Strange Problem...

[charloscarlies]

I just swapped out processors today...and my rig isn't randomly rebooting like all the threads I've seen, but what it does do is hang at random times. It won't reboot...my monitor just turns off, and I get one single beep (sometimes). What else could this be? It happens even at stock speeds and voltages. I don't think it's the ram because this is my second pair.

Another thing that crossed my mind...I no longer am running on raid and ocassionally one of my hard drives spins down like it got shut off. I've never noticed that happening before. Is this the sign of a drive going bad and would that cause the hang? Or is it a bad power supply?

I've also occasionally had my games/benchmarks crash and vpu recover informs me of some error caused by my card. I then have to reboot to get hardware acceleration back on. Could this be my video card over-heating?

I'm really at a loss here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[myocardia]

Your video card overheating could be causing that, assuming that when it happens, it's a "hard" freeze.

 

[charloscarlies]

Sorry for the noobie question...but what do you consider a "hard" freeze? I'm starting to think it is the video card because it is pretty hot to the touch. Don't the ATI cards have a problem with that?

 

[mechBgon]

I am also going to suggest trying 2.5-3-3-7 at 2.7 volts on your memory if nothing else is helping, because there have been plenty of instances where that has helped on i865/i875 boards.

You can open your case and aim a house fan at the motherboard/video card to test for the heat problem. What power supply brand/model/wattage are you using for this?

 

[charloscarlies]

Well it's been running for a couple hours without a problem. It's very odd because sometimes it happens every 5 minutes and sometimes not once in an entire day.

I'm using an Allied 400 watt PSU. It was pretty inexpensive though when I got it, so I kind of wonder.

I might try loosening the timings, but that would really disappoint me after paying a few bucks extra for the LL modules.

Any other suggestions?

 

[lxie123]

Hard freeze is when everything just freezes,
Symptoms:
you can't move the mouse
can't ctrl alt del
can't even power off without turning off the psu on cetain cases.

 

[myocardia]

How much do you have your video card overclocked? If you don't, and you have decent airflow, I would suspect the psu.

 

[charloscarlies]

Yea the video card isn't overclocked at all at the moment. I figured it could be part of the problem. It does seem to happen more frequently when I overclock it.

And I guess it would be considered a 'hard' freeze. Does this mean anything different?

 

[myocardia]

Well, it means that you didn't rule out the video card, because if it didn't hard freeze, it couldn't be the video card. Why not either raise your vdimm (memory voltage) to about 2.8v, then play a game for a little while. If it doesn't happen then, it wasn't the video card, and if it still happens, it's definitely the video card. BTW, if you think it's your power supply, all you have to do is see what your psu's rail are running at, while it's under extreme load, like while running the Prime95 torture test.

 

[charloscarlies]

I might try a little bump in my vdimm...but should I really need to do this at stock speeds? Maybe I mistyped or something, but I think it is a hard freeze.

I'll also check out the power supply under prime95 when I get a chance. Thanks a bunch guys!

 

[charloscarlies]

Ok just an update:

While running the prime95 torture test I get:

+12 = 12.16v
-12 = -11.86v
+5 = 5.08v
-5 = -5.49v
+3.3 = 3.25v

All of these using motherboard monitor.

It is also showing 2 core voltages:

Core 0 = 1.47v
Core 1 = 1.5v

Why is it showing two and which one should be my actual processor? If it's 1.47 I guess I could bump the voltage a little. I've heard Albatron undervolts...is this true?

 

[mechBgon]

Did you slacken up your DIMM timings? If not, try that. The DIMMs are not the problem, by the way... the mobo chipset is touchy about ultra-tight timings. 2-2-2-6 spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e for many i865/i875 owners.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: charloscarlies
Ok just an update:

While running the prime95 torture test I get:

+12 = 12.16v
-12 = -11.86v
+5 = 5.08v
-5 = -5.49v
+3.3 = 3.25v

All of these using motherboard monitor.

It is also showing 2 core voltages:

Core 0 = 1.47v
Core 1 = 1.5v



Why is it showing two and which one should be my actual processor? If it's 1.47 I guess I could bump the voltage a little. I've heard Albatron undervolts...is this true?

The PSU rails look just fine.