K9N Platinum Sli trouble

[MrFlint]

Athlon 64 x2 AM2 4200+
Zalman CNPS9500
K9N Platinum Sli
OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 667MHz EL Gold Edition 2GB Dual Channel Kit
XFX Geforce 7600GT 256mb XXX edition (another one will be added today for SLI)
a SATA drive and a DVD burner (these arent important for the issue)
temps = idle 30-34 c, load - no idea havent checked that yet
Enermax Liberty 400w PSU

ever since ive assembled the system i ran into a strange thing - during the changing of setting in the BIOS it froze a few times.
Neverthless i was able to run the system, install windows, start to install other software (yesterday)
and today when i turned on the system, windows booted up, and sudenly it restarts and freezes up in pre bios stage...
Reset or Shutdown resulted in power up, but nothing happening, the monitor did even got out of standby...
after a few tries, and about ten minutes without power, it started up and went to a bios stage, giving a CMOS Bad Checksum Error... loaded bios with fail-safe settings, system worked fine and booted up windows... windows worked fine aswell, attempt to reboot and change the bios settings, gave a Bad Checksum from start and a freeze in bios. System is not getting to bios stage once again...

Attempted a CMOS Reset, (battery removal and button pressing)
System booted up with CMOS Bad Checksum and Date/Time error. Fixed in bios booted up windows. worked fine, went away for 15 minutes, came back and same problem again system powered up but nothing works - reset and shutdown didnt help again...

Possible suspect - EVEREST Extreme edition (it caused the first reboot...)


A Mobo problem that warrants a vist to the store, to return it?

 

[elph]

get a new power supply.

 

[cmrmrc]

update the bios...i hear that the newer bios fixes alot of bugs

 

[MrFlint]

Well at the moment the board is back in the store for defectiveness testing...
But whats wrong with the power supply ive got? not strong enough? (note its brand new) after all i didnt exprience sudden shutdowns... in fact there were no power probs at all...
i was thinking about updating the bios but that requires to get bios and windows booted up... something that refused to happen during the last few times...

 

[MrFlint]

Board was replaced, as it was not working past POST.
New board has similiar probs, but i managed (running on one mem stick) to up the mem voltage to 2.0v, ran memtest, was stable no errors no freezing up...
thinking of flashing the bios...

 

[Bateluer]

I had horrible luck with the 1.3 Bios myself, see my thread about it.

 

[MrFlint]

yeah ive seen it, but i wonder why did you use liveupdate? it is a know source of bios flashing problems... (atleast according to the MSI forums )

 

[MrFlint]

manually flashed to bios ver 1.3, RAM runs stable now on 1.9v (the new default setting)
but it seems that the root of the problem was also one of the RAM sticks...
it refuses to POST with one of them, and it refuses to post when they are combined,
changing their locations made them POST but it froze again the bios...
so at the moment i have a dual channel kit of wich one stick runs well and stable, and the second one not POSTing or freezing in the BIOS... upping the voltage didnt help the faulty stick...
back to the service centre then...

 

[AstroGuardian]

 

[AstroGuardian]

I don't know what's with you guys. But troubleshooting a hardware problem is not an easy thing. You must do tests step by step.
Did you:
Try with older PCI card?
Did you try with unpluged DHH and Optical drive?
I know you didn't try with only one memory stick the first time.

And what's most frustrating you made BIOS changes and not being sure about the problem.

But your biggest mistake is that you are purchasing a brand new technology (nForce 570 MCP SLI in your case) which has not been tested yet properly and surely with lack of GOOD BIOS versions. If i had you problem i would purchase NF4 board from MSI ONLY!!!
It's proven itself as perfect and reliable technology.

Best

 

[MrFlint]

Originally posted by: AstroGuardian
I don't know what's with you guys. But troubleshooting a hardware problem is not an easy thing. You must do tests step by step.
Did you:
Try with older PCI card?
Did you try with unpluged DHH and Optical drive?
I know you didn't try with only one memory stick the first time.

And what's most frustrating you made BIOS changes and not being sure about the problem.

But your biggest mistake is that you are purchasing a brand new technology (nForce 570 MCP SLI in your case) which has not been tested yet properly and surely with lack of GOOD BIOS versions. If i had you problem i would purchase NF4 board from MSI ONLY!!!
It's proven itself as perfect and reliable technology.

Best

older pci card - yes
unplugged - yes
actually i did try with one stick the first time, that board was indeed defective, as at some point it always froze after or before POST.
The new board on bios v1.0 was running stable on one stick with the voltage upped to 2.0v
after updating the bios to v1.3 it running stable on 1.9v.
ive finally managed to boot on the suspected mem stick and run memtest86 on it - 746321 errors counted and then froze... it appears to be busted
as someone else advised upped the voltage 2.1v and run memtest68 again - 168896 errors and then froze...

 

[MrFlint]

got a new RAM kit of the same brand from the store, everything works like a charm now

 

[AstroGuardian]

 

[AstroGuardian]

Glad to hear that MrFlint.
I just bought that kind of mobo for myself and it runs like clock. No problems, extreme performance.......
Dream

 

[sHAKER281]

I just built a very similar system and have had similar trouble.

Athlon 64 X2 4000+
K9N Platinum SLI
Zalman CNPS9500
MSI GeForce 7600GT
Corsair twinx 2GB XMS PC6400
Zalman NB Heatsink
WD Raptor 74 Gb SATA
WD Caviar 250 Gb SATA

And my previously used Antec Truepower 430 w/ 20 pin ATX connector.

Once I am up and running I can work/play and reboot all day long no problem!

***If I power off and try to power back up it fails w/ LEDs 1,2 & 3 red and 4 green(video initialization). No signal to monitor. But, if I power off the monitor untill video initialization is complete it will boot every time***

I have the latest Bios (1.3) and have ran a single stick of memory and passed memtest. Has anyone else checked the "D-Bracket" LEDs when their's fails to boot? Or tried powering off the monitor?

 

[Bateluer]

sHAKER281, that sounds like a power supply problem. A TRU430 is a little lite for that system, IMHO.

I think I'm starting to have some power supply issues with my Fortron 450w PSU, possibly due to dirty electricity entering my house. I bought a better surge protector, but I haven't had enough time to see if it helped. If it continues to worsen, I'm going to pick up an uber PC Power&Cooling PSU.

 

[sHAKER281]

Thanks for the feedback. I hope it is the power supply. I haven't ruled it out and it would be easier than a RMA on the MB or videocard. I hope someone on here with a K9N and SLI videocard (with similar power on boot problem) could look at their LEDs and try the same thing.

Been searching the web for hours to find anything like this.

 

[sHAKER281]

Well, now I have a good reason to pull the MB and try the primary (top) PCI-E slot - according to the specs the secondary PCI-E is only X8 compatible in non-SLI mode.

Forego that big aftermarket fan/HS if you want X16 on your PCI-E!!!!

I'll try this today and report my results.

Update: No change after moving the videocard to primary X16. Except with the OEM HS the NB is really hot! Stumped as to whether this is the MB or videocard or possibly PWR Supply.