings in the BIOS (3.15-3.18v for 3.3v, and 4.75-4.86v for 5v), but I chalked it up to poor board voltage monitoring.

So I tried another board, and I still ran into stability issues. I would get seemingly random bluescreens with the new board. So today, I went to the local computer shop and I bought a 360w Enlight PSU.

The results were dramatic. On first boot-up with the Enlight, My 3.3v rail shot up to 3.31v and the 5v rail was stable at 5.02v. After adding all my devices it sticks at 3.29v/4.99v/12.39v, which is wayyyyyyyyyy above the Antec PSUs. All I can surmise is that the Antec Solution Series power supplies have issues with (at least my) A64 boards. I don't know what to think. Both power supplies worked great with my old nForce2 setup.

Also, it took me some time to figure it out, but the first two RAM slots on my Leadtek K8N error out at 5:35 in Memtest. The only slot that's stable is slot 3. I have no idea why. It must just be a bad board. I would RMA it, but Newegg doesn't have anymore in stock and they don't have any comparable boards in the $90 price range.

So, I haven't had any blue screens since I got the new power supply, and I'm extremely pleased about that. Time will tell, but I think the problem was in those PSUs all along. I just didn't want to place the blame on them because the 300w had been so faithful and the 400w was brand new. At any rate, I've got some overclocking to do. I know this CPU will run at 2200mhz with 1.55v, so I'm pretty sure it's still got some headroom.

What's the lesson here? There isn't really one, but as many before me have said, PSU quality is extremely important. If anyone finds any other reports of Antec Solution Series PSUs causing trouble with Athlon 64s, I would love to hear them.

Here's my setup, as I haven't taken the time to update my sig yet:

Athlon 64 3000+
Leadtek K8N
R9800np 128mb w/Samsung 2.86ns
512mb Buffalo PC3200
120gb hard drive, CD-RW, DVD-ROM
... and all the other obligatory jazz.

[Maxvla]

thats why i start with the best psu's for the money, sparkle/fortron :)

got a fortron 530 on my A64 rig.

great to hear you got it worked out :D

how do you like your rig?

[Shade00]

Yeah, I've always heard good things about Fortron and Sparkle, but I never had any problems with my Antec, so I assumed another wouldn't be a problem. I didn't expect the Enlight to be that great. *Shrug* Who knows. I'm just glad it's working.

I've been loving this system even while it wasn't working properly. I was able to get off 3dmarks every once in a while and I was very impressed. I'm going to give it another day or two to make sure it doesn't BSOD on me, then I'll start pushing it.

For a while I thought the processor itself was bad, and I was going to send it back and get an Opteron 144. I wanted to play around with Socket 940, but it would have cost me too much more to switch over.