Correct clock speeds for 8RDA+ system?

[wrenhunter]

Hi

I recently purchased/assembled a new system that looks like this:

Athlon XP 2100+*
Thermaltake Volcano 9 heatsink/fan*
Crucial Radeon 8500 LE 128 MB DDR
Epox 8RDA+ Motherboard*
PC2700 512MB Crucial
Western Digital 100GB HDD *8 MB Cache*
HP 9100 CD/RW
Mitsumi Floppy*
Immersion case with 400W (AMD approved) PS*
Extra Thermaltake case fan*
Windows XP Professional
Phoenix Award BIOS (dated 12/31/02)*

(*This stuff was part of the barebones I bought. Other stuff I had or added.)

Nothing is overclocked. The system freezes now and again under normal home use and I don't know why.

Before I look at the heatsink/fan (which seems OK but you never know), I want to ask about the FSB and memory speeds. The Advanced Chipset Features screen in the BIOS shows the FSB Frequency at 133 with no multiplier. I wrote to the guys who sold me the barebones system and they told me the CPU runs at 266. But the choices are 100, 133, and 166, and the multipliers start at 3.0. What should this value really be, and how do I set it? (All the other settings I have not touched, they seem to be default.) And same question for the RAM speed?

Even if having these settings too slow don't account for the freezing, I would still like to have the right values.

Thanks,

David

 

[mechBgon]

The CPU should run at a 133MHz frontside bus. This bus is a double-data-rate bus so it equates to 266MHz DDR effective speed. It would be best to run the memory at 100% of CPU speed, which means it will be running at 133MHz (or DDR266). This may seem counterintuitive, since the memory is running slower than its rated DDR333 speed, but this results in lower latencies which generally make the system perform better.

I wonder how good the power supply really is. Can you spot a name brand on the label, and what are the amperage ratings for the 3.3V, 5V, 12V and 3.3V+5V combined? The rest of your parts are "known quantities" for the most part, and cheapie PSUs have cause headaches for some folks.

A couple other questions for you:

What temperature does your BIOS report, after you let the system idle for about ten minutes? It should be in the 45C to 50C area or so. If it's closer to 60C+ then maybe something's amiss with your CPU cooling.

When the system does shut down, does it reboot, or does it turn off as if you'd unplugged it?

Do you have the Thermaltake fan plugged into the motherboard? What model is that fan?

Welcome to the Forums

 

[wrenhunter]

Sorry for the delay in replying. Thanks for the info on bus speed, I think that is set correctly now (at 133 as you suggest). Since I first wrote, I have updated to the latest BIOS from the EPOX site, reinstalled XP, and installed the latest chipset drivers. I've confirmed that all 3 fans are running. The BIOS is running at "Optimized Defaults". No OC'ing.

I checked the power supply but do not see a name. I may try again, and in any case will bear this in mind. Regarding electrickal readings and system/cpu temps, I found a monitoring program, USDM 1.07, on the system CD and am using that now to log info. Temps seems stable around 46 (CPU) and 35 (system). The CPU fan (now set to variable speed via chip autosensor) has been up around 4300 RPM.

Note that the system does not shut down or reboot, it freezes. When I got home today from work, it was frozen after ~36hours of uptime. This is the first freeze since I reinstalled XP on Sat.

If it's not the PS or the RAM, I wonder if it could be the ATI card? It's really been a pain between crashing Total War and conflicts with Mozilla (total system reboots!). I'm giving strong thought to RMA'ing it for a GeForceMX.

And thanks for the Welcome

 

[mechBgon]

My personal view of cheap PSU's might be slanted, but I would bail the no-name unit and pick up that Enlight 420W unit that newegg has for $46 shipped, or another recognized brand like Sparkle Power, Antec or Enermax.

I asked about the Thermaltake fan because they have at least one model that draws enough 12V power that you wouldn't want to plug it into a motherboard (I'm referring to the Smart Fan II).

Since you have WinXP and a burner, I also suggest running the nVidia 2.03 driver installer again, but click No at the prompt that asks if you want to install the SW IDE drivers. This causes the driver installer to use the burner-friendly WHQL-certified IDE driver instead. If you go through Windows Device Manager and look at the drives, the SW driver will result in them being viewed as SCSI drives, while the WHQL driver will result in them being viewed as IDE drives.

Good luck!