Problems with band new, latest technology system

[Vyruz]

Hello, i'm new to this forum but after reading a few topics i found out that there is a lot of knowledge on this forum, so here goes nothing 🙂

I bought a new pc 2 weeks ago, and haven't had anything else that problems with it ever since...

here's wat i got:

MSI K8N SLI motherboard (temp replacement mobo)
AMD X2 4400+ 64 bit dual-core processor
OCZ matched pair memory 4*512MB DDR 400mhz (5-2-2-2 timings)
2x western digital raptor 74GB disks functioning in raid 0
2x MSI Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB video cards operating in SLI mode
Enermax noisetaker 600w SLI PSU (certified by nvidia on www.slizone.com)
Thermaltake Xaser III bigtower


now i first had an Asus A8N SLI premium mobo (the one with the heatsink) but this mobo would seldom allow me to get even further then the BIOS, i tried updating it without results...

the power supply gave 3.6V on the 3.3V rail, which seemed strange to me, so the shop took it back, i got another one which gives 3.4V, but that is normal according to enermax...


while the PSU was gone i was given an OCZ modstreem 520w PSU (not certified by nvidia) which caused my system to hang when i set my memory timings to the right times, but these problems were solved when i got the enermax PSU back..

what happens now, is that my system runs unusual high temperatures, though it stays stable most of the time:
cpu: cool n' quiet is set to 40°c, which the processor maintains all the time, even under full load (though the fan starts spinning a lot faster)

graphic cards: idle at 60-65°c, 80-90°c under full load, they really get hot in a way that one cannot put his hand onto them...


also my system still crashes from time to time, mostly when i start a game after a reboot (only the 2nd-3rd time i start a game, never the 1st time)

my case has 7 fans in it:
-2 fans as a lower intake
-2 fans as an exhaust to the left of the processor (back of case)
-2fans blowing air straight onto the processor (from the left side of the case)
-1 exhaust fan in the top of the case

see this link for a graphic of the fan locations :
http://www.thermaltake.com/xaserCase/xaser3/v1000plus.htm

so i think my cooling is quite OK

i'm running windows XP SP2 (required for SLI operation 🙁 ) with all latest updates etc
my bios is also the latest, same goes for Nforce and Geforce drivers

i got 2 main suspections right now:

1.cooling, the temps of the graphic cards seem okward to me, so this could be the problem

2.PSU, since the problem got better when i went from the OCZ 520w PSU to the enermax 600w, i think there might still not be enough power coming out of it, though this is a certified PSU for SLI systems


any help will be greatly apreciated as i've spent too much time on this myself (causing me ot be sleepy at work 😀)

 

[bob4432]

nice system and welcome to the forums -

can anybody tell me did amd take care of using 4 dimms with the x2? to the op, the single core cpus had issues with running 4 dimms, you had to set them to 2t and with the older ones even run them at 333MHz instead of 400MHz. i am not sure what happend with 4 dimms with the x2 memory controller.

could you also take off the side of your case and see if the temps change at all? i am not familiar with the 7800gtxs, but i thought they were cooler than that, although i might be wrong, but 90C is f*cking hot...194F...that seems high for anything, but again i could be wrong.

 

[Vyruz]

Originally posted by: bob4432
nice system and welcome to the forums -

can anybody tell me did amd take care of using 4 dimms with the x2? to the op, the single core cpus had issues with running 4 dimms, you had to set them to 2t and with the older ones even run them at 333MHz instead of 400MHz. i am not sure what happend with 4 dimms with the x2 memory controller.

could you also take off the side of your case and see if the temps change at all? i am not familiar with the 7800gtxs, but i thought they were cooler than that, although i might be wrong, but 90C is f*cking hot...194F...that seems high for anything, but again i could be wrong.

thanks for the quick reply

i already took the side panel off, this brings the temp of the cards down to about 55°c (upper one) and 57°c (lower card)

i also tried taking out 2 dimms but that didn't change anything

what i also found out is that there is a preset temperature treshold in the NVIDIA driver settings, at which that cards are downclocked, in order to lower the temp, this treshold is set to 115°C, this also seems really strange, as i always thought H/W couldn't handle anything above 95°c

 

[imported_Kensai]

- With four DIMMS with the Venice, San Diego, Toledo and Manchester cores you're still forced to 2T but you can run at DDR400 speeds.

-They're so hot because the MSI K8N SLI is a tight board. You need more airflow between the cards.

 

[Vyruz]

Originally posted by: Kensai
- With four DIMMS with the Venice, San Diego, Toledo and Manchester cores you're still forced to 2T but you can run at DDR400 speeds.

-They're so hot because the MSI K8N SLI is a tight board. You need more airflow between the cards.

i did notice that the cards are placed pretty close to eachother, compared the asus A8N

what do you mean by "forced to 2T" ? my memory runs at 400Mhz 2-2-2-5 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)

 

[aatf510]

Originally posted by: Vyruz

Originally posted by: Kensai
- With four DIMMS with the Venice, San Diego, Toledo and Manchester cores you're still forced to 2T but you can run at DDR400 speeds.

-They're so hot because the MSI K8N SLI is a tight board. You need more airflow between the cards.

i did notice that the cards are placed pretty close to eachother, compared the asus A8N

what do you mean by "forced to 2T" ? my memory runs at 400Mhz 2-2-2-5 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)

1T and 2T are the command rates. There should be a setting in your BIOS for that.

 

[Vyruz]

Originally posted by: toattett

Originally posted by: Vyruz

Originally posted by: Kensai
- With four DIMMS with the Venice, San Diego, Toledo and Manchester cores you're still forced to 2T but you can run at DDR400 speeds.

-They're so hot because the MSI K8N SLI is a tight board. You need more airflow between the cards.

i did notice that the cards are placed pretty close to eachother, compared the asus A8N

what do you mean by "forced to 2T" ? my memory runs at 400Mhz 2-2-2-5 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)

1T and 2T are the command rates. There should be a setting in your BIOS for that.

i looked into this, in the bios it says 1T/2T memory timing, is this what you mean?
it was set to auto, i set it to manual and then to 2T...

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Vyruz

Originally posted by: toattett

Originally posted by: Vyruz

Originally posted by: Kensai
- With four DIMMS with the Venice, San Diego, Toledo and Manchester cores you're still forced to 2T but you can run at DDR400 speeds.

-They're so hot because the MSI K8N SLI is a tight board. You need more airflow between the cards.

i did notice that the cards are placed pretty close to eachother, compared the asus A8N

what do you mean by "forced to 2T" ? my memory runs at 400Mhz 2-2-2-5 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)

1T and 2T are the command rates. There should be a setting in your BIOS for that.

i looked into this, in the bios it says 1T/2T memory timing, is this what you mean?
it was set to auto, i set it to manual and then to 2T...

yes, does that help?

damn, 115C = 239F, you could boil water on those bad boys....can you put a fan in that blows directly on them? like 92mm or 120mm? maybe mod the case? turn off cool 'n quiet and turn all fans to high.....

 

[Vyruz]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Vyruz

Originally posted by: toattett

Originally posted by: Vyruz

Originally posted by: Kensai
- With four DIMMS with the Venice, San Diego, Toledo and Manchester cores you're still forced to 2T but you can run at DDR400 speeds.

-They're so hot because the MSI K8N SLI is a tight board. You need more airflow between the cards.

i did notice that the cards are placed pretty close to eachother, compared the asus A8N

what do you mean by "forced to 2T" ? my memory runs at 400Mhz 2-2-2-5 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)

1T and 2T are the command rates. There should be a setting in your BIOS for that.

i looked into this, in the bios it says 1T/2T memory timing, is this what you mean?
it was set to auto, i set it to manual and then to 2T...

yes, does that help?

damn, 115C = 239F, you could boil water on those bad boys....can you put a fan in that blows directly on them? like 92mm or 120mm? maybe mod the case? turn off cool 'n quiet and turn all fans to high.....

there's really no more room in the case for any fans,i've got 4 disks sitting in the lower compartment

but if Nvidia hard codes those temps as a treshold (they cannot be changed) that must mean that the cards can handle temps up to that point, no?

 

[Vyruz]

i was reading a bit on SLIzone.com and found out that the motherboard i'm using now (MSI K8N SLI, no the deluxe or diamond version) is appearantly not certified by nvidia
does that mather or is that just nvidia kitch?

 

[CreativeTom]

Seems a waste of money for that system, the Raptors are a waste in the Raid setup. The SLI 7800's are nice don't get me wrong, just seems like overkill and alot of money. The X2 is nice!!! I would never have gotten 4 512 sticks, I would have gone with two 1GB sticks.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: CreativeTom
Seems a waste of money for that system, the Raptors are a waste in the Raid setup. The SLI 7800's are nice don't get me wrong, just seems like overkill and alot of money. The X2 is nice!!! I would never have gotten 4 512 sticks, I would have gone with two 1GB sticks.

but that is what we are workig with, and the op is new, so you could cut him/her a break. we need to fix the problem at hand, and the op is being cool about our comments questions, not like some other noobs that are a$$holes.

op - as far as the temps i fhtye hare hard coded in i guess they can get that hot, but it does seem high

also, has changing the command rate to 2t helped out?

also, you might want to take out one of the gpus and just run 1 to clear up any issues with the m/b and nvidia certification. if one works excellent it could be the board (i doubt it but possible) or a power issue (again, not likely due to the psus you have used). this would eliminate additional areas of concern. also, what resolution are you running at and what game?

did the place where you bought the machine from suggest 4x512 or is that what you told them you wanted? what is your experience level? how many other machines have you built?

 

[xTYBALTx]

Is it possible that this is simply an airflow issue? I doubt the graphics cards heatsinks are mounted incorrectly, that's like 1000 to 1 * squared.

Here's my quick-n-dirty guess for how many watts you're pulling:

Mobo: 30W
CPU: 120W
GPU1: 100W
GPU2: 100W
HDD1: 30W
HDD2: 30W
7 Fans: 35W
CPU fan: 8W
Ramx4: 80W
DVD1: 25
DVD2: 25

Total: 580W. I tried to overestimate every single item, but the point is that you're cutting it close. This is by far the most power hungry system I've ever seen, and when the PSU heats up, it's power output will drastically decrese. Try to turn up the PSU fan, if possible.

From there, I'd recommend taking out one of the vid cards and seeing if that fixes things. If only running one vid card DOES fix things, you've narrowed it down to:

1. SLI doesn't give you the cooling you need.
2. There is an conflict/stability problem with SLI on your system.
3. PSU isn't giving enough juice for SLI'd cards.

I'd bank on either 1 or 3. Let us know what happens!

 

[Vyruz]

@creativeTom: i agree with u, it's just that i'll still be able to play a game on decent resolution/quality in a year or so...

@bob4432:
I think i can say i have quite some experience in computers, i built my first system about 8yrs ago, when i was 12, i also upgraded that system on and on, untill i bought this last one...
i have worked as a PC builder/technician and network administrator at a local computer store, and now i work as a software developer for a major IT company

it was also me that decided to take the 4*512 instead of 2*1024, as this should be faster (larger dimms have bigger turnaround times)

i will try taking out one VGA card to see what that does
i'll also try to unplug 2 disks and a DVD-R drive, so they can't draw anymore power
maybe hook up a 2nd psu to the rig

i talked to a guy at work about it today, and he said it can't be a problem with the airflow, since my system temp is around 35°C, he says...

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Vyruz
@creativeTom: i agree with u, it's just that i'll still be able to play a game on decent resolution/quality in a year or so...

@bob4432:
I think i can say i have quite some experience in computers, i built my first system about 8yrs ago, when i was 12, i also upgraded that system on and on, untill i bought this last one...
i have worked as a PC builder/technician and network administrator at a local computer store, and now i work as a software developer for a major IT company

it was also me that decided to take the 4*512 instead of 2*1024, as this should be faster (larger dimms have bigger turnaround times)

i will try taking out one VGA card to see what that does
i'll also try to unplug 2 disks and a DVD-R drive, so they can't draw anymore power
maybe hook up a 2nd psu to the rig

i talked to a guy at work about it today, and he said it can't be a problem with the airflow, since my system temp is around 35°C, he says...

that is cool, i just wanted to know what we were dealing with, no offense of course. with a rig like yours i would have expected you to have prior knowledge, but i have gotten trouble for assuming....

35C is a decent temp especially considering everything you have in there.

have you attempted taking 1 of the gpus out? also, you might take out 2x512MB just to test it out, since the x2s are so new i haven't read enough on them about how they deal with 4 sticks besides the 2t part. i don't know how there onboard memory controller is setup...i will look into it...if it is one memory controller per core or one memory controller total. either way, in theory, changing the command rate to 2t should have taken care of any memory problems, but you never know.

have you tested your ram with memtest and prime95?

 

[Vyruz]

i did a test with memtest, not with prime95 though, i'll let it run overnight
i also unhooked 2 HDD i'm not really using, and the system "seems" to be more stable
about the GPU temps i could have been wrong, i played a few minutes of battlefield 2 (max settings 1600*1200@32bit) and the max temp that was reached was about 73°C but the two HDD's i took out where in front of one of my 2 intake fans, so the airstream might be better, i don't know...

here are 2 excel sheets of dataloggin made by Nvidia's nTune utility, you can see CPU, GPU1 and GPU2 temps in there
www.fastlikehell.com/temp/mmm.xls -->a few minutes of mad mod mike (nvidia's GF7800GTX demo)
www.fastlikehell.com/temp/battlefield2.xls --> half an hour or so of playing battlefield 2

i gotta go to bed now 🙂 but tomorrow i'll do the same dataloggings with the two HDD's in and the case closed, and see what that does

for some strange reason the cool'n quiet functionality stopped working too, i had it set on 50° processor heat, and it always kept that temperature, while the fan was running at about 800-900rpms on idle usage
now the processor is 45° but the fan is spinning at 5000-6000 RPMs, for some reason it seems like the fan is trying to get the temp down while it shouldn't...



i also have another question:
my mobo has onboard sound and LAN, though i disabled that to get more performce out of it, and i got an additional sound and lan card sitting in there
since i don't realy have the need for more resources, i'm thinking of throwing those 2 cards out and enabled the onboard stuff again
what would you do?

thanks for all the feedback i've gotten so far, you're really a great community

 

[imported_Kensai]

Use the onboard LAN. It's probably better than your discrete NIC.
Depends on which sound card. If it's Audigy2 or better, keep it.

 

[Vyruz]

@kensai: i've got a 3com 905C NIC so i guess it's better then the onboard one
the audio card i have is a regular Audigy card, how does that compare to a AC'97 onboard audio card??

i'm also running prime95, but the pc seems to be quite stable, here's the latest log file :
Current Time CPU temperature GPU temperature Secondary CPU temperature HT bus PCX bus Mem bus Current profile
2005/8/19 10:47:28 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:29 53º C 58º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:30 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:31 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Vyruz
@kensai: i've got a 3com 905C NIC so i guess it's better then the onboard one
the audio card i have is a regular Audigy card, how does that compare to a AC'97 onboard audio card??

i'm also running prime95, but the pc seems to be quite stable, here's the latest log file :
Current Time CPU temperature GPU temperature Secondary CPU temperature HT bus PCX bus Mem bus Current profile
2005/8/19 10:47:28 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:29 53º C 58º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:30 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:31 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None

i live those 3com nics 🙂 i have one in every computer, i just disable the onboard stuff most of the time. i would say your onboard sound is fine, unless you have an extremely nice set of speakers, in fact you could take out the 3com nic if you wanted and just use onboard stuff.

with prime95, you need to let it run a long time like memtest, stop it, select options->torture test and select "in place large ffts", this will utilize max power for your cpu. if the machine is seeming more stable with the extra hdds gone, it may be a 12V thing, but you already have a good psu already...is this the psu you have?

have you tried it with only 1 gpu too?

 

[Vyruz]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Vyruz
@kensai: i've got a 3com 905C NIC so i guess it's better then the onboard one
the audio card i have is a regular Audigy card, how does that compare to a AC'97 onboard audio card??

i'm also running prime95, but the pc seems to be quite stable, here's the latest log file :
Current Time CPU temperature GPU temperature Secondary CPU temperature HT bus PCX bus Mem bus Current profile
2005/8/19 10:47:28 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:29 53º C 58º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:30 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None
2005/8/19 10:47:31 53º C 57º C 60º C 1005 2500 402 None

i live those 3com nics 🙂 i have one in every computer, i just disable the onboard stuff most of the time. i would say your onboard sound is fine, unless you have an extremely nice set of speakers, in fact you could take out the 3com nic if you wanted and just use onboard stuff.

with prime95, you need to let it run a long time like memtest, stop it, select options->torture test and select "in place large ffts", this will utilize max power for your cpu. if the machine is seeming more stable with the extra hdds gone, it may be a 12V thing, but you already have a good psu already...is this the psu you have?

have you tried it with only 1 gpu too?

yes that's the one i have...

i didn't try with one GPU yet, but the system seems stable now, i also found out what was causing the cool'n quiet not to work: after some testing, the system wouldn't boot at all anymore, appearatnly it was my bluetooth dongle causing the problem, when i opened it up i saw that one of the 4 solder points connecting the USB connector to the PCB had come loose, to i soldered it back on at work now

i'll try with one GPU tonight, i'm at work now and only have FTP acces to my home computer (so i can still get the log files)

i also ordered 2 artiv NV5 silencers for extra GPU cooling, hope those will work

 

[JonMooring]

my god that is a lovely system 😀 glad she's acting better now, hopefully she'll stay that way.

 

[Topweasel]

Remember the Temps for a GTX get to about 80-85C on almsot any setup. So hitting 90 with them so close to each other doesn't seem out of the ordinary.

 

[Vyruz]

Originally posted by: JonMooring
my god that is a lovely system 😀 glad she's acting better now, hopefully she'll stay that way.

thnx m8, i hope so too 😛
i actually had a good sponsor 😀 my dad wanted a new computer but any new system (even a cheap one) would be overkill for him, he only surfs the net a bit, and does a bit of assembler programming (old school guy 😛) so he offered me to give him my computer and he would buy a new system for me 🙂

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Vyruz

Originally posted by: JonMooring
my god that is a lovely system 😀 glad she's acting better now, hopefully she'll stay that way.

thnx m8, i hope so too 😛
i actually had a good sponsor 😀 my dad wanted a new computer but any new system (even a cheap one) would be overkill for him, he only surfs the net a bit, and does a bit of assembler programming (old school guy 😛) so he offered me to give him my computer and he would buy a new system for me 🙂

i love stuff that is written in assembly, although i can not read it or understand it, but d@mn is it lean and mean. they should code games in assembly 🙂 🙂 then bf2 would only be 25MB 😀

 

[Vyruz]

hmm, i came home right now, and when i looked at the pc, prime 95 had encoutered an error:
[Thu Aug 18 23:49:28 2005]
Compare your results to other computers at http://www.mersenne.org/bench.htm
That web page also contains instructions on how your results can be included.

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
CPU speed: 2211.11 MHz
CPU features: RDTSC, CMOV, Prefetch, 3DNow!, MMX, SSE, SSE2
L1 cache size: 64 KB
L2 cache size: 1024 KB
L1 cache line size: 64 bytes
L2 cache line size: 64 bytes
L1 TLBS: 32
L2 TLBS: 512
Prime95 32-bit version 24.13, RdtscTiming=1
Best time for 512K FFT length: 21.135 ms.
Best time for 640K FFT length: 27.596 ms.
Best time for 768K FFT length: 33.539 ms.
Best time for 896K FFT length: 40.072 ms.
Best time for 1024K FFT length: 44.796 ms.
Best time for 1280K FFT length: 57.031 ms.
[Fri Aug 19 08:54:51 2005]
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.


so i had a look at the nMonitor log files:
it seems that at 3.20PM this afternoon, the program stopped logging my CPU temperature, only me 2 GPU temps
take a look at these excel sheets :
www.fastlikehell.com/temp/p95.xls
you can see that the in the first logfile in the beginning there are still loggings of my CPU temp, then suddenly it disappears and moves to two GPU temps to the left
in the second log file it even removes the "cpu temperature" column completely


also, after i saw the prime 95 error, i wanted to post it on this board, and when i tried to open up firefox i got a bluescreen directly followed by a reboot
event viewer shows the following things:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Error code 1000008e, parameter1 c000001d, parameter2 805bc341, parameter3 b9fc9b3c, parameter4 00000000.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp."
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
The server {51FA2736-5DEE-11D4-98E8-006008BF430C} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

i guess i kinda found the bug, now i just need to find out why and what exactly happens