Help, What part of my Rig is DYING!?!?

Stability issues have creeped up...and now they're creeping up even more and more. I think I might be suffering from SNDS

Abit IC-7 (some revision)
2x512 Crucial Ballistix PC4000 ram, dual channel.
Northwood 3.0c running at 3.6...now at [email protected]
XP-90 with a higher-capacity 90mm Panaflo on top of it
I replaced the ABIT passive heatsink on the northbridge with a Vantec HS/FAN combo to keep that cool.
Antec TruPower 430 watt

1 Geforce 6800GT
1 SATA Seagate 120 meg drive
1 DVD Rom drive

Thats it......

I run with the case off....everything inside the case is relatively cool to the touch, idle temp for the P4 shows as 44 on the MB (42 to 44), under prime or load I've never seen it break 55. But everything is cool to the touch. The Caps near the CPU are cool, the XP-90's fins are cool.....even the ram isn't really warm.

I'm getting frequent automatic reboots on my Win2000 machine.

Sometimes it will run stable for days.....and then, for no apparrant reason, it'll just start giving me errors when I try to start an app, try to do anything and it generates an error. Try to shut down, explorer.exe has given me an error" and then the machine reboots. Then sometimes it will just reboot once, twice....then it'll be perfectly stable for hours of gaming, etc, etc.

I noticed that I think some of this problem began to happen when I added the 2nd stick of Ballistix ram. This motherboard maxxes out at 2.8 volts to the ram, and when I run the box overclocked at 3.6 (lets say) its at..what..240Mhz? Could there just not be enough juice on the MB for these two stick sof ballistix?

Or am I seeing the early stages of SNDS?? Again.....heat doesnt' appear to be an issue, but the lockups happen now at 3.6...3.4.....it even happend a few times at default 3.0 speeds...heck I'm wondering if I'll get through this posting!

Oh wait, I said "Lockup". Thats not right, nothing ever locks up. If anything, it will suddenly stop responding...like I'll be midway typing an email and suddenly it just stops typing. Mouse moves, I can open and minimize the window...but then the machine just reboots itself. Thats the problem, rebooting for no good reason.

Sometimes when I boot up I'll KNOW if I'm giong to have problems as some of the icons will be blacked out...you know, like there isn't any color to the icon in the taskbar so its just all black.....

Whats goin on here people.....am I going to be shopping for a replacement P4 soon or could it be something else...??

Thanks.

If it started when you installed more memory.......
www.memtest86.com

Memtest will run for hours at 3.6Ghz without dying. At 3.65ghz I start to get errors, so backing off to 3.6 or even 3.5 seemed perfectly stable.

But the reboots continue. I'm perplexed.

**UPDATE**
I've decided to change my memory timings from 1:1 to 5:4, to see if that changes anything.

I'm currently running the box at 3.68Ghz with 5:4 timings.

Normally my ram timings in 1:1 mode (default) are 2.5-3-3-8.

I switched the ratio to 5:4 on the motherboard, without touching the RAM, and now CPU-Z is reporting that the ram is running at 2-3-3-7.

So far its stable...I primed for a few minutes...but I don't know...maybe some gaming will do the trick, like I said...its rebooted in the past for no good reason at all.......if this is stable, maybe I can get 3.75Ghz out of the thing, which would be running the ram at its "rated' speed of 250Mhz..only....at 5:4...not really....well, you know.

are u sure that windows just isnt corrupted from the number of reboots you have been having, u should get the BSOD , unless u have auto reboot on, turn it off and make it so it gives u a BSOD and see what what error its showing, that can help out..

sounds like a soft problem
you mentioned it stops responding, but mouse moves, well if it were the cpu/ram/mobo/etc the mouse wouldnt move either it would lock solid


D

Sorry for the scrunched screenshot, but its the best I could do quickly.

My voltage as you can see is reported a little lower than my setting on the motherboard, which is at 1.575v. So if those reported voltages are true, my ABIT IC7 is undervolting. These screens were recorded IDLE, not under load. Under Load those voltages drop a bit more. So even when I had it set at 1.6V before, it probably wasn't delivering 1.6v under load.

I will say this, running the PC at 5:4 RAM instead of 1:1 seems to make things more stable, I did set my OS to NOT automatically reboot, so we'll see the next time she wants to reboot what the logs say. Could it be, as I read in other posts, that my Northbridge or Southbridge can't keep up with everything running this fast? IE: its a motherboard problem?

Right now AIDA is showing my +12v rail as 11.86 to 11.98, again at idle. DIMM shows 2.74 to 2.75v.

what PSU is this, the rails seem fine, within tolerances, lower than I personally would allow but everything seems in order.

ANTEC TruPower 430. So far the PC has been running with those stats above for a few hours, no signs of trouble. I'll prime it for awhile, see what happens there. This is where I'll see if the volts are a problem I imagine.

I'm tempted to re-memtest this whole thing as I haven't tried it at the 5:4 setting.

If this thing runs at a higher clock speed and lower volts at 5:4 than the 1:1 speed settings would allow, are we thinking the MB might not be able to handle the 1:1 RAM speeds at 240+mhz, or that the MB isn't able to supply enough juice to the chips?

My MB VDIMM settings max at 2.8v, but even at idle thats 2.75......under load that might drop....??? <shrug>

I dont think I have any real problems with my Win2000 install. Would hate to have to format the box and reinstall everything, but if I had to, its a weekend morning project.

Maybe now is a good time to move to XP PRo......although thats $150 bucks i'd rather not have to spend since 2000 serves me just fine so far...

well you also can't trust software voltage readings, the only way to be sure is to use a Multimeter to read them. I'm inclined to say that the PSU isn't strong enough, its kinda weak for that system. I had the 430 as well with my 6800gt and it couldn't handle it. An upgrade to 500W fixed that

I've got a Voltmeter here...I'll check readings on the 12v rail later, but if it returns ok, how can I check the rails that are actually in use, like the 12V going to the MB....the HD gets its own 12v, the CD rom gets its own.....and the 6800gt has its own.

Since the voltage reports low on the MB I have no idea what to trust I guess.