Unstable at Normal Speed

I have a Asus A7V266-E with a AMD Athlon XP 2100+, for the longest time i've had to run it at 1333 mhz and it won't even boot if i put it up to 1700 mhz, i thought it was my Power Supply so i finnally upgraded that from a 250w to a 400w, i have 2 nic card, 2 hd's, and 2 cdroms, ati radeon 8500 128mb ddr, x2 - 256mb DDR, don't know the clock speed on that... or even the brand... but i should be able to run this thing at 1700mhz.. any insight? recommendations? bios settings?

Welcome to the forums. Thers one quirk about that board, theres a jumper near the top of the board for the cpu type, default is supposed to be athlon\duron but most come set to polomino. When set to polomino, it may cause problems like you having, set it to athlon\duron and see if it helps. Also check over all the jumpers(dip switches) and make sure everything is set to jumper free mode.

Jim

thanks for the welcome... and the advice, jumpers are in jumper free mode, and you were right, the jumper was on palomino, which helped a little bit, i can boot now at 1733mhz, but after about 5min in windows, it bluescreens and reboots, installed pc probe, my cpu temp at idle was about 70C, so i went out and got another fan, now it's at 60C... and the +12v monitor is at 13.5v.. and flashing... but haven't looked up what that means yet.. is there any bios settings i should be aware of? i have rev 1011, any other advice would be great.

Have you tried mother board monitor instaed of probe? I always had better luck with it rather than probe. You may also want to check your voltages with a mutimeter, I've had probe give me a false reading before.

Those temps seem a little high, do you have good airflow though the case, and what is your room temp?

I can't recall much of the settings without looking at them, if I get a chance later I'll look into it, the boards in my son's system now.

Jim

airflow is kinda crappy right now, just getting into this... i have one case fan blowing out the back, with the cpu fan, and my northbridge fan is blown out right now.. but rounded cables are comming in on tuesday, and i'll get another fan to suck air into the case as well... i just hate the fact i have to run my pc underclocked

Temp a little high

Yes I would have to agree. I know my 2600+ Barton on an A7V333 starts to get a little flaky around 60c. You might want to add a fan or 2 to the side cover straight out from the processor and video card area. You can use a hole saw to add the holes for the fans. Thats what I did and then I also bought fan grills to put over them and used the grills to mark the mounting holes for the fans. You can never have too much air flow through the case!! And I have used vantecs chipset cooler fans to replace the stock fans or heatsinks on the north bridge. They cost about $10 for aluminum and $15 for copper. It could be the north bridge getting hot that is causing you some problems too.

Heat

If you have the tools I would suggest cutting an 80mm hole in the top and put a fan under it to blow the air out I have four fans running and that one mod lowered my temp by 10 degrees.

Just make sure you take the case apart dont do any work with any components near it too many steel filings make mobo go kaboom!!!!!!!!!

thanks for all the tips and ideas. I unfortunatly don't have the tools myself, so i've been looking for a place that i could take pieces of my case in to have holes cut, but havn't been too succesful, most places are a little iffy on how well they could do it.

I got my round cables, which brought the mb temp down.. but cpu is still idling at 67C.. so i'm ordering a new heat sink and fan, and i've seen some cooling kits that draw air in from outside the case right to the cpu.. but don't really know how well those work, but they look cool.

those temps are close to danger levels.... i would take the side off of your case for the time being. it will at the very least allow your computer to breathe. im guessing this will get you into the mid-low 50s as far as temps. at least try this until you get a more premanent solution

I agree

I would also remove the side cover. The best heat sink in the world won't help you much if the temp inside the case is too hot. With hot air inside the case, you are just blowing hot air across your heat sink. If you have a drill or can barrow one, you can purchase the hole saw and drill bit needed for not a whole lot of cash. At least a lot less than a new processor. Good luck!

hot hot hot

Even if you just draw a circle on the top of the case and drill some holes with a drill then place a fan there(blow out) dont have to have an open hole like i cut (dont have to worry about cover for it then), it will help. Dont need a lot of cutting tools ......

You can get fans fairly cheap.....

it's been awhile, but still tinkering... i put the jumper back on palomino.. because i have a palomino... did some things.. but not many.. with no results.

Things i found out...
1) Jumpers for vcore were on 1.85.. so dropped that to the recommended settings of 1.75
2) Will boot at full speed 1.73ghz.. but not stable, after about 10secs of running prime95 system hangs...
3) Will boot in "safe mode" 1.33ghz and run prime95 without incident
4) Sandra still says vcore is at 1.86 even though in bios it says 1.75

Things i'm gonna do still...
1) Buddy at work has an Athlon 2400 sittin around gonna snag that up, see if it works
2) Upgrading to a new computer this week, A8N-SLI Deluxe, Athlon 64 3500+, 1GB Corsair TwinX3200CTPT, ati x700 256mb and yes i know SLI dosen't work with ATI.. but i wanted the optical digital audio out and socket 939 with pcix..

so this system will be a secondary.. it still runs games pretty good.. and hopefully with that 2400 i can run it at normal speed.