Need 939 motherboard advice

[Linknoid]

I've put together a pretty quiet system:

3000B case with Acoustipack installed
Gigabyte's passive cooled Radeon X800
2 Nexus case fans
Socket-939 AMD64 with Thermalright XP-120
Seasonic S12 500 Watt
Samsung Spinpoint 160 GB hard drive in a SmartDrive 2002C
1 GB corsair RAM (512 X 2 in dual channel mode)

However, the big issue is my motherboard. You see, it's the most unstable motherboard I've ever used:

Asus A8V-E Deluxe

It had lots of features that I liked, and I'm happy with the performance, but it tends to crash several times a day. I don't know if it's a driver issue or a hardware issue, but I ran Prime95 for 6 hours with no errors, and Memtest86+ for 8 hours without error, so I really don't think it's the processor or the RAM (although I can't eliminate them completely). I was using a Sapphire Radeon X300SE video card, but I replaced that with the Gigabyte card, and it crashes just as often.

When I first put the motherboard in, it was just as unstable, so I don't think putting on the Zalman northbridge heatsink made any difference in that respect (although it may have voided any warranty). The case temperature averages around 80 degrees F, and the CPU around 90 F, so I really doubt it's a heat issue.

Can anyone suggest, out of the list of socket 939 motherboards that support CnQ, a motherboard that they've used that is rock solid stable, even under extreme circumstances? I've been burned by 1 too many motherboards with a VIA chipset (ok, so I've had a different problem with each different one I've ever had), so I'm not buying a VIA. But I just want to get recommendations from people on here that have had a great experience with a stable, problem free motherboard.


(If anyone is curious, I've had Windows Explorer crash shortly after startup, I've gotten blue screens of death with errors writing to read only areas of memory in Win32.sys, I play a 3D game which crashes randomly, sometimes I have to unplug and plug my mouse's USB cable to get it recognized, and when I do a shutdown from Windows, it gets to the point where it would shut off the power and then hangs. Rebooting works fine, just shutdown doesn't work. This morning my ethernet wasn't working until I rebooted.)

[Mats]

Some things you can try:
1. Move RAM modules to different slots, or try with only one module.
2. If you're using Windows XP with service pack 2, then try service pack 1 instead. I have had problems with sp2, it made my computer highly unstable and forced me to go back to sp1.
Edit:
3. Use latest BIOS

[kcg]

[...]
However, the big issue is my motherboard. You see, it's the most unstable motherboard I've ever used:

Asus A8V-E Deluxe

[...]

Can anyone suggest, out of the list of socket 939 motherboards that support CnQ, a motherboard that they've used that is rock solid stable, even under extreme circumstances?
I've been burned by 1 too many motherboards with a VIA chipset (ok, so I've had a different problem with each different one I've ever had), so I'm not buying a VIA. But I just want to get recommendations from people on here that have had a great experience with a stable, problem free motherboard.
[...]

Sure, I can, but it will be the same bought! As you can see in my signature I have it and it runs perfectly solid, now for:
silence:~$ uptime
20:31:38 up 2 days, 23:44, 8 users, load average: 0.02, 0.05, 0.01
silence:~$
BTW: have you done any over-clocking? If so, please reverse it. Also please update to the latest BIOS, currently 1011 version (although my 1009 is rock solid). Is your disc SATA or PATA? If SATA where is it connected? Maybe you can try to switch to different chip, i.e. either VIA-based slots or Promise-base slots.

Well, as you know the big question is if the instability is caused by board itself or by OS itself. I wouldn't be surprised to see OS as a culprit, especially since you've run memtest OK.
Hmm, do you have latest drivers? (every OS is as stable as it the most unstable driver!)
Uff, now I've noted that you have *-E board, do you? So you have PCI-express and then that's the board I don't have myself, but all the advices above applies.

Good luck!
Karel

[rtsai]

Can anyone suggest, out of the list of socket 939 motherboards that support CnQ, a motherboard that they've used that is rock solid stable, even under extreme circumstances? I've been burned by 1 too many motherboards with a VIA chipset (ok, so I've had a different problem with each different one I've ever had), so I'm not buying a VIA. But I just want to get recommendations from people on here that have had a great experience with a stable, problem free motherboard.

I can't give you a list, but my Soltek SL-K8TPro-939 motherboard has given me over 30 days of uptime (even that was only interrupted by a reboot invoked by me); see my sig for details. I don't know what you consider "extreme" circumstances; it gets most of its stress from lots of high-def capture and transcoding. It supports Cool'n'Quiet, but does have a VIA chipset.