New Build Keeps Crashing

rnickster

rnickster

rnickster

Associate
Joined
4 Mar 2007
Posts
409
Location
Manchester
Hi there, spec is as follows
e6420
Gigabyte DS3P
Crucial PC2-5300
Raptor 150GB
Western Digital 250GB
OCZ Modstream 520W
ATI X1950 Pro

basically, the computer randomly crashes all the time, not during specific tasks but seems to be when i get the CPU to do anything...It will just go black and wont even restart.

Ram is fine, as checked in memtest, no errors, and running at 2.2v, im thinking it is not that, however..in the BIOS it says in PC Health section that DDR18V (i think thats it) FAILED...in red :confused: and i don't know if this is the cause or even what it means.

I have the F5 BIOS installed from the original F4, but even before F5 i was getting these crashes. I thought perhaps a BIOS update would cure it but it did not. :(

I had to buy some extenders for my PSU power cables to the motherboard, 24 pin and the 4 pin ones, and had some trouble with the 24 pin one not connecting properly at the extension socket where the original psu cable attatches...some of the pins were coming loose and causing the PSU fan to spin and light up when the computer was off and also created a repeating dotting sound to my speakers, i have since tried to make them more tighter and the connection better and i think i have solved this problem now...

The psu is the only thing that is not new in this build, its about 3 years old. But i was told it could handle all this new hardware. ?

Any ideas....that FAILED message in the BIOS about the DDR18V is surely not good.

Thanks for any help
Nick
 
rnickster said:
thanks i will check out my card
Click to expand...

Overvoltage can be dangerous and you might be slowly killing your RAM. If your not using the volts they are turning into heat.

Advise turning it down and checking stability.
 
But my rams default rated voltage is 2.2v.........by default the BIOS sets it at 1.8 so i HAVE to overvolt by 0.4v to get it up to 2.2........No ?
 
rnickster said:
But my rams default rated voltage is 2.2v.........by default the BIOS sets it at 1.8 so i HAVE to overvolt by 0.4v to get it up to 2.2........No ?
Click to expand...

Its just a suggestion. BIOS defaults usually are right ( or atleast they are stable ). Just trying to think of ways to solve your problem, no offence intended.
 
I've just had a very similar problem (lockups / crashes) with a very similar setup (DS3P / e4300 / 2Gb Crucial Ballistix 5300) which I purchased last week from OcUK.

I had run memtest too with both sticks in and it was showing OK, but I was still getting problems. In the end I tried the sticks of RAM individually and then lo and behold one stick gave loads of errors in memtest, but only when it was in there on its own.... :confused:

The RAM is now being RMA'd direct to Crucial (don't even get me started on the timeframe OcUK quoted to turnaround an RMA).

May be worth trying the sticks individually (assuming you've not already done so, and that you are running two sticks of course...)

Good luck.
 
Non taken mate lol....suggest away cause im all ears and will listen to anything anyone has to say....Gigabyte Easy Tune Center reads the ram voltage as 1.8v and i just went with the manufacturers spec and thought i should bump it up...I am right in doing that ain't I ? otherwise undervolted ram might be unstable ??
Overvolting by 0.4 makes it read as 2.2v so i think thats ok.

Hhmm, this is annoying :)
 
TBH don't trust anything a windows app gives you on voltage. Lots of things get it wrong. Default it in BIOS.

Or just defualt everything and start again.
 
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