Gigabyte GA965P DS3 - Halts at Boot Screen

[phoenix198]

I've just made a bit of a horlicks of (re)installing a Gainward GTX 580 onto a Gigabyte GA965P DS3 motherboard (Q6600 processor, 4GB PC6400 DDR2). Sequence of events:

1. Initially installed it fine, booted into Windows 7 and installed latest NVidia driver. All well, then started a game to bench the card which caused the fans on the GTX 580 to kick in and found that one of the SATA cables was fouling the rear fan on the card - horrible noise.

2. Shut down, removed GTX 580, cleared the foul - no visual signs of damage to SATA cable or the fan

3. Reinstalled the GTX 580, closed up case, reconnected to monitor, keyboard and mosue via a Belkin KVM switch - no video output! Remembered I had forgotten to reattach the PCI-E PEG cables! Re-opened case, re-attached PCI-E PEG cables, checked no fouling and all other cables soundly fastened. Reconnected to monitor, etc

4. Rebooted PC. Now have video signal to monitor but PC halts at Gigabyte boot flash screen and is unresponsive to keyboard inputs - USB or PS2.

Help!

[phoenix198]

Update to the above:

Replaced GTX 580 with GTX 460. Same fault - PC boot freezes at Gigabyte boot flash screen and is unresponsive to keyboard inputs.

Going to try resetting the CMOS ...

[blueball]

Try booting with one stick of memory then set memory voltage to correct setting before adding remaining memory.

[phoenix198]

Try booting with one stick of memory then set memory voltage to correct setting before adding remaining memory.

It worked

Not sure that I would ever have considered this but after doing so the PC booted, then quickly rebooted, announced there was a CMOS checksum error and would I like to use the last known good CMOS <yes> and it then happily booted into windows.

I want to have your babies*

* There may be a small technical hitch about this ...

[blueball]

I have two gigabyte boards, a DS4 and a DQ6, and they both get iffy about memory voltages if you have a crash or whatever. I discovered this was the only way to get back into them (clearing the CMOS wouldn't allow a boot with multiple memory sticks and default voltages).

Glad you are sorted. Don't worry about the kids; I already have one

[phoenix198]

Aaargh!

Worked with two sticks of RAM but crashed (and burned) when all 4 sticks installed - not even a video signal to the monitor <sigh>.

So: either some of the RAM is fritzed, the motherboard is goosed or I have PSU problem?

[blueball]

Have you set the correct voltage for the RAM. Try with 1 stick again; it may need 2 or 2.1 volts to operate. Once you go into the BIOS press CTRL-F1 then go the the voltages page (second from the bottom from memory but could be wrong) and you will now have access to extra setting. Set the correct voltage for the RAM and, as you are using 4 sticks I would add about 0.1V to the MCH controller as well.

[phoenix198]

Took me a while to access the memory voltage and MCH settings you referred to (my BIOS doesn't have the Ctrl-F1 access) but got there eventually.

Did as you suggested - added 0.1V to both - and system now happily boots with all four modules installed.

Thank you very much!

[phoenix198]

blueball:

Just re-read your post and realised that I have probably over-volted the RAM! It requires 2.1V (that's what it says on the side anyway) and I probably now have it running at 2.2V as there wasn't a numerical value in the BIOS to say what the board would supply at default voltage settings.

It's reasonably good RAM (Corsair XMS2 Extreme) - should I worry about the possible over-volt?

[blueball]

DDR2 default is 1.8V so you would have to set +0.3 to get 2.1V

If you have set +0.1 then you can afford to increase it to +0.3. If you have set +0.4 I would personally trim back to +0.3

[phoenix198]

DDR2 default is 1.8V so you would have to set +0.3 to get 2.1V

If you have set +0.1 then you can afford to increase it to +0.3. If you have set +0.4 I would personally trim back to +0.3

Decided to get 'brave' late last night (knew I shouldn't have done so after a couple of beers) and set the DDR2 voltage to +0.3V. Instant 'no-boot' situation followed by complete panic until I managed to re-access the BIOS and re-set it to +0.1V.

Think I'll stick now while I'm ahead, but thanks for your help.