M3A overclocking

[i found nemo]

you would have no post if it were dead .... so be glad for that lol.

[SSN585]

There doesn't seem to be much hope. It stills crashes from WinXP (after a few minutes) with these settings:
Mem clk manual 400Mhz, 2T, auto-auto-auto-auto
FSB200, cpu x 8 (1.6G), cpuV 1.2375, DRAMv 2.20
Last 2 DRAM's, new, installed <1 week ago, removed

Nothing feels overly hot...CPU and NB heatsinks, RAM, all good to touch.

I even crash when booting to memtest.

Maybe I should have went Intel. I switched to AMD's about 10 years ago; mistake?

[Jakalwarrior]

Bet youd love those new intel chips that slowly die with a bit of a voltage bump

Anyway, did you already try the normal stuff like letting the bios battery sit out over night? trying an old backup PCI vid card, etc...
If so thats when you call tech support and get an RMA. You give them some of your money to give you a refurb board (hope there arent any yet!) in place of your new board. Standard ol refurb lottery issue too. Most every manufactuer does that BS.

[SSN585]

Jakal, I didn't do too much troubleshooting yet. As for the BIOS, I didn't reset or leave the battery out. The glitches seen in the BIOS were a one-time event. I don't have enough info to see if this is a MB or CPU problem (or possibly the GPU). I think the OS is good, as well as the HDD's. I took out the two very new ram sticks, but have same symptoms - so will swap the older and newer ram sticks (none are more than 1 month old). Nothing in the system is very old, except maybe for the CD/DVD's.

I went out on the town today looking for parts - we have nothing in the area. One CompUSA, closing it's doors tomorrow...it looked like a bomb went off in there. Best Buy, Circuit City and Staples carry nothing. NO CPU's. I thought if I could get my hands on a fairly cheap AM2 CPU, I could use it for troubleshooting.

[SSN585]

Maybe, it lives.

I removed the "old" ram sticks in the slots A1/B1 yellow slots, and re-installed the "new" sticks in the A2/B2 black slots. Bravely, I set manual mem clock to 800. Some fairly short Prime95 testing indicates the system is working again.

What may have happened is the Enzotech H/S interference with the A1 yellow slot. The heatpipes are putting slight pressure on that stick, and maybe that combined with the h/s fan vibration is screwing the works up.

Time will tell. p.s. this is not funny, so stop laughing

[Methious]

I didn't laugh, I did chuckle a little. Glad you got it up and running. Short note, things touching ram sticks isn't a real good idea.