Power supply problem? Or other?

jamoore9 · Post by **jamoore9** » Fri Jun 13, 2003 7:56 am

Okay, I upgraded to an Asus P4P800, P4 2.4C, and Geil PC3500 2x256MB.

And I've had a bugger of a time. I finally got the memory subsystem stable by turning off Performance Mode Turbo, and turning off Memory Acceleration Mode (Asus' i865PE PAT cheat), 200FSB, DDR400 @ 2-3-4-6. Worked down from 2.5-4-4-8 (CL3 wouldn't even post). Ran Memtest86 all-night without an error. Ran Prime95 for 8 hours before it ran out of memory. (Don't know what that means, never had it happen before -- but at least there were no errors.)

I'm running Win98SE. XP will be here Monday. Hyperthreading is not enabled.

I can't install 007 Nightfire, and I think its related to the power supply, but I can't be sure. Voltages are okay, not great at 3.316, 5.05, and 11.865 (yeah, I know), or thereabouts. 3.3 and 5 are always a touch high, 12 is always a touch low. I have a Herolchi 350W PSU.

I'm getting Windows Protection Errors when Nightfire install accesses the CDRW. I'm running the CDRW and my Radeon 9500 Pro off of the same PSU lead. Here's the whole story:

Disc in DVD-ROM drive. InstallShield hangs at Serial Number verification screen. Disc in CDRW. Enter Serial Number. Install starts and gets halfway. Prompted to insert Disc 2. Press EJECT button. Windows Protection Error. You must restart your computer. Restart. Delete TEMP files, EA Games folder and files, and registry entries for EA Games, Bond, and Nightfire. Try DVD ROM again. System hangs at start of file transfer. Doesn't spin up to speed. I think its the PSU. Disconnect DVDROM from MOBO and PSU. Insert disc in CDRW. Try again. System hangs during install. Drive doesn't spin up to speed. Restart. D elete files. Force PIO Mode 4 in BIOS. Enable DMA in Windows. Restart. Install commences. Drive doesn't spin up to speed, but proceeds very slowly (>10 minutes for disc 1). Prompts to insert disc 2 -- "Windows Protection Error. Please restart your computer" -- before I even touch anything.

This, and variations on it, happened a dozen times or so. The CDRW never spins up to speed. I thought it might be the CPU even though I'm not overclocking, so I boost voltage a notch. No improvement. vDIMM is already at 2.75, but I've never heard of a Windows Protection Error that had to do with memory errors (isn't that what OE, OB, O6, etc, errors are for?). I thought it might have something to do with data tranfer off the drive. I select all cabs from Win98 install disc and transfer. Windows Protection Error around 75% transfered. Drive was spinning at high speed.

I try to install Jedi Outcast. It installs without so much as a hiccup. Played for an hour with no problems.

WTF is going on here? I have no clue. Somehow I don't think installing WinXP will help. I really hope that I'm even able to install it with the CDRW and DVD drives acting this way.

Please, somebody try to shed some light on this. Will a more solid PSU (I'm thinking the Fortron 120mm) fix this?

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Fri Jun 13, 2003 12:03 pm

I dont have P4 experience so am just musing out loud.

1) I would reckon Win XP will confuse things. Sort the problem on SE then upgrade.
2) Could be power. In theory 350W should be plenty, but ... What is the 12V rating for that Hero? Presumably the mobo takes the extra P4 power connector. Somewhere I read Intel want abot 9.xA of 12V for the latest CPUs, and your optical drive motors are 12V as well (usually 1-2A). Can you put a multimeter on a spare molex and watch the +12V?
3) If it is power, then in theory you should be able to recreate the problem other ways - put Sandra burn-in for the CD-ROM looping while you thrash your HDD and DVD some other ways (all the motors are 12V). A bit like your Win98 cab copy crapped out.
4) Does the Radeon suck +5V or +12V from the extra lead (or both?). Can you swap in a low power vidcard and see if things improve? And/or power off extra HDD, floppy & fans.
5) Not knowing P4, but your memory travails seems non-trivial. Perhaps another symptom of the same problem?
6) Do you have a spare psu you can use to power the drives, fans and vidcard in parallel with the Hero feeding the mobo only? Just hotwire the green wire etc.

Good luck

miker · Post by **miker** » Fri Jun 13, 2003 12:22 pm

I'm going to give the opposite advice. Drop this issue until you install Windows XP.. It sounds to me like Win98 is fubar'd (technical term), and you will need to do a clean install of WinXP. (Personally I would never do an OS upgrade) I am guessing you did not re-install Win98 when you swapped out the mobo?

If you are rock solid playing JKII, I don't really think you even have hardware problems.

As always, its nice to swap out spare units like PSU's if you have the availability.

Harry Azol · Post by **Harry Azol** » Fri Jun 13, 2003 9:34 pm

Yeah.. try a clean XP install

jamoore9 · Post by **jamoore9** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 7:04 am

I did do a clean install of 98se when I swapped the board. And right now its running like a pro. There really is something hinky with this Geil memory. I just don't think it runs well at 400Mhz. I gave the mobo a 5% OC, with FSB at 210, and I haven't got a single OE error (before doing this I got periodic OE errors just doing normal tasks in Windows; the program closed and I went on with my business).

At any rate, during one of my previous installs while fighting with this machine, I did run the Sandra burn-in with CD-ROM/DVD benchs on. And it locked up over and over on that module. I'm running the burn-in right now in another window, without CD/DVD, and its going strong. So I don't think its hardware related.

The HEC is rated for 15A on the 12v line. 20A 3.3v, and 33A 5v. Now that I think about it, that's probably not enough for the 12v: if the mobo needs 9, then I'd have to use no more than 1 or 2 each for the CD, DVD, HDD, and 9500. Would it make a difference if I had a PSU rated for 16A like the Fortron FSP350-60PN with the 120mm fan? (looking at one anyway -- this CPU and MOBO are hotter than my previous, so I had to re-activate the 92mm underside fan on this HEC, which makes it considerably louder than before)

Question: Can I put a DVD drive on the Primary IDE port? Right now that port is empty (using SATA), and both optical drives are on the same cable on the secondary IDE port. Its probably unrelated, but I just wanted to check.

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 9:48 am

It's pretty hard to conceive that your 12V is overloaded: 15A => 180W which should be well more than is used by your whole PC. (On paper you can round up each number, assume all the peaks occur simultaneously and convince yourself you need 550W, but that is OTT.) But it nags me on your symptoms: that it tends to go pear shaped just when an optical drive should be winding up to max power usage. Can you get a multimeter on a molex? MBM may give it away if you decrease the sample interval to say 1 second and watch the hi/low screen. It may be your Hero is getting old & tired?

Putting an optical on the Primary IDE should be no problem AFAIK.

jamoore9 · Post by **jamoore9** » Mon Jun 16, 2003 7:09 am

Well, I may have found A problem (not necessarily THE problem). I accidentally was using only 2 of the 3 leads off the PSU to power the system. IE, I had the HDD, CD, DVD, FDD, VGA, and 2 fans running on 2 molex lines. Probably not causing all of my problems, but not all that bright. Now I've got the HDD and FDD on one, the CD and DVD on another, and the VGA and 1 fan on the third. Better overall, as the DVD player seems to be working fine: ran the Matrix and Braveheart for hours yesterday without a problem. Both drives pass the Burn-in test, but I'm getting a low transfer speed from the DVD drive (its a 32x CD, but I'm getting 24x transfer rates). I still can't install Nightfire. It doesn't crash or hang the system, and there are no protection errors, but the program just does nothing. Starts and then stops, closes without having to end task. Very strange. I think I'll just wait to see if XP helps.

But my problems continue. I melted the PATA-to-SATA converter I was using to hook my HDD to the SATA header. It got smashed by UPS and I popped it in anyway in hopes that it was okay. While it worked it was MAD fast: Sandra benched it at equivalent to an 2-disk ATA100 RAID-0 array. Now I'm back to using the ATA-100 ribbon cable that came with the board, but I'm crashing on Sandra's file system benchmark and on large file read/writes (windows protection errors). SMART reading say everything is honky-dory, so I've ordered another SATA-converter (Highpoint this time, not a no-name). Hopefully that will fix it.

Now, I don't know if its related, but the system is freezing after staying on for a long time. I defragged the drive last night over night: the defrag finished (which takes a long time on an 80G drive), but when I found it this morning, the system had frozen. Same thing happened yesterday while running ScanDisk: got through 1.5 million of 2.4 million sectors and the system froze (took about 5 hours to get that far). Nothing else was running and I had disconnected the LAN in both instances. I still fear that its this Geil memory (Asus listed Geil as compatible in the first version of the manual, but it is not listed in any subsequent revisions. So I'm SOL. Nice.) If things don't shape up with XP, then I'm replacing it with Kingston.

dukla: I'll try running AsusProbe and monitoring the voltages during spin-up to see if that's causing any problems. Can't use MBM since it doesn't support the P4P800 yet. Thanks for the tip, though.

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Jun 16, 2003 8:01 am

I suspect the PSU. The 5V and 3V lines won't produce anything like those numbers simultaneously, especially if there is a substantial draw on the 12V line. It would be nice to plug in a bigger PSU (like a Fortron 400 or similar) just to see if the problems continue. If they disappear, then you know for sure. If not, it's something else.

jamoore9 · Post by **jamoore9** » Mon Jun 16, 2003 8:14 am

MikeC wrote:I suspect the PSU. The 5V and 3V lines won't produce anything like those numbers simultaneously, especially if there is a substantial draw on the 12V line. It would be nice to plug in a bigger PSU (like a Fortron 400 or similar) just to see if the problems continue. If they disappear, then you know for sure. If not, it's something else.

That's a good suggestion. I think I'll borrow one (ie, take home, test, return) an Enermax or somesuch from Circuit City this afternoon. I'll report my findings. Thanks.

Post by **MikeC** » Mon Jun 16, 2003 8:40 am

If you are going to do that, get a good brand with tons of power. Might as well be totally sure.

jamoore9 · Post by **jamoore9** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 5:52 am

Okay, here's what happened.

I went to BestBuy. Good idea. They had Kingston HyperX PC3500 256MB DIMMs on sale with rebate at $57.49 each. I picked up 2. Plus, they were conducting an instore survey and gave me a $10 gift card for my time! So I got these DIMMs at a steal!

I also picked up an Antec 400w PSU (all they had). I installed the DIMMs and the system is doing better. Only one (recurring) OE error that I think I have isolated to Trend Micro PC-Cilin, which came with the mobo. Otherwise, bandwidth and OC are better with the Kingston than with the GEIL.

The PSU, unfortunately, is sub-par compared with the HEC I was using! Its rated for more current, but delivers less voltage. 3.27, 4.94, and 11.749. Ew. That said, I did have more luck with the optical drives than before. Sandra crashed on the first attempt to bench the DVD drive. After that, I was able to bench both the DVD and the CDRW over and over again. But, still no Nightfire...

Unfortunately, I'm still hanging at times! Cant' figure it out. I'm going to stop fiddling with it until Windows XP gets here (didn't happen yesterday). I'm definitely replacing the HEC, though. The system overall has improved in terms of stability, even with the overpriced and undervolted Antec in there. I'm going to return it and grab a Fortron somewhere...

Thoughts, suggestions, criticisms, witicisms?

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 6:47 am

jamoore9 wrote:The PSU, unfortunately, is sub-par compared with the HEC I was using! Its rated for more current, but delivers less voltage. 3.27, 4.94, and 11.749.

The voltages in isolation are pretty irrelevant AS LONG AS they are within the ATX spec of +-5%. So actually the numbers you have are no cause for concern. In general Antec fall in the 'quality' end of the psu spectrum. Fluctuations, even 1 brief spike outside the 5%, are cause for much more concern.

jamoore9 wrote:But, still no Nightfire... Unfortunately, I'm still hanging at times!

This is all disappointing. Difficulty is you have swapped 2 items (mem & psu) so would recommend you try diagnose which 1 (or both) made the difference. You may well land up back at miker's view that the Hero was OK. Especially if you can be as stable as now with your Hero you can return the Antec with confidence. The nagging residual though is each time you play with power (changing cables for drives, swapping to the Antec) the symptoms are affected.

Post by **MikeC** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 6:53 am

The nagging residual though is each time you play with power (changing cables for drives, swapping to the Antec) the symptoms are affected.

And that suggests motherboard issues. Power components are also on the motherboard. It is possible that section of the board is not right on yours.

jamoore9 · Post by **jamoore9** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 7:17 am

I didn't mention it, but I did swap only the memory first. OE's were reduced, but the system hung once each in 3dMark2001 and UT3K Benchmarks. Swapped the PSU at the same settings, and both bench's worked just fine. OC'd a little bit and things still sail smoothly. But long running processes are still unstable. I ran the Sandra burn-in using only the CPU and memory benchmarks and it hung after 9 passes. Haven't tried P95 because at that point I was tired and pissed and went to bed.

If it is the motherboard I'm gonna puke, because ASUS sucks at RMA.

I'm just not going to deal with this anymore until all the components are replaced/assembled (SATA adapter, new PSU, WindowsXP). If I still can't get it stable, then I'll have to consider the RMA. Which will blow. Thanks for your help, guys. I'll keep you posted as to progress (if any).

jamoore9 · Post by **jamoore9** » Mon Jun 23, 2003 6:20 am

Okay. I don't have the Fortron 350W PSU in there yet, but with the Antec and Windows XP, its much better! Very stable now. Ran Sandra Burn-in all night last night with no errors. I've put it through 3dMark2001, 3dMark2003, HardOCP's Unreal benchmarks at all settings, PCMark2002, Memtest86, and Prime95. It stable. Hasn't crashed yet (which has been my experience thus far with XP at work, too). Very pleased. Oh, and Nightfire installed and works great!

Thanks for the tips!