unsafe at any speed

Matt82

Matt82

Matt82

Soldato
Joined
13 Mar 2004
Posts
16,649
hi there fellas.

Ive got a new system that i cant get stable at standard speed, im grasping as straws and i want your views.

mobo MSI 870a 54
cpu Athlon II x3 450
ocz 4gb dual chan special ops
caviar blue 500gb x2
optical sata dvdrw
ocuk value case and psu

installed windows without issue, did some stress testing and things started to go pear shaped after everything was installed.

at first it seemed to be driver related as everything worked fine if i did a reinstall of the board drivers.

after that i started testing the ram individually. one stick gives BSOD, other gives a few errors.

upgraded PSU to an ANTEC 500w item, just incase, still failing prime. sometimes its primestable on all four cores for 24 hours but will then randomly BSOD after.

should i buy more ram from OCUK, for testing. if that fails, i can return it in the 28 days

what else can be done?
 
prime can sometimes run 24 hours perfectly stable but memtest always throws errors on one stick and bsod on the other.

i just dont get that it was stable (or seemed stable) at the start.

what do you think of... reinstall windows, install basic drivers, stress test.

after that i think its replacement ram time.

any suggestions that are nearer the budget end of the range?

im thinking corsair 4gb xms
 
If ram is giving errors (even 1) and its running at correct voltage and speeds then its faulty and should be returned.

Reinstall with faulty ram is a waste of time as likely to cause a bad install.
 
Just get the RAM RMA'D. No matter what you do you will never fix it. Blue screens can be as infrequent as 2-3 weeks apart due to bad ram.

I had the same problem couple of years ago.

With regards to a replacement. Just get the same one in a replacement. If you do want to change then the corsair or the Geil is a good bet.
 
new ram ordered today. went for corsair xms, if that fixes it ill return the originals to ocuk.

gonna do the reinstall tonight on the old ram just for giggles and ill keep you posted
 
even on 3 cores i cant get it stable.

last night, after a fresh win7 install, ive set it to run memtest with both sticks of ram in and prime is doing small FFTs.

should be getting the new corsair ram in the post.
 
ok. 24hrs of prime small FFT. all four cores stable.

1100% memtest all clear

i have put a new bios on though.

i bet it falls over straight away in prime blend

clues?
 
This is a tough one to diagnose, and maybe a hard one to RMA but if the CPU is failing the stress tests then I'm guessing it's a dodgy one? Have you tried disabling each of the 3 normal cores to see if it's definitely one of them that's faulty?
 
its completely random.

small fft 24hr stable on 4 cores, so cpu should be good.
memtest 24hr stable, so mem should be good.

corsair mem arrived today, so will test later.

its on an antec 500w psu, which is definately enough, but now im thinking i should upgrade that again.
 
does it fail ibt also ?

its sounding like its failing only when the cpu and memory are fully stressed which would maybe make me think it is the board ?
 
you are right, its when the mem and ram are done heavily at the same time.

not been back to the pc since 6pm so i dont know if prime fell over yet.

i initially thought the same as you (cpu and ram) and hence changed the PSU as i thought it could be current draw, but its only an x3 450, 95w
 
well well well

prime blend started 6pm lastnight.

still running now. 16 hours later. thats on default 3 cores and 3.2ghz. vcore = default. vdimm 1.6v (well within specs for the corsair stuff)

so that looks like the ram fixed it. next step is blend on 4 cores and whatever the outcome, reinstall windows because it was BSOD repeatedly yesterday on the ocz ram.

(ocz used to be such good stuff)
 
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