Hey,
I have owned my A64 3500+/MSI K8N Neo2 system/BFG Geforce 6800GT OC/Enermax 430W for almost a year now. When I got it, I was able to stabilize my 3500+ 2.2GHz @ 2.64GHz for 31+ hours prime95 stable at small fft. I upgraded from 512MB Corsair RAM to 1GB G.Skill DDR550. I ran the ram at DDR500 (250 HTT) for the longest time with CPU at about 2.61GHz, and everything was prime/memtest stable for over 30 hours. Just lately I've been struck with alot of system instability.
At first I noticed my 2 x WD raptors in RAID 0 sounded like they were power cycling (they seemed to stop spinning and spin back up) -- this caused alot of instablity obviously. I have since switched the power connections with my two older hard drives in the same case and have so far not experienced any problems. In the midst of these hardware problems I reset my computer to mostly stock settings. I brought the CPU frequency back to 2.2GHz and mem frequency to DDR400 at stock 2.5-4-4-8 (with mem altho still at 2.75V and cpu @ 1.5V + over vid 5%) Now, I came home last night, turned on my monitor, and noticed the video did not come back up after moving my mouse or hitting wake up or anything like that. I was forced to hard reset. When it reset, it got to the Windows XP loading screen, and it seemed just after it was loading the bar, the screen went just blank again. Rebooting one last time, it booted into Windows fine. I then ran Prime95 overnight. For the hour or two I was awake, it tested fine. As I woke up, I turned on my monitor, happy to see the Windows XP logon screen, but noticed that it was reloading Windows itself, therefore meaning the computer had restarted.
After changing the CPU voltage to stock (startup) and mem voltage to 2.65V, I booted back into Windows. I loaded up a single app and noticed a bit of video distortion. I am now in the midst of running a memtest86 test #5 at everything stock and starting from the beginning to try and see what is causing the problems.
As well, last week I was remote desktopping to my machine from downstairs, when instantly I got a connection hang. I went upstairs and looked at the monitor, and it was completely garbled and distorted, I couldn't make out anything.
Does anyone have hints of how to approach testing this? I am not sure whether to say it is RAM/Power Supply/Video Card. I don't *think* the CPU is the problem.
Voltages in BIOS:
+3.3V = 3.34V
+12.0V=12.16V
+5.0V=5.13V
Battery=3.19V
+5VSB=5.10V
Thanks.
EDIT: Current system specs:
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
AMD Athlon64 3500+ @ Stock
1GB (2x512MB) G.Skill DDR550 GBLD
BFG Geforce 6800 GT OC
Enermax 430W Power Supply
2x36GB Western Digital Raptor SATA in RAID 0
160GB IDE HDD
80GB IDE HDD
Soundblaster Audigy 2
I have owned my A64 3500+/MSI K8N Neo2 system/BFG Geforce 6800GT OC/Enermax 430W for almost a year now. When I got it, I was able to stabilize my 3500+ 2.2GHz @ 2.64GHz for 31+ hours prime95 stable at small fft. I upgraded from 512MB Corsair RAM to 1GB G.Skill DDR550. I ran the ram at DDR500 (250 HTT) for the longest time with CPU at about 2.61GHz, and everything was prime/memtest stable for over 30 hours. Just lately I've been struck with alot of system instability.
At first I noticed my 2 x WD raptors in RAID 0 sounded like they were power cycling (they seemed to stop spinning and spin back up) -- this caused alot of instablity obviously. I have since switched the power connections with my two older hard drives in the same case and have so far not experienced any problems. In the midst of these hardware problems I reset my computer to mostly stock settings. I brought the CPU frequency back to 2.2GHz and mem frequency to DDR400 at stock 2.5-4-4-8 (with mem altho still at 2.75V and cpu @ 1.5V + over vid 5%) Now, I came home last night, turned on my monitor, and noticed the video did not come back up after moving my mouse or hitting wake up or anything like that. I was forced to hard reset. When it reset, it got to the Windows XP loading screen, and it seemed just after it was loading the bar, the screen went just blank again. Rebooting one last time, it booted into Windows fine. I then ran Prime95 overnight. For the hour or two I was awake, it tested fine. As I woke up, I turned on my monitor, happy to see the Windows XP logon screen, but noticed that it was reloading Windows itself, therefore meaning the computer had restarted.
After changing the CPU voltage to stock (startup) and mem voltage to 2.65V, I booted back into Windows. I loaded up a single app and noticed a bit of video distortion. I am now in the midst of running a memtest86 test #5 at everything stock and starting from the beginning to try and see what is causing the problems.
As well, last week I was remote desktopping to my machine from downstairs, when instantly I got a connection hang. I went upstairs and looked at the monitor, and it was completely garbled and distorted, I couldn't make out anything.
Does anyone have hints of how to approach testing this? I am not sure whether to say it is RAM/Power Supply/Video Card. I don't *think* the CPU is the problem.
Voltages in BIOS:
+3.3V = 3.34V
+12.0V=12.16V
+5.0V=5.13V
Battery=3.19V
+5VSB=5.10V
Thanks.
EDIT: Current system specs:
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
AMD Athlon64 3500+ @ Stock
1GB (2x512MB) G.Skill DDR550 GBLD
BFG Geforce 6800 GT OC
Enermax 430W Power Supply
2x36GB Western Digital Raptor SATA in RAID 0
160GB IDE HDD
80GB IDE HDD
Soundblaster Audigy 2
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