need help tracking down problem

[inodiare]

Hi all,
i recently ordered my new system from newegg figuring i would try my hand at overclocking .. that hasn't worked out too well so far.

i got ::

Athlon xp 2500+ mobile (IQYHA)
Asus A7N8X-e Deluxe
(2) 512 Corsair pc3200
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Antec True430 psu
Volcano-12 + AS5

I've been reading these boards for the past few days trying to figure out what is wrong, or how to fix it, but with no luck.

I'm not sure where to start .. i can't get Prime95 to run w/o errors. I've tried plenty of combinations of freq / multi / vcore .. no go. System is running now at 200 x 11.5 @ 1.675 vCore. Prime95 (blend) ran for 56 min before an error. No errors running memtest. Temps are about 42 idle 46 under load.

Only oddities i can see, but not sure if they would affect anything, are the vCore, +3.3, and +5 rails .. set the vCore at 1.675 in the bios, but MBM shoes it fluxing between 1.65-1.78. The 3.3 goes from 3.26 - 3.31 and the +5 is anywhere from 4.87 - 4.95..

Oh, one last strange behavior .. if i set freq at 200 and use 9.5 mult, i can boot into windows but get prime95 errors. However, if i use 10 or 10.5 the machine doesnt post.. I hate to do a cold reboot at which point i get an error and have to change the mult ..

Would appreciate any help and i can supply any other information that you guys would need ..

 

[inodiare]

oh whoops, forgot to mention that i do get random restarts while in XP ..not after any specific time, just .... random

 

[michaelkahl]

sounds like a powersupply maybe...i say that because your cpu voltage is fluxuating so much. I have my vcore at 1.65 and it goes as high as 1.69 and thats it, you may just have some power issues, or just a mobile that doesn't OC well...these things aren't 100% guarantee 2.7GHz or even 2.2GHz for that matter. I hope you find the problem because I would think you would at least get 2.4GHz.

 

[Mr_Obvious]

MBM reads my core voltage all over the place on all my machines. Trust what it says in the bios under pc health, you should see it right where you set it. Nforce2 boards are power hungry, especially on the 12v rail, thats the one to watch. But the PSU you have is one of the recomended ones for nforce2 boards What are your memory timings at? if your running at spd, try running 1:1 and loosening them up a little, like 8-3-3 2.5 or more. check out the memory section of this forum.

 

[buddhafumes]

If you lower your memory to maybe, oh 4:5 it could be better, also loosening your timings and such it might help. You could have also just gotten a bad mobile that doesn't oc too well. I think your psu's fine enough, maybe just a bad cpu.

 

[inodiare]

Thanks Mr_Obvoius .. i had to go back to v 1008 of my bios .. for some reason they disabled manual memory settings in 1010 .. but after playing with the memory timings a bit, prime95 has been running for about 2 hours now w/o errors.

Going to let it run for a while more just to make sure everything is stable, but thanks for the help (been reading the memory forums too, alot of helpfull information in there )

 

[Docta_Z]

If you lower your memory to maybe, oh 4:5 it could be better, also loosening your timings and such it might help. You could have also just gotten a bad mobile that doesn't oc too well. I think your psu's fine enough, maybe just a bad cpu.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say but...

Running your ram async on an nforce2/xp platform will create a bottleneck and significantly decrease performance.

My advice: do some testing in memtest86 to help determine where your instability is. Perhaps your ram is an issue.

Also for 200x11.5 1.65v might be a little too low - I know my system requires say... 1.75 or so for 200x12...

It could be your power supply - but I don't think so yet. That fluctuation isn't excessive and 430 watts should be enough.

 

[inodiare]

Well, i changed my CAS Latency to 2.5 (from the 3 it was set at by default) and, leaving all else the same (11.5 x 200 @ 1.675) Prime95 ran without any errors for 6 hours.

Not sure if i should push my luck and try to get more out of this chip, but i probably will Testing 12 x 200 @ 1.7 atm, so we'll see how that goes. Maybe i'll even try to up the FSB too .. hopefully all goes well