HELP - I've broken something

Vertigo

Vertigo

Vertigo

Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2003
Posts
16,687
I'll try in here as the memory forum isn't offering much help.

Just been seeing how far I could push my memory. All was going well until I tried 500Mhz FSB. At this point the machine booted but immediately (after about 5 seconds, before any beeps or POST) powered off and then rebooted again in an endless cycle.

No problem I think, just reset the BIOS and all will be well but no joy. I've tried the reset jumper and removing the battery for 20 minutes but it still does the same thing.

I'm now worried I've fried either the memory or the motherboard. I didn't think memory could be fried by high speeds, only voltages, and it would just fail to work at the higher speed. Now I don't know if I've damaged something or if the CMOS is failing to clear for some reason. The mobo is a Gigabyte P35-DS3P which has some dual-bios malarky but I haven't a clue how that works or what it does.

Anyone got any ideas or advice, I'm desperate here
 
Tried permutations of memory, no joy. Even tried it with none at all - surely it should beep in this situation? (it doesn't)

TBH if I have fried something I'm hoping it's the mobo or some of the mem as it's cheaper to replace than the CPU. What are the chances the 500Mhz FSB has fried the CPU? TBH I can't see it being the mobo as it's a P35 chipset and the BIOS allows FSBs up to 700. If 500 was going to be potentially dangerous to the mobo, they'd hardly allow you to set it 200 higher.

Think I'm gonna take the mem and cpu into work tomorrow and test them in my office PC - process of elimination.

sarf: err, how am I supposed to run memtest when the machine doesn't boot?
 
None of this makes any sense tbh.

If it was the memory then surely it would at least beep when I removed all of it? It doesn't which leads me to think it's not that. Have yet to try each stick individually, will do that tonight.

As for the mobo, I can't believe 500Mhz FSB would fry anything as this speed is reasonable for a P35 chipset and the BIOS allows up to 700Mhz to be configured. As I said earlier, I can't believe they'd allow 700Mhz if 500Mhz could possibly fry it. As for the BIOS, if that were corrupted in some way, surely the DualBIOS system would have copied in a backup from an earlier successful boot?

The CPU should have been able to take 500Mhz without damage, although quite possibly not running properly. Can't really believe it would have fried it.
 
I agree it's looking like either the mobo or cpu rather than the memory. Hope it's the mobo tbh as I really don't want to have toasted 170 quid's worth of CPU :(
 
It lives! :D

Unplugged all the drives and stuck a single stick of memory in and hey presto - it booted.

Have reconnected everything and reconfigured the BIOS and all is now well.

Many thanks to all who offered advice :)
 
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