Albiniasty

I have a weird problem which I'm trying to solve for last two weeks.
Here are my PC spec's:
Gigabyte EP45-DS3L rev 1.0, BIOS F10
E7200 CPU
2x 1GB OCZ Reaper 1066 CL5
Creative SB Live! Gold (I forgot which version exactly because it's quite old)
Gigabyte GF7300GT (GV-NX73T256P-RH)
Chieftec GPS-350EB-101A PSU
+ SATA HDD and IDE DVD writer.
CPU, NB and GPU are watercooled.

The CPU seems to run fine at 3.6GHz (9x400) at 1.35V with memory set to 400*2.66 = 1066 @2.1V. Theoretically it's stable, because I can run any stress test for as long as I like without errors. But from time to time I get a random black screen lockups - it looks just like windows 'blank screen' screensaver. It always looks the same and it's totally random. The machine can run for a week 24/7 under constant 100% load without problems, and then suddenly I can get 5 black screens in a single day.
There's another thing - after I press reset button when the black screen issue happens, usually the PC won't boot, so the MB resets itself to default clocks. I can set it back to my settings and it will run fine until next black screen loockup....

Could this be caused by my weak PSU ? I've tested voltages with multimeter, +12V(2) drops to 11,73 under full load. Also the CPU vcore isn't exactly equal to what I set in BIOS, it's around 1.3V with BIOS setting @ 1.3625.

Bolletje

Don't always blame the PSU. Chieftec isn't that bad and 350 watt is likely enough to keep you system going (7300GT doens't consumes a lot).

Under load or idle? You can have a Vdroop that's 0.0625V.

During the black screens, do you have HD activity? And for example, do you still hear audio when you were playing music?

Albiniasty

1.3625 drops to around 1,33 idle and 1,30 under full load.


Nope, everything freezes. The music usually loops endlessly at the last tone played.

[hobo]eclipse

being a p45 are ther not more voltage options inthe bios? cpu pll, cpu termination voltage and cpu reference? unlike my specs to the left my mainboard is now a ep45-ud3r and i had a hella time gettin it back stable at the seetings in sig. the previous board ex38-ds4 didnt have nearly the voltage options.

what you runnin for those? not that ill be able to give you a quick fix, but its prolly a good place to start

Albiniasty

Yep, it has a lot of other voltage options, but I left everything at Auto.
I have a feeling that the problem is somehow related to RAM, because I got two black screens during 6 hours test at default CPU speed & voltage, but RAM set to 266x4 2.1V. After that I've set the CPU to 3,80GHz (for around two hours it even worked close to 4,1GHz because I set the FSB wrong by mistake), but reduced the RAM speed to 800MHz (400x2.0 1.9V) and so far no problems...
Maybe it's the RAM voltage drop causing problems ? It drops to 2.06V if I stress RAM, sometimes even a bit lower, to 2.04. Is it safe to set it to 2,15 or even 2.2V ?

[hobo]eclipse

do you have easy tune 6 installed? if not u should and post a screen shot of the tuner, advanced, voltage tab. in my situation auto overvolted the CPU pll and termination way to much. this what im working with now. actually im pretty sure im good at 1.59/1.57v cpu pll. with auto and these clock speeds the bios would set the PLL voltage at 1.8v and the Termination v at 1.6.

ram stable at 2.08v bios/ 2.06/2.04 under load, ddr2-1130 5.5.5.15 (was stable at 5.5.3.13 same volts and clock speed on ex38-ds4)

Albiniasty

After few days of stressing hardware I found the source of my problem - one of the RAM modules was broken, it caused black screens even at default speed if I set DDR voltage to anything higher than 2.0V (and the manual says that 2.1 is the default at 1066MHz). I got a new pair of DDR2s and so far everything looks fine.

[hobo]eclipse

good to here ya got it straightened around