Anyone got an idea if this is the mobo or psu playing games?

Soldato
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(This is also in the mobo forums, Im hoping to get a quick answer so I can surprise my mate by coming to some sort of rescue tomorrow/monday if need be, am feeling a bit gutted for him, considering how finicky his new build [first home build] has been for him, its had me working on it 3 days solid, trying to get it running properly!)

My friend installed his new system the other day, and got it running.
Its a C2D E6400, DS3 (Rev 3.3 F10 bios), Geil 2GB kit 15-5-5-5 timings, Antec Trupower 480W (came with his case)
There was initial nightmare where his SATA Seagate Harddrive wasnt detected, (after it locked up overnight with an early overclocking stress failure) if you listened very closely it just clicked, whereas my SATA Hitachi drive was detected and spun up immediately, so we swapped drives and sorted that issue. (his drive spun up straight away in my system).

Once we'd dealt with that, we benched the CPU. 1.4~V straight to 3.2GHz, and it ran Orthos 2004 beta, small ffts over night for over 8 hours solid no fail. (hence we dont think the CPU is the issue, as surely it would have fallen over by 8 hours if something was an immediate issue with it). Brilliant we thought, my mate was well chuffed, so we turned it off while he went to work for the day, and came to look at it later, get everything running in Windows etc. (for clocking, we'd set PCI lock to 100,raised the FSB to 400, so it'd be going at the RAMs rated speed and only raised voltages minimally, as per the DS3 clocking threads suggestions, except we gave the CPU less than 1.45V)

We then discovered that now, the machine doesnt seem to pass BIOS properly with any overclocked settings. Settings were reset to exactly the same as before, but the system starts up, show the gfx bios, moves onto mobo bios, detects the CPU, RAM, and about starts to detect the drives, and then just immediately powers off. It doesnt do this at stock, but hell, I think we ought to RMA/try and fix this, as somethings not quite right for it to completely power off part way through initial BIOS bootup, as it seems obvious that his chip at least has some nice clocking potential in it, and it seems a shame to run it completely at stock, as his CPU should be able to achieve some overclock, even if not the 3.2 GHz we stress tested on.

Ofc, as he'll be without a PC for a few days, we need to try and RMA the right component, and ofc include a description of the turning off thing etc so they accept it, rather than just immediately bung something in and say it works, without thorough testing.

If you DO think its the mobo, for overclocking, would you recommend getting a replacement DS3, or just getting another board, has to be under £100, Im looking at the new Abit Fatality board on this week only for one.
 
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What graphics card do you have in that system? It could be the PSU not supplying enough power tbh. Do you have these problems at stock? What about if the FSB is only 333?
 
The turning off seemed to be occuring even at 300, let alone 333 fsb. He doesnt seem to have said issue at stock, as I say (we reset the system a lot yesterday), but it feels like we're really not getting the most from his chip if it could do damned 3.2GHz 400x8, and pass orthos stress for 8 hours :(. The graphics card shouldnt be causing it as its a lowly 6600 basic, which draws all its power from the PCI-E slot.

The only way I guess I could really test if its the PSU would be to try with MY current PSU, but damn thats a pain, but at least I know mines fine, as its running my system in sig.
 
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