Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P - killing me swiftly

[azkiwi]

OK - got a brand new board today - Gigabyte MA790x-UD4P as a replacement for the Biostar I couldn't get to work. I am now officially losing my mind!

Plugged in the new AMD 7850 and SATA drives and booted up.

Initially it booted up my old installation of XP and installed chipset and graphics drivers (Nvidia) but then started to mess up. System started to crash when the USB mouse first moved. OK, it was worth a try. Reinstall windows ... crashed during (quick format) install.

OK, so now I have it sitting on a mat, out of the case, plugged in. Two SATA drives, DVD, GeForce and one stick of OCZ 1066 ... and I just can't get the damn thing to run all the way through XP setup.

It seems like as just as soon as I start giving it inputs - it dies. I have to power off and then it restarts the install, til about the same point. the only other memory I have to try is DDR667 (it crashed too). Since it seems to fail when it gets I/O I'm wondering if that is a memory or cpu issue. That said, it has crashed during POST and elsewhere during setup where no input was required.

I've built numerous systems over the years, but this one has me on fire.

Ideas puleease!

 

[azkiwi]

Wondered if it could be heat related ... took off the HSF, cleaned it all off and reapplied AS ... got XP installed but locked up as soon as I tried to mouse click "install" the chipset drivers.

 

[lopri]

Wait. You're going from 790GX to 790X?

You may need to reinstall OS. Going from 790X to 790GX should be fine, but the other way around might cause an issue because 790GX has an IGP (and your NVIDIA drivers).

 

[Stoneburner]

what's your PSU? Also, maybe it doesn't matter any more, but I always play it safe and make sure any board is properly on standoffs. Running it just off a mat seems like an unnecessary risk.

 

[Stoneburner]

Originally posted by: lopri
Wait. You're going from 790GX to 790X?

You may need to reinstall OS. Going from 790X to 790GX should be fine, but the other way around might cause an issue because 790GX has an IGP (and your NVIDIA drivers).

I went from 790gx to 790x and it worked flawlessly, I just had to get into safe mode on XP and delete a few drivers.

 

[azkiwi]

Removed GX drives before switch over but have since formatted and reinstalled XP - so that's not an issue. But its locking up in the post-OS install setup. By lockup I mean freeze - no keyboard mouse ctrl-alt-del or reset. Hard shut down only.

PSU is Antec 500W.

 

[azkiwi]

Originally posted by: Stoneburner
what's your PSU? Also, maybe it doesn't matter any more, but I always play it safe and make sure any board is properly on standoffs. Running it just off a mat seems like an unnecessary risk.

Running it off a mat to rule out any misinstallation / grounding issues.

My last stab is that the default bios settings may not match the components somehow for voltage etc. The OCZ Reaper is problem in that it is 2.2v default and even tho the bios is set to 1066 I don't think it bumps the voltage. CPU is auto-detected as 2800.

 

[lopri]

I assume you have tried Clear CMOS? Was there any other CPU installed previously?

 

[azkiwi]

Cleared CMOS and same cpu before.

 

[Stoneburner]

Originally posted by: azkiwi

PSU is Antec 500W.

Well, that's probably not the problem then. I was getting similar errors installing windows 7 release candidate when I had a crappy PSU installed. As soon as I put in a decent one, it ran.

I know antec is generally good, but maybe there's something wrong with your particular one?

 

[azkiwi]

I know antec is generally good, but maybe there's something wrong with your particular one?

Hard to rule out - I don't have another one and its an expensive item to buy just to test. Iran the hardware monitor on the last mobo and it was reporting all the voltages as being pretty accurate.

The thing that is kicking my butt is the system "seems" to run until I do some "work". I booted through to safe mode - device manager says only the graphics card needs drivers (haven't had it run long enough to install them!) but then locked-up when I dragged a window. No other errors reported.

 

[azkiwi]

After much reflection, I am now thinking this is (at least partly) a heat issue. The power supply seems to be cool; the fan is working and I blew out the little dust that had gathered. I cleaned off the cpu with isopropyl alcohol and carefully reapplied some Arctic Silver.

After being off for a while I can get it into XP, but after just a few minutes (5) it locks up. Can a cpu just run too hot out of the box? The bios says it's running at stock 3.125V and obviously I have not been able to even think about overclocking.

Its not in a case right now so its not a case issue.


Edit;

vcore 1.312V
DDR2 2.256V
+3.3V 3.264V
+12V 12.239V
system 40ºC
cpu 49ºC
cpu fan 3110 rpm (smart fan enabled and speed increases with temps)

Is this normal for an X2 7850 under no load?

 

[azkiwi]

Update; I guess its not heat ... even underclocked and at 44ºC the system hangs after a few minutes in the bios health screen. From reading other threads it seems like o/c'ers don't crash until at least the 60ºs...

 

[Philippart]

don't worry, phenom I based cpus only start crashing at about 70C

 

[lopri]

I think that is the cause. Fan running @3000RPM and CPU rigs 50C in BIOS, then it will easily creep up higher. And often times actual CPU temperature is higher than what BIOS reports (even as a ball-park figure). Try a temp monitoring apps? Everest, HWMonitor, EasyTune, AOD, etc. Boot the system up and do light tasks and see what CPU temp is like. If a monitoring software reports two different value for the CPU temperature, fire up another monitoring prog and see what it says. If both report the same two values, I'd go by with the higher value.

 

[azkiwi]

Originally posted by: lopri
Boot the system up and do light tasks and see what CPU temp is like. If a monitoring software reports two different value for the CPU temperature, fire up another monitoring prog and see what it says.

Can't get it to run that long! I'm, just running the PC Health in the bios and it locks up there after 3 or 4 minutes - so that's even before the OS gets loaded. I even underclocked to 2600 and it locked at 44ºC ...