PSU or Motherboard issues? Please help

[Xet]

Okay so.

K8N Neo2 Platinum
2x1gb GeiL Value
AMD64 3000+ Winchester Core
ATI X850PE
2x250gb Maxtor Sata drives
3xDVD/CD Drives (one plugged in)

and allegedly a 450W PSU (Miridian is the Make)

The board has been running for months fine, until I started to fit my water cooling.

Now the system won't boot unless the ram is at 2.85v and it'll only boot with 1gb, not the two (it'll post but not boot).

Idle temps for the cpu are at ~27c according to MBM5, and also about 27c for the Graphics card (which is oc'd). The cpu bumps up to about 50c underload, and if I oc it to 2ghz (stock 1.8ghz) it'll hit the 70s! (if I apply a bit more voltage to the chip the system will go as far as to hang)

I'm going completely mental as I can't make sense of whats going on - my main thoughts are the board or the psu... of course the memory controller could be broken on the amd (or is that likely to cause more 'serious' problems).

Further: the 1gb sticks have been memtested and don't error.



Any advice on what could be wrong would be a great help as I can only really afford either a new mother board, or a new processor or a new cpu, not all three nor even two!

Cheers!

[BUFF]

Is the wc being run off that 450W PSU too?
I'm not up on the power requirements for wc but it could be that it has pushed it over the PSU's ability.

[explicitlyrics]

Are your hard drives in RAID setup? If not then I would try disconnecting one of them, a hard drive uses more juice than RAM so if you add the RAM and remove a HDD and it works then you knows its a PSU problem. If still no luck, try removing the DVD drive aswell and see what happens. If on the other hand it still doesnt work then its not so simple.

The Meridian is a decent power supply, so it is likely that it would supply the juice it says it does. Also with the components you have listed, you should be under the 450WATT limit, unless there are other parts of your PC which consume a fair bit of power - unless the water cooling is super-power-mad. It is also possible the water cooling is putting a large load on one particular 'voltage regulator like device' in the power supply, this could distort the apparent power consumption.

Anyway get back with results on the above and ill give it a think. Best of luck

[Xet]

wc is running off the mains

Tried disconnecting all the drives - also no RAID setup

Completely confused

oh and in other news I found out my ex girlfriend is moving in with the guy she left me for (tho I thought'd she'd broken up with him..)

I know this has nothing to do with anything but thought I'd vent

I shouldn't even care - I'm now dating a model (well technically) yet I'm still shaking like a leaf... damn women. damn them.

[explicitlyrics]

Did the install go ok? Or did you knock/spill/... anything on anything?

The only other thing I can think of is the heat of your components. maybe the heat transfer paste isnt applied properly or the die of the water cooling block doesnt touch the CPU properly. This in turn is causing a problem with bootup.

May be worth disconnecting the water block and ensuring that it is all clean and tidy underneath it. I dont know how advanced you are with PC installations, but you dont want a huge amount of paste on the cooler/CPU. Then again you need enough for a thin layer on top, there is information on google about how much to apply.

Could your motherboard not be booting up because it is no longer connected to a fan, thus it thinks the fan is broken and doesnt boot. Try plugging in the old fan aswell while leaving the water cooling running.

[Xet]

yeah, I've reseated the cpu/waterblock...

I'm using the box fine as I write this... but with only the 1gb of ram in...
and it's only when it gets to windows that it has the issue and reboots without warning

currently sitting at an idle (ish - got windows media player running, msn beta and firefox) temp of ~31c waterblock is also cool to the touch (even when it hits 70c when I stress it)

Also at the moment it's clocked to 2ghz

Edit: the proc got a bit beat up on install, had an issue with bent pins and it also not seating in the socket properly (now resolved) that's why I'm pondering damage to the chip... but surely that would cause more post errors and even with current config cause prime95/memtest to fail?

[explicitlyrics]

Agreed, you would probably see some labelled errors if it was processor problems. one more thing before I go to bed, does it matter which stick of RAM you use or is it just having 2 sticks in which causes the crashing. Can you try it in different slots on the motherboard, e.g. 2 and 3 rather than 1 and 2. Or something along those lines.

[Xet]

tried every possible combo of ram.

As long as it is 1gb in chan A it'll post and boot

I've got 2x256mb chips, same brand that also cause similar problems, though I've fogotten the finer points of it.

More oddly, untill I took it all out it was working fine (and that was with 2.5gb in) although I was booting into Linux and not windows then (which I seem to recall when I was having troubles getting an os loaded onto the system it worked a bit better and was less fussy about ram config) But even then it required the ram to be clocked at 2.85v to even past post properly.

most strange.

Edit: sorry that read badly - before I ripped the system apart it didn't care about ram voltages, now it does.

[Xet]

yep turns out the motherboard, swapped it out for an ABIT AV8 I got in town and it's running sweet.

Temps are still a bit crazee on the cpu... but I think removing the IHS will solve that... the real question is with my recent spate of hardware luck... do I want to do that

Edit: Removing the IHS = magic.

Temperatures now no longer skyrocket into the 60s got a 20% OC on, idle temp of 25c, load temp (currently, still prime testing... but this about after half an hour or so) of between 31 and 32c.

Hopefully this will be of help to anyone with an MSI Board that's playing silly buggers! Replace it

and I'm really amazed at the difference taking off the IHS does... for the scaryest mod I've ever done (really suprised it worked!) the payoffs are definately worth that moment of fear!

Now... could someone pass me a bandaid, I appear to have cut my hand :/