Asrock Dual Sata 2 mobo with x2 3800 freezing up

[ShreddedWheat]

Here are my specs:

Asrock Dual Sata 2 mobo
x2 3800
Arctic Freezer Pro 64 (using arctic silver 5)
x800xt (x800 pro vivo flashed) ---->not oced
1 gig Patriot Sig DDR 400 ram
2 80 gig SATA HD in Raid 0
160 gig hd for storage (ide)
Case old Antec with 2 intake fans and 2 exhaust
Ultra 600 watt power supply
rest negligilbe.


Ok I was running an opteron 146 oced to 2740 for a year no problems.

I bought newegg special x2 3800 for 90 bux a few months ago. Replaced 400 watt ultra ps with 600 watt. I have been running the processor at 2450 @ 1.4 volts no problems until just recently (few weeks ago) I have been having issues with random lockups after about 5 to 30 minutes or sometimes longer.

I reinstalled WinXP 2 days ago and it ran fine for the install and then once I start reloading programs etc...it started locking up. (First with office xp) I have even tried lowering the clock speed to around 1800 mhz @ 1.35 volts and it still locks up?

The multiplier is at 10 x 245 = 2450 and memory at 204 @ CAS 3.0 -4-4-7 @ 2 T
HTT at 245 x 4 = 980

Using core temps it is reading around 36-39 C most of the time and rarely breaks 40-41C at idle. Both cores differ by around 2-3 degrees. Even when running demanding progs it will read the same for temps until it finally locks up?

About 4-5 days ago before reinstall I turned off computer at night and waited until it was turned off. The next morning when I woke up the computer was on but nothing on the monitor. I do not have wake up on lan or anything else enabled in the bios? I turned it off and turned it back on and it worked for awhile and then locked up.

I have tried reseating the heatsink numerous times with no difference. I have cleaned heatsink with isopropal alcohol (high%), etc... Using instructions on Arctic Silver's website, etc..... What is crazy is that when I take off the heatsink the Arctic Silver 5 is dry and cracked! I'm only using about 3/4th the size of a "bb" in the middle of hs and spreading with ccard.

I traded out other 400 watt ps and still lockups. I have read on various sites about disabling shadowing and caching of bios but there are "NO options" in my 1.5 bios to do this.

Thanks for the help.

 

[o1die]

Did you load the amd dual core driver?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: o1die
Did you load the amd dual core driver?

Or better yet, did you update the BIOS to one that supports dual cores, and did you uninstall the AMD single-core driver, and then install the dual-core driver?

 

[ShreddedWheat]

O1die

I installed the dual core optimizer and had problems with it (bad stability probs) and uninstalled and it isn't as bad with stability.

Myocardia

I reformatted the hds and reinstalled winxp. The bios is up to date with dual core support.

 

[sayNOtoFSB]

Sound like vid card. remove , clean and install vid card.
Have you installed AGP patch before installing PCIe card?

 

[SynthDude2001]

After reading this post, my theory/guess is RAM timings. I had the same thing happen to me a few months back (random hard locks, even with underclocked CPU/RAM, and even with different PSU's). I am running the same motherboard.

My conclusion, at least in my case, was that the BIOS was setting the "hidden" timings to something too tight for the RAM. I believe you're using a 166MHz RAM divider, and what I think is happening is that it's setting some internal timings tighter for 166MHz, even though the effective RAM speed ends up being 204MHz.

To try to confirm or eliminate this as a possibility, try temporarily enabling "Memory Flexibility" in the BIOS. This will use a 133MHz divider and relaxed timings. See if you still experience lockups then.

What I actually ended up doing in my case was permanently enabling the Flexibility option, then using A64info (a small Windows program) to change a few of my timings and raise my divider to 140MHz upon loading Windows (and I reworked my CPU overclock to use a 9x multiplier). Not all of this will be applicable in your case (if this even ends up being the problem at all).

Also, I can't remember if I have any caching/shadowing options in my BIOS either, but you say you're running 1.5 and that is fairly old (late 2005). You may want to try flashing to a newer one (2.30 is the newest official one), just to see if that might fix anything.

 

[ShreddedWheat]

I have been stable for 2 days now, I ended up doing some of the things before I read SynthDude2001's post and was like that is what I did.

I lowered the timings to 2.5 - 4- 4-8 running at 195 (using the 166 divider) I might try the timings back to 2.5 -3-3-7 at 1T as before in the past. Got rid of Muskin Value ram will use in other systems.

Lowered clock speed to 2340 but instead of using 10 x 234 I'm using 9 x 267. I uninstalled core temps, uninstalled AMD dual core optimizer. HTT is running at 267 x 3 = 801 was running at 980.

Once I know it is running stable over the next week I will do what you said and update the bios to 2.3.

Thanks for all the suggestions. It sucks that processor is runniing 100 mhz slower than it was before but stability is nice to have again.

Any last thoughts on why arctic silver 5 is dry and cracked whenever I take off the heatsink? Using Arctic Freezer Pro 64 too????