GA-X48-DS5 Can't get stable even at stock

[NimrodAUS]

OK ill do it. lol. Do you believe that dodgy ram is having something to do with no SATA? not 5-5-5-18? Yeah I found out about the AUTO voltage control first thing, I had it one and well lets just say I think that is what has cause these problems as things worked before, mind u it was only as worked as long as it takes to install vista. then I changed things so not a good test. but Vdimm was like 2.2 and vcore was up above 1.5v

[VorLonUK]

Vdimm was like 2.2 and vcore was up above 1.5v

I'm lost....

Are you saying this was what was reported on the PChealth screen of the bios when all voltages were set to AUTO?
Or is this a result of you manually testing?
If it is the latter, you shouldn't need to Exceed 2.1 volts for the DDR2 and 1.3Volts for the CPU.
Both your ram should be OK at 2.0volts and your CPU at 1.2volts.

I must admit I'm getting totally lost on what you have done and what you are trying.

Could you just load up the bios optimised defaults (save) and try the instructions I gave on my previous post. You seem to be trying far too much all at once and just adding confusion to the mix.

[NimrodAUS]

Dont Stress, those volts were shown in the PC health page when things were on AUTO when I tried overclocking to 9.5X400=3.8ghz. that was last week, It is running on optimized settings with only the ram timming set to man and the volts set to manual and normal. Currently ram is 1.87V and CPU is 1.25 but its goes down sometimes to 1.2

[NimrodAUS]

The one thing that i dont understand is why does this problem still exist with 2 X 1gb sticks that I know are good running at there 533mhz speed. Can you let me in on the train of though ur on with ram relating to sata issues please. Im very sure that one XMS2 dimm is dead as when I put it in my dell it will BSOD as windows loads every time, put the other one in and theres no problems. Im running Memtest2.11 on the good one now so Ill let you know if there is any dramas. How many passes is sufficiant? I know I should let it go for a day, but damm thats a long time to wait.
Thanks for your continued support and sorry if my nobness is upsetting u.

[Xevius]

Originally Posted by NimrodAUS

I have turned off all power options in windows that would cause it to turn off, and it still will turn off even while prime is running and you click on the start menu and nothing happens for about 20 seconds untill the HDD spins up again?? Any Ideas?

You know I had a similar situation. I had bought a board off eBay from a guy who claimed it was a great over clocking board. Well I installed it with a Q9550 and it was working pretty good. But then after a while it started acting up and rebooting on me. I gave up and revisited it the next day and it worked great, then I started stepping up the voltage and it would not and testing the CPU. Everything look great until I did a full test of cache and memory and then the system started dumping again. I called the techs at Gigabyte and they told me I should inspect the board. Well when I inspected the board I found electrical tape holding down the Northbridge. The real problem was the as long as I did not throw a lot of heat at the NB, I was good. I am now waiting for a brand new GA-EP45-EXTREME to come in. I suspect you might be experiencing some heat issues. Please make sure that you cooling systems are making proper contact with your devices. Not dissipating the heat can make even a stock system unstable.

Bob

[VorLonUK]

Originally Posted by NimrodAUS

Dont Stress, those volts were shown in the PC health page when things were on AUTO when I tried overclocking to 9.5X400=3.8ghz. that was last week, It is running on optimized settings with only the ram timming set to man and the volts set to manual and normal. Currently ram is 1.87V and CPU is 1.25 but its goes down sometimes to 1.2

Lets hope the 1.5volt+ reading was an incorrect reading and doesn't account for volt drop. Last time I checked, the Absolute maximum rating for E8xxx series was a touch under 1.5volts. As you were just testing to see what it could do and not for a long period, it's probably ok.

I wonder if one stick is faulty, as the Dell will use no doubt the stock voltage and often these sticks need more than that. So one stick could be better than the other, but may not be defined as faulty.

That is why I said to try one stick at a time of the XMS in the GB board using memtest 2.11.
If one or both fail at stock voltage , ie 1.8volts try incrementing by 0.1volts to a maximum of 2.0 volts.
If they both pass, try both and follow the instructions I posted a few posts back.

Edit:-
Reading Bob's post above is good info. But if your Heatsinks are attached properly and the pins are pushed through and intact, plus the heatsink gets hot to the touch, then you can be assured that the Heatsink is making contact. A cool heatsink when something is under load is to be worried about, Not a hot one.

[NimrodAUS]

Thanks for your post Bob, I have though of the heat issue, and I have isolated that as the issue, I put a fan on the NB and the temps were well down, nothing like they are standard. and it still did it. This is a brand new MB I got from a computer shop, so hopefully it doesnt have any tape on it lol. I have reseated the "Silent Pipe" cooling for the chipset and stuff and it looks ok, Apparently the temps are well with in the norm. the Funny thing is that i can leave it off all night and turn it on and it will fail to detect any SATA, and then restart it 50 times and it works.

[NimrodAUS]

Yes VorLon I was only a very brief moment that the Vcore was @ 1.5v as I checked back into PC health once I changed FSB to see temps. and saw the volts and though Holy starfish. And rectified that issue post haste. I like what ur saying I hope that the ram isnt faulty.

Why though is my sata being silly even with different slower ram?

[NimrodAUS]

Oh and also how much more heat is going to be had from 2.0v as the XMS heat spreader gets pretty hot as it is.

[VorLonUK]

Originally Posted by NimrodAUS

Oh and also how much more heat is going to be had from 2.0v as the XMS heat spreader gets pretty hot as it is.

Your XMS will be fine with 2.0volts - don't worry about that.

Try that side of things first and forget about the SATA for now.