Probem with K7S5A, XP2200 and Win2k

nukes · February 5th, 2004, 01:42 PM

Right, I'm having a problem with one of the systems here. Occasionally in windows you will hear the hard disk spin down and the system reboots. Sometimes it flashes up a blue screen for about 1/10th of a second beforehand.
This doesn't happen when the FSB is set to 100mhz.
I've run Memtest86 with the FSB at both 100 and 133. At first it gave problems at 133, but I swapped the DIMM slot to the other one, and it works now. I figured that would be the end of the problems. Not so.
The CPU isn't overheating, stays in the low 40's crunching FAD.
I did notice the voltage is at 1.58v rather than the standard for the chip (1.6 iirc)
Also the 3.3v line is down to 3.2v
This is leading me to suspect the PSU. However, the system was working perfectly before I upgraded the CPU (was a Duron 1g) so it could as easily be a cache fault or something on the cpu.
What do you guys think?

System Specs:
ECS K7S5A ver 1.0
XP2200 Tbred
512mb Crucial PC133 (I've had this ram stable faster than 150mhz so I don't think that's it)
Noname 300w PSU
Win2k Pro.

barginhunter · February 5th, 2004, 07:23 PM

The northbridge is probably getting hot , it's only stuck on with double sided tape . Put a fan on it or use some thermal epoxy instead of the tape .
Another weak point of that board is the little battery tends to die fast .
Other than those two weaknesses , great little board .

nukes · February 6th, 2004, 04:46 PM

I've already done the HS mod. There's no need for a fan on the northbridge. The heatsink is plenty. The underside of the board doesn't even get warm.
I've ruled out the power supply, I borrowed a 550W Q-Tec supply from somebody. That should be more than enough to suit that system. Bluescreened within minutes of bootup.
I'm going to swap the ram with some PC2700 tomorrow and see how it goes.

JPMiller · February 6th, 2004, 05:05 PM

PSU quality (not just supposed wattage
) is a huge issue with these boards...
doing the Cheepoman bios upgrade can make a big difference as well...
try different memory like you stated as well...

nukes · February 7th, 2004, 08:35 AM

Umm, its a Q-Tec PSU:
http://www.qtec.info/products/product.htm?artnr=13492
Anyway, even if it only operated at 70% efficiency, it would still be more than enough to power the system. It IS a good quality PSU
Also, I neglected to mention that I already have the cheepoman BIOS installed.
I'm going to swap the memory out of my main machine today.

nukes · February 7th, 2004, 02:53 PM

Right, swapping the ram for some PC2700 didn't help either. I reckon its the CPU. Gonna try it in another board, and if that doesn't work, RMA it.
God help ebuyer if they mess me around more with this. Half the boxes arrived with dents in and I've still to test the hard disks.

nukes · February 8th, 2004, 01:15 PM

Swapped the CPU with another XP2200.
The one I stuck in this machine just does the same. The one from this machine works fine in the other.
This is doing my head in. :grr