Need Help - System Unstable!

[shikhan]

First off, this is on a system I've built a while ago. Until recently, I had never had any stability problems, or at least, none that I could detect with my use of the system. However, in the last 2 weeks, my system stability has been horrible, and so I decided to run some tests. All of my HD's pass their respective Drive Fitness Test, and MemTest86 runs fine for more than 24 hours. However, Prime95 will fail the smallFFT Test, and not in the same place, and not within the same time period as well. When it crashes, MBM reports no flux's in my rails (all stay well withing a 5% tolerance), nor spike in the temperature (max temp was 42 C). So I figure its either my CPU or Motherboard thats failing, but I'm not sure how to figure out which one it is. I've also heard that even if the memory passes MemTest86, its possible for it to be the cause of Prime95 failing. Can anyone reccommend further tests to isolate a specific piece of hardwar as the culprit? I need to get my system to be stable as the recent performance of my system is unnacceptable.



System Specs:
AMD AthlonXP3200+ (2.19GHz)
1 GB Ram
ABIT NF7-S Ver 2
NVIDIA GeForceFX 5900 Ultra
3 HDs:
160 GB Maxtor
60 GB IBM
30 GB WD

 

[Zinn2b]

CHECK your power supply

 

[shikhan]

I have, as much as I can think of... I've got a Fortron FSP530 in there and as I stated in the original post, MBM didn't report any fluxuation in the voltages when Prime95 failed... What else on the PS should i be checking besides the rail's outputs?

 

[JavaMomma]

Did you try it not overclocked?

 

[shikhan]

Just noticed i didn't mention this, but its not overclocked in any fashion.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Could it be the CPU voltage? My friend had a NF7-S v2 that undervolted by a full 0.5V.

Hope that helps.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Memtest is not 100%. you have 1GB of RAM. I'm sure you don't just have one, 1GB stick. Try your RAM one stick at a time.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Oh... And last time I had a problem like this, it was my power supply. Had a Enermax 500W that didn't show any kind of voltage fluctuations, etc. I just happened to swap out the P/S and it worked. One note: The system was significantly more stable when I UNDERclocked it, which lead me to think the problem was the CPU. I'm glad I was wrong.

 

[shikhan]

Originally posted by: StrangerGuy
Could it be the CPU voltage? My friend had a NF7-S v2 that undervolted by a full 0.5V.

Hope that helps.

Hmmm... I just checked that out and it seems that my core voltage did drop down to 1.60 (when it should be 1.65) right about the time prime95 failed.... I'll try upping the voltage a bit and run it again.