• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

unstable computer =(

X

xtophertothemax

n00b
Joined
Oct 22, 2004
Messages
5
first here are my system specs:
MOBO: K8N Neo2 Platinum bios 1.4
Processor: AMD FX-53
RAM: Geil 512 mb DDR400 Dual Channel standard cas timing
Video card: BFG 6800 OC 128mb
HD: maxtor 250GB SATA
PSU: Antec 430W true power
^ nothing is overclocked

i've had my FX53 for almost 3 months now and it has never been stable. i'd say i've reinstalled windows at least 5 times now and each time hoping for better luck. My system just restarts randomly sometimes i can be running benchmarks..or even opening a folder or trying to play a song it will just reboot. everytime it reboots i can hear my HD turn off and then the system reboots as well...i just got the HD from fry's a little more than a month ago. I asked my friend what could be wrong and he suggested the power supply and so i replaced that but i'm still having the same problems. i'm thinking it's the RAM..about 2 years old. Maxtor HD..a little over 1 month old. Motherboard..2months old from newegg. it's just so fustrating for my system to be so unstable!!
if anyone has any ideas as to what might be the problem please let me know
thanks

temp settings:
CPU: 45 C
system: 25 C

if anyone has any ideas let me know thanks
 
Download and run the diagnostics for your hard drive brand. If your hd is powering down, causing the system to restart, there are several things that can be the cause of this.

1) Bad IDE/SATA cable. Check and replace if needed.
2) Failed hard drive onboard controller. That is the actual controller on the hard drive has failed or is failing. Run the drive diagnostics and perform a full hard drive scan for errors.
3) The motherboard IDE/SATA controller has failed. If the above two suggestions turn up no errors, then I'd assume the motherboard controller has failed.
4) If you're overclocked at all, don't overclock. I see in your post that you're not, it's just here for people who may be having similar problems.

Anyhow, try the above and see what happens. I've had this problem before with Western Digital HD's and turned out to be the onboard hard drive controller was failing. New hard drive fixed the problem! :)
 
That 430 watt PSU might be causing the problems if it's not giving enough juice to the components + the new HD. Try borrowing a more powerful PSU and see if that helps. Also try removing the new hd and testing it out.
 
yeah, i was gonna ask what you replaced it with. i think your friend meant that the psu is underpowered as serbianem said, not faulty.

if it's no that, then try the following:
download prime95 and run torture test: small fft for a while. if that errors out, it's likely to be your cpu being instable, which might be because you have an insufficient psu (though i had the system in my rig running just fine with an antec true430 for several months)
if prime gives you no errors, get memtest86 and install it onto a floppy and run a few loops of memtest (at least 3). if you get errors there, then it's either the cpu or the ram, but we already kinda ruled the cpu out with prime95, which leaves the ram.
if it's neither of those, maybe the video card?
 
i posted my problem on another board and i was told to check the voltage on my FX53(supposed to be 1.5v)
it was 1.424-1.44 and the guy said that could be a major problem so i went into bios and messed around with the voltages for a while now it's 1.488v
could undervolting a processor cause instability??
 
xtophertothemax said:
i posted my problem on another board and i was told to check the voltage on my FX53(supposed to be 1.5v)
it was 1.424-1.44 and the guy said that could be a major problem so i went into bios and messed around with the voltages for a while now it's 1.488v
could undervolting a processor cause instability??
Click to expand...

Absolutely.
 
yes.. it does. though i guess higher end cpu's are less tolerant that low end cpu's cause my 3200+ can go down to 1.3v at stock speeds before it gets unstable.
 
i was feeling hopeful that the voltage would fix the problem HOWEVER
about 10 mintues ago i was playing a mmorpg and listening to music and i heard the hard drive click and it rebooted AGAIN
any other ideas on what is causing this problem?
 
Dude, borrow some RAM from a friend and try it out. New motherboards these days are starting to get incredibly picky to the point that I'm gonna have to replace the Mushkin Level 2 I've got with Corsair or Kingston because my A64 runs unstable with it. Just to get it to run for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time requires 2.95V and raised timings... Needless to say I'm not very happy with my situation but you should check it out. I grabbed a friend's leftover Corsair XMS and it ran like a champ.

BTW, I've been through about 4 A64 939 motherboards so far and every one of them has been picky on the memory, which is why I bought the Mushkin. =[
 
Did you dl and run disk diagnostics on your hard drive? If not, I'd recommend that, as have others. Also, borrow some other memory and possibly another hard drive and PSU and test one at a time until you find the culprit (if you do). Some stores have great return policies, so you can get something to test with and if that's not the problem, return it for a full refund. I just did that myself with a mobo... ;)
 
i was poking around in bios today and i found out that on my motherboard when you set fail safe defaults or optimized it always sets the primary graphics adapter as PCI by default i changed it to AGP so maybe that will fix the problem..i'm not too sure. also i was reading on a forum earlier that if you install windows on a hard drive that's SATA you should always use the disk that came with your motherboard to install SATA controller...could that be the problem as well?
 
Please run diagnostics on the hard drive if you haven't already. I guarantee you'll find out you have a failing onboard controller. Replace the SATA cable with another, and also check for loose connections between the SATA drive and motherboard.
 
All of the above are very good ideas, let me add one if I may. Bump your RAM voltage up to 2.8 or so and try that. I have had similar issues with machines where that was all it took with older RAM. Heck, I've even had to do it with newer RAM, even at stock speeds.

Give it a shot, don't cost nutten but a reboot.

Luck
 
You don't have a BenQ DVD-RW or I/O Magic DVD-RW drive do you?

I had similar issues and it turned out to be my BenQ drive!. I upgraded the firmware on the drive and poof - stability.

Your Powersupply is fine (antec True Power 430...) -

A couple things to check is - your mother board bios - go to the website and see if there is a later bios. If it were ram issues then you would not be seeing the kinds of crashes your are seeing.

Trust me I know how frustrating it is....I JUST went through this and spent about 300 dollars trying to figure out what it was and in the end it turned out to be my stooopid dvd burner!! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top