Trouble getting stable!

Nicfish · 16 Jan 2008 at 17:37

After a bit of playing in the BIOS my pc will now run longer than 5 mins! But I am still gettin random crashing! The screen will suddenly freeze and will slightly deform but the mouse will still work for about 10 seconds then it completely freezes! I managed to get a quick screen shot before it crashed.

Usually its like the whole screen that will look like that but it didnt fully crash this time! Could it be GFX?

mame · 16 Jan 2008 at 17:42

were you trying to overclock? only thing i could think it you have left the PCI-E bus on auto and its now way over 100mhz. Could try locking it to 100mhz. Might be worth just clearing the cmos and making sure everything works ok at default.

therealnerd2 · 16 Jan 2008 at 17:45

Artifacts coming out in a screen shot???

Nicfish · 16 Jan 2008 at 17:56

mame said:
were you trying to overclock? only thing i could think it you have left the PCI-E bus on auto and its now way over 100mhz. Could try locking it to 100mhz. Might be worth just clearing the cmos and making sure everything works ok at default.

I have played around with the PCI-E bus tried ranges from 100-110. Some more stable than others, but if i go to high my internet stops working!!!

And I have a E2180 @ 3.00 ghz. It orthos stable even at 3.4 Ghz but when scrolling internet pages is when i normally crash!

Also have:
Asus P5KC
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz
HIS ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro Turbo X

Darg · 16 Jan 2008 at 17:56

therealnerd2 said:
Artifacts coming out in a screen shot???

They always will unless they're caused by the cable.

Darg · 16 Jan 2008 at 17:56

Nicfish said:
I have played around with the PCI-E bus tried ranges from 100-110. Some more stable than others, but if i go to high my internet stops working!!!

And I have a E2180 @ 3.00 ghz. It orthos stable even at 3.4 Ghz but when scrolling internet pages is when i normally crash!

Also have:
Asus P5KC
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz
HIS ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro Turbo X

What are your voltage settings for:

CPU
RAM
NB

Nicfish · 16 Jan 2008 at 18:03

SpeedFan says:

Vcore - 1.38v (think its set to 1.4v in bios)
+12v - 11.35v
AVcc - 3.31v
Ram - 1.8 v

Northbridge is on Auto in Bios but i dont know how to find out.

Darg · 16 Jan 2008 at 18:09

Go into your BIOS and set your RAM to 2.1V or the closest to that you can get. Find out your northbridge default voltage and set it to that +0.1V

Nicfish · 16 Jan 2008 at 18:12

If i set my memory voltage to high it starts gettin errors on memtest. And Even when i set it to 2.1v it still shows as 1.8 on speedfan! Should i just ignore this?

And how do i find my northbridge voltage?

Darg · 16 Jan 2008 at 18:19

BIOS is always the one I'd trust.

It really shouldn't get memtest errors at 2.1V, that's its stock voltage. Have you manually set the timings to 4-4-4-12 and the speed to as close to 400mhz as you can get?

Have you tried running memtest86 off a boot disk?

Nicfish · 16 Jan 2008 at 18:28

CPU-Z is saying

The timing is 5-5-5-18
FSB: DRAM - 5:6
DRAM frequency is at 360 Mhz
CR is 2T

And no i have not tried memtest86 off a boot disk

Nicfish · 16 Jan 2008 at 18:40

Just tested and memtest is fine at 2.1v

should i maually set the timings?

Darg · 16 Jan 2008 at 18:54

Yea set the timings to 4-4-4-12 and retest memtest, leave it going for about an hour if you can off the bootdisk. Also set the ratio to 1:1 so that the memory speed is the same as your FSB. Some motherboards have issues with ratios. This might mean it's a bit low at the moment but we can play with the CPU ratio and FSB later to make the memory back up to 400mhz.

mame · 16 Jan 2008 at 19:03

I'm not sure where this is going now. Yes its better to have tighter memory timings but having 5-5-5-18 instead of 4-4-4-12 wouldn't cause any instability, it would make the system more likely to be stable. My memory needs 2.1v to run at its rated 4-4-4-12 but runs fine at 1.8v with slack timings.

Nicfish · 16 Jan 2008 at 19:07

Thanks for the advice. I shall try this out and then get back to you!

mame · 16 Jan 2008 at 19:11

going back to your first post: you've played around in the BIOS, you're not sure what you've changed and the PC has become unstable. I would clear the CMOS which puts everything back to default and see how it runs like that. Tightening memory timings is the last thing i do to a stable and tested PC

Nicfish · 16 Jan 2008 at 19:18

No its always been unstable. But i have yet to solve it!

Nicfish · 21 Jan 2008 at 02:29

ok i tried having the ratio set to 1:1 and also setting the RAM as close to 800 as i can, but i still get the random artifacting (grammer?) and then freezing. could this be down to my graphics card? or even my monitor as i have had this issue even with my last set up and i have had new mobo, cpu, ram and graphics card since then!