K7n2 delta locking up

hello, i've just upgraded my friends xp2500 333fsb to a xp3200 400fsb. windows boots fine every time but it now ocasionaly locks up.
psu
3.3v 28a
5v 40a
12v 17a
gfx
msi 5600 256mb
memory
512mb 3200 crucial picked using their memory configurator
cd roms disconected
BIOS V5.1
Please could someone offer some advice on where i could start to rectify this problem.
Any advice/help much appreciated.

Thanks wonknoby for your speedy reply. The vcore was set with h/w i have set at 1.575v and this seems to have sured the locking up. The temp is about 33 degres at idle and goes upto about 42 when playing UT2k4.
Many Thanks

Similar Messages

K7N2 Delta lock ups

Hi there,
I've got a MSI k7N2 Delta sitting in my PC atm. But with a nasty problem. I have to keep the cpu sitting in it (AMD Barton 3000) underclocked for me to use my PC for more then 40 mins at a time. After that time, it just freezes, and the sound card (not system speaker) emits a nasty high pitched sound. Using a more intensive game, i.e. planetside speeds up the process, somethimes running for a mere 5 mins. To use the pc atm, the cpu is clocked at 1.4Ghz, instead of the over 2ghz it should be at.
Any suggestions anyone?
Specs:
K7N2 Delta
AMD Barton 3000+
512Mb Kingston DDR (on compatibilty list)
ATI Radeon 7500
SB! 128
Antec 400Watt PSU

ok, after some more testing (man i love CS ) it still locks up, but it took longer initially. It now just freezes, with no beeeep from the sound card. It may be temperature related though, as after the intial freeze, it will now only take a few minutes before it does it again. Straight after it freezes I'm getting temperature of around 50 on all monitors.
Ill whip out that TV card and give it a whirl now
p.s. case fans, i think one is in the wrong way, is the spinny side supposed to facing in the case, or out the case? cheers

K7N2 Delta ISLR lock-up sound

Help!
I just got a K7N2 Delta ISLR and installed it in my system. Over the course of a few painful days I've realized that system has a propensity to lock up after I load the sound drivers for the motherboard. If I don't do that the system is completely stable but of course I don't get sound. I get this problem even when I'm only using one hard drive with nothing else in the system.
I've followed liquidsoul's NForce 2 Installation How To guide on www.AMDMB.com's forum but to no avail. Has anyone encountered this problem or know how to fix it?
Thanks!
My system specs are:
K7N2 Delta ISLR (newest bios)
1400 Athlon
2*128 DDR 266 (generic)
Plextor 12X burner
Pioneer 10X DVD-Rom
80Gb WD HDD 8Mb
40Gb Maxtor HDD
40Gb Maxtor HDD
Promise Ultra 100
Windows XP Pro SP1
Logitech Cordless Optical (keyboard & mouse)

Thanks Deathstalker & scooter787b!
When I set up the PC originally I only had one hdd in it and I did not install the promise card (you have to install them later because I've found I need to flash the bios of the promise cards so that it will be recognized by windows XP) so I guess I did do the KISS principle (I've learnt my lesson the hard way before).
That said I did the installation thing and everything looked fine. However, the lock-ups occur at no particular interval so after 3 hours and nothing wrong I installed most of the other hardware booted it up and it seemed good. But a day later the lock-ups started happening. Even removing the extra hdd and promise (btw I did put the promise card in PCI 3) card did not help (I went all the way back down to one hdd and still got the problems). I went through many reinstallations of Windows XP SP1 as well.
During the process of elimination I even bought a nice OCZ Dual DDR EL Kit but that didn't help. Also, I changed from my 350W enermax to a new 450W enermax. Problem did not stop happening. I know the hard drive I was using is in good condition.
In terms of drivers I tried the ones that came with it, 2.03, 2.45 and the realtek ones.
After 7 days of painful elimination I'm leaning towards the problem being the board.

Help with Video camera lock ups on K7N2 delta

hi everyone,
finally got new computer working after formatting and reinstalling windows and the bare minimum of software.
but a small problem arose after drivers from supplied CD Rom installed my Sony DV camera locks up.
i haven't even installed any video editing software yet.
before installing drivers, when i double clicked the camera icon in my computer it gave me access to the camera i.e i could press play on the camera and view it on the computer.
now since the drivers have been installed the message that i get is 'please wait while device initializes'.
then 'program not responding' is displayed.
my configuration is
K7N2 delta
AMD XP2000+
crucial 512mb PC2700
Radeon 9200
belkin firewire card
trust V92 modem
any help would be much appreciated as the new computer sole purpose is to video edit.
cheers everyone

I have the same problem and have a very old MoBo 266Pro board, I have a different camera it's a Samsung dp-s103 or something like that, whenever I try to capture some movie the program lock ups and I have to =restart the PC. I tried taking out the PCI cards and left only the firewire PCI card I was able to capture about 16 minutes of video, but it still locks up. I will try the latency patch and a bios upgrade. Will then see how everything turns up. I've also tried this on an old computer with an Intel chipset, 733Mhz processor and it worked fine, so this must be either a chipset problem or MSI didn't manufacture these board well.
Best regards
PS. I think that my new system will be a pure intel one :(

[nforce] K7N2 Delta, having massive lock-ups / random reboots.

Hi all, it's been a while since I last needed your wisdom. Anyway, a couple of days ago my machine began to randomly reboot on me, so I went about trying to figure out what is causing the problem. I've cycled out my PSU, my drives, changed BIOS settings, so on and so forth, and it's still happening. System Specs follow:
MSI K7N2 Delta Mobo
Athlon 2800+ Processor
512 x 2 Kingston ValuRAM PC3200
Generic PSU : 3.3v : 28a, 5v: 30a
EVGA Nvidia Geforce 5950 Ultra 256 MB
Seagate 200GB 7200 RPM Hard drive
Lite-on DVD/CDRW Combo burner
Any ideas? I've been dismantling this thing and rebuilding it over and over for about a week now, and nothing has changed. I get the reboots all the time, graphic-intensive and not. I've even had the machine freeze up in the BIOS menu before. Help me please!!!

Quote from: sickfallout on 19-May-05, 02:38:49
Alright, thanks a lot guys for all your help!
Hi there..
I'm not sure if you have fixed the problem or not.....but i have the same board and my pc reboot maybe one or two times a day...
and i'm sure it is my Ram, and i also use 2x512mb Kingston Value pc3200
i have tried with 2x512mb crucial pc3200 from my other pc and then there is no problem...
ps. I haven't been writing in english for a long time.

K7N2 Delta-ILSR + FX5700-256td = PC Shudown and Lock

i play a Doom 3 demo or Morrowind and in the short while to be playing the computer it is extinguished
MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR (v7.8 Bios)
MSI FX5700-256td (last bios)
AMD Sempron 2600+
512 DDR
300W power
WinXP SP2, Suse Linux 9.1
all patch´s and last drivers for all OS
I look the 8X AGP dont work...
4X Agp works... Im proving now

AMD Athlon Sempron 2600+
MSI K7N2 Delta - MS-6570
MSI FX5700-TD256
System BIOS : 08/02/2004-nVidia-nForce-6A61BM4CC-00
Memory: 512MB 16x(32Mx8) DDR-SDRAM PC3200U-2533-600 (CL2.5 up to 200MHz)
HD: 80G SATA
Voltage Sensor(s)
CPU Voltage : 1.55V
Aux Voltage : 1.63V
+3.3V Voltage : 3.25V
+5V Voltage : 5.03V
+12V Voltage : 11.98V
-12V Voltage : -12.03V
-5V Voltage : -5.15V
Standby Voltage : 4.97V
AGP Bus(es) on Hub 1
Version : 3.00
Speed : 4x Fast-Writes Enabled : No
Isochronous Mode Enabled : No
Addressing Enabled : 32-bit
Aperture Size : 128MB

Data corruption on MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR

Hi all,
Just got my new MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR up and running.
Got some issues with the memory running at 200mhz while the Barton core of my Athlon Xp 2600+ was running 166mhz, this had to be 1:1 (thx forum )
While running the default bios settings with cpu/mem at 166/166 fsb everything is stable as hell. I have been running Prime95 for 2 days now and using the system for dvd ripping/encoding, UT2004 gaming etc.
Then the overclocking began I'm using the standard AMD cooler that came with my boxed Xp2600+ so I didn't expect an FSB of 200mhz.
I stopped at an FSB of 190mhz...been crunching Prime95 for 18 hours now and again very stable.
Now comes the problem : Sometimes I get crc errors when installing a game or decrypting a dvd!! But how can this be? Prime95 is stable at this 190fsb overclock.
When using an FSB of 166mhz no data corruption or crc errors.
What can this be? It's not the cables because they're all the same as in my old setup which was running (ahum...walking) stable. PCI/AGP speeds are locked when overclocking...
Only thing I can think of is the power supply. I've read in a warning post from Bas that the Q-Tec 550w psu I have is crap. So my guess is PSU, but maybe it's something else I'm forgetting...Any suggestions??
The stupid thing is when I'm not overclocking I don't have the data corruption problems, but I'm still using the same crappy Q-Tec 550w PSU.
Help!
gr,
Remco

Hmmm, that's curious. On the MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR product page Kingston memory is recommended
Ok, did a Memtest86 v1.11 pass at cpu/dimm 166/166 - no problems whatsoever. I think using Prime95 would have revealed memory problems...but will do another pass with cpu/dimm at 190/190.
Can overclocking affect the Promise Raid Controller?? It should be locked like the PCI/AGP but who knows...
Well, I still have to replace my PSU but I'm not 100% sure that this is the problem. What PSU would you recommend? ...and I'm also thinking about replacing the standard CPU cooler, any advice is welcome
gr,
Remco

MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR (MS-6570) BSOD problems grrr

I recently purchased this board and although it is an awesome product, I'm having a problem with BSOD's when I play a game for a certain period of time
Specs:
MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR (7.6 BIOS)
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton
512MB (2x256MB) Samsung PC-2700 DDR memory (2.5-3-3-6 1T)
MSI 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4200 (4X AGP)
NVIDIA nForce on-board sound
Western Digital 80GB drive w/ 8MB cache
MSI X48 CD/CD-RW/DVD combo drive
Windows XP Professional SP1
PSU:
Turbolink 420watt (came with case)
+3.3V is 28A
+5V is 40A
+12V is 18A
So what happens is I get a STOP error during the game that shows the kmixer.sys driver as the culprit. Sometimes it's accompanied by PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA too. I read somewhere that kmixer.sys has to do with windows audio and that it's a 3rd party driver issue or a memory issue. I'm using the latest NVIDIA 3.13 nForce platform drivers. I ran Memtest lastnight for 12 hours straight and 0 errors. I'm thinking the memory may not be compatible with the board nor dual channel, is this possible? I have also tried several different drivers for both video and chipset including MSI's own and I still get the kmixer.sys BSOD when playing games. My previous motherboard was an MSI KT3 Ultra2-R (MS-6380E) which I had no issues with. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
--Update--
I just tried to play a game with audio disabled and it crashed this time with DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL with nv4_mini.sys as the problem. My IRQ table shows some sharing, but device manager shows no conflicts.

Ok I tried running the DTM-CB3 module which is nForce2 approved at 3-4-4-11 2T timings and experienced the same result even at 2.6 and 2.7v. I tried both in dual-channel and same thing happened. However, I downloaded a program called Prime95 and ran the CPU torture test and the system returned a fatal error within the first few minutes. CPU Temp was at 57 C and the warning beep (set to 60C though) sounded intermittentley which is strange. I let it cool down then ran the torture test again and about 5min. later the system either seized completely or the program crashed. IE has also crashed randomly on me. I did this several times, before trying a different FSB/DRAM ratio. So I left the system at 200 FSB and used a 6:5 ratio so my memory was running at DDR333 and processor was a 3200+. I ran Prime95 again and the system locked up just as it did the other times. So after I did this a few times with consistent results. I went back and set the FSB to 166 and tried a 5:6 ratio so the memory was DDR400 and processor was the normal 2800+. I ran it again and to my suprise it passed all the tests and after an hour of this, I tried a game and that was perfectly fine as well. I checked the temps and CPU was only 45 C this time. So I'm thinking the processor can't handle anything above 50C or it's just plain overheating. I ordered a Thermaltake Silent Boost HSF today which is tested up to 3400+ so this should fix my problem. If not, then I'm going to replace the memory with a 512MB Geil PC3200 golden dragon dual-channel kit.

[MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR] Trouble

Hello,
I have some serious trouble with my pc, my system specs are:
-Unlocked Amd 2400+ (AXDA2400DKV3C from August 21, 2002)
-Msi K7N2 delta-ilsr
-Palit GeForce FX5900XT
-Std. 512mb pc2700
-Std. 512mb pc3200
-More stuff
The problem is that I can't change the multiplier. If I change the multiplier from 15x (standart) to for example 13x, the system won't boot. Than I have to put a jumper at the 100mhz fsb setting, then I must change the multiplier back to by h/w & save the settings. So I am only able to change the fsb, but not the multiplier
Anywone who know's a solution for this problem?
Thanks,
Sape

Quote
Originally posted by Wonkanoby
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=48585
i told how to there
Yes but I would like to be shore
Quote
Originally posted by Tango
How do u know that your CPU is unlocked?
Sounds like to me it is locked because you can change the fsb and not the multiplier.
Because the processor is from 2002, and then it's unlocked

K7N2 Delta ISLR and XP3200 Woes

Let me share some of my experience with random crashes and lock ups on my main system.
Hopefully some might find it helpful and others might have useful comments to add.
It all started when I decided to upgrade my system. I waited until new technology was announced and then went out and bought the hardware that was knocked off the top spot.
My current system is:
Althon XP3200 Barton
1Gig PC3200 (2x512M)
K7N2 Delta ISLR Bios 7.7
Radeon 9700pro
Antec TruePower 550W PSU
XP Professional
SATA 120G Barracuda
When I first assembled the system I could not, and still cannot, get it to run stable as a XP3200 with a FSB of 200MHz (400MHz) and the memory in dual channel mode. The system wouldn’t boot, would randomly crash, would come up with fatal XP errors.
So after consulting the message boards I was informed it was probably be down to two causes; a inadequate power supply or overheating.
That is when I went out and bought the Antec TruePower 550W PSU. The reason being the CPU temperature was around 47C - 52C (107F - 115F) with ambient around 35C (88F). Not too hot I thought.
Anyway this did not solve the problem so I then decided to change the CPU coolers. I now have a nice collection, Alaska, Aero, Gigabyte and others. Current one on order is SLK-900A with a delta FFB0912EHE fan. But again this did not solve the problem.
I then thought that maybe the ambient inside temperature was too high and therefore pushing the CPU temperature up. To solve this I fitted two hard-drive fans, four 80mm case fans and a PCI exhaust fan. This was on top of the 3 fans already in the system. Still the system would not run. I even took the side panel off and had a 6” mains fan blowing into the case. Still couldn’t make it stable.
I have just ordered a Thermaltake Wingo V8000A case.
So I decided to check out the XP3200 and memory. After playing around I found out that:
1. The memory is fine running dual channel at 400MHz. I ran memtest using my CPU and memory in a friends PC for 12 hours without any problems (Abit board).
2. The system is stable if I drop the FSB to the processor to 166MHz (333MHz). How I am currently run the machine.
3. The system was more stable if I ran the memory in single channel mode.
4. The point it becomes unstable is when the CPU FSB is 192MHz (384Mhz).
5. The problem occurs on another K7N2 Delta ISLR motherboard. Actually exactly the same problem running a different XP3200 and 1Gig.
I have tried all possible combinations in the bios, except Vcore, Vddim voltage levels. Which is my next step. I think I need to up the Vcore at higher frequencies as I believe it may be a bios /motherboard inherent problem.
I hope this might be helpful to some who are experiencing the sample problems.
Couple of things I don’t like about the mother generally a part from the fact I can’t set it up correctly.
1. The decoupling capacitors around the CPU socket are too close. This limits the choice of CPU coolers you can fit.
2. Motherboard components interfere / prevent you from fitting certain cards in the PCI slots. Such as the SPDF adapter that comes with the motherboard.
And does anyone know:
1. What is the maximum temperature I should be seeing for stable operation on a XP3200?
2. Any recommendations on another suitable motherboard? I basically spent all the money I had so if I can’t get it working I’ll bin the motherboard and buy another one.
Oh, why don't I run it at 333MHz? Well then I got a slower system than I started with and it means I admit defeat!

I have this same board with the same BIOS and am also using an Athlon XP 3200+ (with Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2 RAM) and had the same excruciating stability problems. I had tried/tested everything in sight and no stability. Then I found a posting in this forum made a few months back by WebFan (with an XP 3200+ and basically the same RAM), who said he had the same kind of problem. He had only achieved stability when he reduced the FSB setting to 192 MHz (obviously not a coincidence). (Thank you ever so much WebFan.) I reached the heaven of stability by making the same change. Then I started experimenting; I moved the bus speed to 193, still okay. I set the RAM settings to the 3-3-6 2.5 that Corsair says are stable, still okay.
Then, and this I believe is the key step, I installed the lastest set of chipset drivers from nVidia (not the older version provided by MSI). This change subjectively seemed to improve performance noticeably, so I decided to take the big plunge and return the FSB to the rated 200 MHz setting. It's only been three days, but STILL OKAY! Before setting the FSB to 192, I was having all kinds of blue-screen crashes numerous times a day. I haven't had a single one in ten days, three days running at the full 200 MHz.
It seems to me that the board/chipset were not tuned to handle the 3200+. If you look at the description of the board on the MSI global site, it says it's compatible with Athlon XP 3000+ and up. My guess is that only the lastest edition of the drivers, version 4.24/4.27, is up to the job. (I'm not interested in overclocking and so haven't been interested in seeing if I can do better than the rated 200 MHz setting [400 MHz DDR clock speed]. Leave well enough alone, if you ask me.)
Try them; you have nothing to lose but your instability.

K7N2 Delta problems

Hey all..having a huge problem with my computer and have no idea what's going on.....when i try to reformat, i am getting errors with blue screen. errors are as follows: Page_Fault_In_Non_Paged_Area followed by the stop error numbers
Driver_IRQL_Not_Less_Or_Equal
IRQL_Not_Less_Or_Equa
as well as a wait or yield error in a DPC routine
Now, when i reset the bios, it will reformat and install windows, but I never had to do this before. Also, when i am up and running, i am getting both crash and reboots, as well as lock-ups. Again, never happened before a month or so ago. Does anyone have any ideas? I don't know if this is a PSU issue, a BIOS issue( I just updated to the latest BIOS version, but after all the problems), a heat issue or what. Here are my specs:
MSI K7N2 Delta
Athlon XP 3200+
2x512 mb of DDR333 RAM
usually use Radeon 9700 Pro, but am currently forced to use FX 5200
WD 60 gb hdd with 8 mb cache
AOpen 300 watt psu
3.3v - 20.0A 5v - 30.0A 12v - 13.0A
any help would be appreciated gang...have a good one !!

Flash the bios back to B30. Much more stable than B40. B40 are really buggy same as the beta one. Good Luck.
Tbred B 2400 (180 x 13.5) 2.10 volt
MSI K7N2 Delta2 LSR
2 x 256 PC2700 Kingston Value RAM
Powercolor Radeon 9600XT 600 core 800 memory
450 Icute PSU.

K7n2 delta ilsr with kingston pc333

Owning a MSI K7N2 DELTA ILSR with an AMD ATHLON XP 2800+ and 512mb DDR KINGSTON (KVR333X64C25/512).
I like to run the motherboard with a FSB of 166MHz, with a 12.5 multiplier.
Setting the FSB/DRAM to 1:1 gives no troubles at all.
But FSB/DRAM 1:2 will lock up the booting process and the only way to escape the black-screen-of-nothing is to reset the bios with the jumper :-(
This way I run half the speed my memory is capable of!
Somebody a suggestion?

memory and cpu uses ddr to transmit data.
double data rate.
it means it sends data twice each clock cycle instead of one.
166mhz true transfer rate becomes 333mhz virtual transfer rate.

K7N2 Delta Onboard Sound Disable Question

I have a K7N2 Delta motherboard with a MSI FX5600 256MB DDR video card. I am currently using the onboard audio. Ever since I first built this computer I have been having nearly every game I play on it lock up and freeze. I am thinking that it is a sound issue that is causing this problem, so I want to install a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live. I have several questions that I hope someone can answer as I have exhausted all avenues and still don't have any answers. Here are my questions:
1. How do I disable the onboard sound? ie Which jumper is it and what are the
jumper settings?
2. Which PCI slot is recommended for installing the sound card so that I won't
any IRQ conflicts?
3. Is this actually an audio problem or is there something else wrong with this
motherboard or video card?
This is becoming very frustrating because when the computer locks up all I can do is just reset without shutting down. I'm becoming more and more worried that if this continues unabated I'm going to crash the hard drive and have to replace it only to have the problem persist. I hope someone can give me specific answers to my questions. Thank you in advance for your help.

First. Is it K7N2 Delta-L or Delta-ILSR (the one with an actual Soundstorm chip on it)? If you have the actual Soundstorm chip, use it! It will sound much better than an SBLive. Assuming you have the normal K7N2 Delta-L like I have:
1. To disable the onboard sound, first uninstall the drivers for it, then you need to go into the BIOS by holding the Delete key while you boot up. Then find the section "Integrated Peripherals" and in that section "Onboard Devices". Press Enter and find AC97 Audio and disable it. There are no jumpers.
2. PCI slots 1, 2 and 3 are usually not shared with other stuff like you AGP or USB ports. PCI Slot 3 is the ideal choice. 1 is usually covered by your video card fan anyway. For the SBLive, on Windows XP/2000, get the newest drivers from Creative Labs. The file is named "LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe" and it's file size is 23.3 MB (24,451,404 bytes). They have fixed the "nforce2 + gameport incompatibility".
3. The problem may be audio related...or not. Which drivers are/were you using for your onboard audio? nvidia or Realtek? Actual Soundstorm chip or crappy software codec? It could also be video card related. Fastwrites? 8x or 4x AGP?

K7N2 Delta Overheating

I have the K7N2 Delta board (rest of system specs are in sig) and after about 45mins-1 hour of gaming, my system locks up and resets. After lock up, if i go into bios, my sys temps usually read about 59-64 degrees celcuis. I was having this problem with the stock fan/hs, so i bought the Volcano 12, figuring that would solve the problem. Didn't, only gave me about 1hr-1 1/2 hours before lock up at lowest RPM setting (2100), and only about 10-15 mins longer at highest RPM setting (about 5600). I have the same problem when I run 3d 2003 test, it goes through the first set of tests fine, but when I get to the first CPU test, my system locks.
My idle temps on the CPU are about 45-52 degrees celcius, case temp is in about 38 celcius. I read in other posts that it could be due to TOO MUCH thermal goo on the chip, but how do I know how much is too much?
Aside from overheating, what else might it be?
If I leave my system idle, it can go for days with no hint of a problem. It's only when I start gaming (America's Army, UT 2k4 demo, BF1942) that I get problems.
Also, I ran memtest, RAM is fine.

Wonkanoby: Ya, I know I need new RAM, but I'm on an incredibly tight budget now, so it's gonna be a while till I can afford some (basically, I haven't had a job in 8mths).
DeathStalker: I tired what you said, opened up the side of my case, put a Vornado house fan on high speed facing my mobo, and the temps did drop quite a bit (with HS/fan @5600 RPM and idle CPU=41celcius, Sys=28celcius. @2100RPM and idle CPU=44celcius, Sys=34celcius). I decided to run the 3dMark2003 this way, with HS/fan @5600 RPMs, and I got through the first CPU test, but then they system crashed again.
So it seems that the extra cooling helped, but still wasn't enough.
Any suggestions on how to cool my system with out putting a house fan in there? I already have 3 80mm fans (1 front bottom intake. 1 top exhaust, 1 rear exhaust). I have room for 2 more 80mm fans (1 front bottom intake, 1 rear exhaust), but I don't think that would help cool the CPU all that much, would it? I thought the TT Volcano 12 would help with cooling a lot, but it has only provided marginal imporvements.
Also, could it be that I am overstressing my RAM, and that is why I'm having these problems?
Open to any suggestions.

K7N2 Delta-L deteriorating cmos resets

Hi
System info :
K7N2 Delta-L mobo
XP2500 Barton
2 x 256mb Samsung (Korean) PC3200
Coolermaster CP5-8JD1F-0L hsf
PNY ti4200 128mb
Maxtor 40g 7,200 hd
Pioneer DVD
LG CD-RW
2 x 80mm case fans
1st psu 400w generic
2nd psu Thermaltake 420w
All installed with first psu, and XP pro. Running no problems. Tested cpu at 11 x 200 (not straight off, gradually built up to it, watching for stability or temp problems), was running fine at stock voltages, ran 3d mark 2001 successfully. Backed things off to 10.5 x 200 to ensure stability. Re-ran 3dmark 2001, then ran prime95 overnight (8+ hours), with no problems at all. Temperatures were fine, I set the cpu temperature alarm well into the safe side in the bios (55deg). The highest cpu temperature PC Alert displayed, was 29 deg.
Updated the bios to 5.3, rebooted and checked the settings in the bios, went back into XP, no probs, re-ran 3dmark, went online, and started to play Dark Age of Camelot. After somewhere around 2 - 3 hours, the display started to "stutter", and the mouse movement became erratic. I logged off, checked PC Alert temps, all was fine, but 12v line had gone down to 11.56v. Rebooted to check the volts in the bios. They were down too, also the blue line selector had acquired a mind of its own, randomly headed anywhere when next item was selected, so I switched off, and guessing the psu to be maybe a bit inadequate, ordered the Thermaltake 420w to replace the 400w generic.
The Thermaltake arrives, install and fire up, after clearing the cmos to start again, and set up with basics. Voltages were all very satisfactory. In the meantime I had checked the cpu seating and thermal compound, and there had been no problems, and I also took the heatsink off the ti4200 to check thermal compound, cleaned and re-applied (as I did with the cpu).
On the fire up into XP, got a bsod with file corruption notice. Booted into Me install cd, formatted the drive, loaded smartdrv, and started a new XP install. The system locked up after a successful install, about 2 minutes into the worktop (went to use windows explorer to access drivers, etc., and it froze). Had to use the reset button, and it would not post. Cleared the cmos, and it posted. Reflashed the bios to 5.2 that was on the distribution cd just in case.
Since then, it has been a catalogue of failed installs, lockups and increasingly difficult clearing of the cmos. It is now at the point that a cmos clear does nothing (with the other pins at 100 and safe mode), and it fails to post. I get to the 3 lights flashing on the keyboard, and that is it.
I removed the board from the case, just in case I had hallucinated and missed a riser or something, but the risers were in the right place, and each had a fibre washer on top. Tried booting with the board out of the system, with just the cpu/hsf/memory/graphics, with no joy, also tried with a Gf 4 mx 440, and also no joy.
In retrospect, I don't think the 400w psu was too bad to drive the system, but it was worth being cautious - it has driven another system with no problems since. The cpu was performing great, as was the memory. There was no problem with the hsf or agp card. Memory was tried single stick in each memory slot (and all of it had flown through 3dmark and prime95 previously).
I am tempted to suspect something is adrift to do with the Athlon powersaving mode that has been mentioned in these forums. Other than that, there was something a bit weak on the mobo, and it has slowly bitten the dust.
Any suggestions gratefully received.

PS.
The case is one of those Superflower Midi towers, with good case volume. Airflow was quite nice with the 2 extra fans, one at front pulling in, the other at rear extracting.
The fan on top of the heatsink, is the standard Coolermaster, which overhangs the heatsink either side, with the bonus of blowing a nice airflow over the northbridge.
The 400w generic psu had 2 fans, which were also pulling a fair airflow through the case. I didn't get any indications of anything even aproaching overheating.

K7n2 delta locking up

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