Please help: power supply or bad ram... which is it and why?

[ineedsleep]

Well, i think i've rebooted my computer about 12 times so far... and the day is still early I've been having trouble with my comp's stability earlier... so i underclocked my cpu. It is supposed to run at 133/33 but my system would never be stable at that rate.

So, after a month of that... it was okay... never really had trouble with it. Until i decided to design a background in photoshop. Now, my system has been crashing like crazy. I can work on smaller images, like those that i do in web dev. But anything large causes my system to lock up.

My system would lock up while watching flash images, usually the larger ones freeze my comp. My comp also freezes whenever i try to play a game... I tried playing Battle Realms and i couldn't get the game loaded. I can however, browse web sites, use irc, use a text editor... but anything graphically intense seems to cause my comp to freeze, crash or lockup.

I believe it's a power supply problem, or it could be faulty ram. But i'm not sure. Since i'm on a limited budget, i can't just go and buy 256 DDR ram and a new powersupply. I can only afford one of the two.

Here's some specs... and i'm hoping that you guys could tell me if it does indeed look like a power supply problem.

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MSI K7 Master motherboard
1333 Mhz AMD Thunderbird (remember, i have underclocked this to 1006 Mhz).
1 stick of 256 DDR PC 2100
2 Case fans
1 CPU fan

1 1.44mb Floppy drive
1 Acer 6x4x32 CDRW
1 Maxtor 9gb 5400 hdd
1 adaptech scsi controller
1 9.1 seagate 10k hdd

1 Sound Blaster Live value (pci)
1 Realtek 10/100 nic (pci)
1 GeForce 2 Ti (agp)

350w Enermax (365ew i think is the model num).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some of the lockup errors i have received:
nv4_disp (infinite loop error, the driver got caught in an infinite loop)
kernel_stack_inpage_error (0xC000009D, or STATUS_DEVICE_NOT_CONNECTED, indicates defective or loose data or power cables, a problem with SCSI termination, or improper controller or hard disk configuration)

Now, here's why i think that it's a power supply issue:

Vcore = 1.96
2.5V = 2.48
3.3V = 3.27
5V = 4.53
12V = 12.72

The values above were taken from the bios during one of my many unexpected reboots.

now the 5v seems awfully low, and that would explain the kernel_stack_inpage_error i experenced.

The only reason i also thought this could be a ram issue, is cause, if ram is bad, everything screws up...

Please let me know what you guys think... as i can't afford to spend money on the wrong upgrade. And please let me know what you guys recommend as an upgrade.

Many thanks in advance for any and all help you may be able to offer

 

[Bonger]

This much i can tell ya, its not the power supply. Running a completely different setup, i had the exact same issues. I swapped out the graphics card, power supply, added loads more cooling including a 120mm and a blowhole, ran every system check i could find.....no go. Never did swap out the ram though...sorry.

 

[zigCorsair]

Do you have a friend with RAM you can borrow?

 

[ineedsleep]

Unfortunately... no one i know uses DDR...

 

[Bozo Galora]

welcome to the club
800,000 other people have the loop
SIS people, Intel people, Ali people, mostly VIA people
there is even a petition going around on the problem

The most reliable way to stop it is set 2X in bios for AGP, uninstall "turbo mode" (4X) viagart, install "standard"
viagart (1X 2X)

Remove all tweak programs (they put added lines in registry), install coolbits reg hack
In D3D Set FSAA to off, render frames ahead to 5, PCI textures to lowest, vsync to auto detect
Use 21.83 drivers

Everything you said has already been talked to death on www.viaarena.com forums, including your spec-
ulation on PSU.

 

[ineedsleep]

Thanks for your reply... hehe sounds like you've been through this a couple times... and got it down so you can say it all in one breath lol

Thanks for the link to... when i visited the forums... i thought i got redirected... but they use the same forum software that AT uses. hehe

Well, thanks for all your guys help... i'm going to go read on at the via forums

and it never even occured to me to change the agp to 2x... thanks man... i really appreciate you pointing me to the via forum.

/me hopes to have this fixed soon

 

[Bozo Galora]

I accept paypal.

 

[Grin]

Thanks, but umm, I don't understand what the 'core' issue is. On the VIA site it is written about a 'loop-problem' , but this seems to be anything causing a crash, bsod, or lockup? Heyhey, different probs all, no?

Only thing my brother has in common with original poster here is the geforce 2 ti . But, like o.p , the comp doesn't hang and the screen doesn't turn to waiting state if his CPU is underclocked.