24 pin power supplies, stability issues?

I just recently assembled a new Athlon dual core system .
Athlon XP4400+ dual core cpu
MSI K8N Neo4 Plat Nforce4 mb
Saphire Radeon X850XT PCIe video card.
2gb of Corsair LL matched ( 2 ea 1gb) ddr ram
2 ea 250 gb WD Sata Hard drives

I have not overclocked the system yet, all running at default settings. I
did up my memory voltage slighty to see if that would help, it has not. I
also upped my vcore slightly.

I am having some stability issues. About once or twice a day, my machine
will just lock up. I have to press the power switch and hold it in, to get
the machine to shut down, then reboot. It seems to usually happen when I am
browsing the internet or reading newsgroups. Has not happened while playing
a game yet, but, I don't game but about a couple hours a week.

It did it this evening when I booted it after getting home, then after
shutting down and rebooting, it went through a checkdisk and corrected some
errors. It did it last weekend, and would not boot, said it was corrupt,
and I ended up having to do a repair install of XP Pro.

Heat is not an issue, my system temp is around 28c, cpu temp at idle is 32c,
under load the highest I have seen is 40c.

I am baffled by what is happening. I did a complete new clean install of XP
Pro SP2, and have all updates.

I am using an Antec True Power 530 watt power supply, but it is the 20 pin
( plus 4 ) connector, and the power connector on the motherboard is the
newer 24 pin connector ( plus 4). Someone posted here recently that there
might be some stability issues when using the 20 pin in the 24 pin
connector? I know MSI 's manual says it should be fine.

I looked briefly at Newegg, and did not see any 24 pin connector power
supplies, at least under the Antec name, or perhaps I just missed it? All I
saw showed as 20 pin ( plus4) , the plus4 meaning I presume the other small
4 pin connector that gets plugged into the mb as well.

Would appreciate any advice, I am wondering if going with a new power
connector that has the 24 pin connector to match the motherboard might solve
the problem. I see nothing in XP's event viewer either that gives a hint of
the problem.

Also, looking at my voltages using Speedfan, I noticed my 3.3 volt rail is
showing 3.1 volts, wonder if that might have something to do with it? I
believe this power supply has an adjustment where I could adjust the 3.3
volt setting.


Thanks for any advice,



--
Don Burnette

In article , "Don Burnette"
wrote:

I just recently assembled a new Athlon dual core system .
Athlon XP4400+ dual core cpu
MSI K8N Neo4 Plat Nforce4 mb
Saphire Radeon X850XT PCIe video card.
2gb of Corsair LL matched ( 2 ea 1gb) ddr ram
2 ea 250 gb WD Sata Hard drives

I have not overclocked the system yet, all running at default settings. I
did up my memory voltage slighty to see if that would help, it has not. I
also upped my vcore slightly.

I am having some stability issues. About once or twice a day, my machine
will just lock up. I have to press the power switch and hold it in, to get
the machine to shut down, then reboot. It seems to usually happen when I am
browsing the internet or reading newsgroups. Has not happened while playing
a game yet, but, I don't game but about a couple hours a week.

It did it this evening when I booted it after getting home, then after
shutting down and rebooting, it went through a checkdisk and corrected some
errors. It did it last weekend, and would not boot, said it was corrupt,
and I ended up having to do a repair install of XP Pro.

Heat is not an issue, my system temp is around 28c, cpu temp at idle is 32c,
under load the highest I have seen is 40c.

I am baffled by what is happening. I did a complete new clean install of XP
Pro SP2, and have all updates.

I am using an Antec True Power 530 watt power supply, but it is the 20 pin
( plus 4 ) connector, and the power connector on the motherboard is the
newer 24 pin connector ( plus 4). Someone posted here recently that there
might be some stability issues when using the 20 pin in the 24 pin
connector? I know MSI 's manual says it should be fine.

I looked briefly at Newegg, and did not see any 24 pin connector power
supplies, at least under the Antec name, or perhaps I just missed it? All I
saw showed as 20 pin ( plus4) , the plus4 meaning I presume the other small
4 pin connector that gets plugged into the mb as well.

Would appreciate any advice, I am wondering if going with a new power
connector that has the 24 pin connector to match the motherboard might solve
the problem. I see nothing in XP's event viewer either that gives a hint of
the problem.

Also, looking at my voltages using Speedfan, I noticed my 3.3 volt rail is
showing 3.1 volts, wonder if that might have something to do with it? I
believe this power supply has an adjustment where I could adjust the 3.3
volt setting.


Thanks for any advice,

The only freeze issue I've heard of, is the issue with the 8.35.2.3
driver for a Marvell LAN chip. And I don't know if that bug would
apply to your Marvell chip or not. The 8.35.2.3 driver was
picked up via Windows Update for most people, and it causes
freezes. Using either an older driver, or a newer driver, should
fix it.

I didn't know Antec made a 530 watt supply. Do you have a URL
for the product ? If you were using an Antec TrueControl, you
should have the adjustment panel installed. I believe, on
a TrueControl, if the panel is missing, all voltages will be
on the low side. The True Power is not user adjustable and should
not suffer from the same problem (I believe it has a feedback wire
on the three main outputs, so it should have pretty tight
voltage control at the motherboard).

There are some power supplies, where the 24 pin power connector
comes apart in two pieces. That allows the power supply to
be plugged into a 20 pin motherboard (with extra 4 pin section
removed), or when the 20 pin and 4 pin parts are snapped together,
you can plug the whole 24 pins into a 24 pin motherboard. That
is completely separate from the ATX12V 2x2 connector.

Are you using the Nvidia IDE driver ? Try the default Microsoft
IDE driver instead.

You could get a copy of memtest86+ and test the memory.
A second test is to try Prime95 "torture test option", which
should run error free. (As a 100% CPU load, that will help test
that the supply is strong enough.) A third test, would be to
run some version of 3DMark. That will load the power supply, and
also test that the video card is stable. I used to leave a demo
loop running overnight, in 3DMark, as a video stability test, and
see if it was still running the next morning. You can run these
tests, if you manage to cure the freezing problem, and you
want to know whether the system is really solid or not.

Paul

there alot of BIOS options also..
Cell Menu
disable Spread spectrum
disable cool'n' quiet
disable the auto overclock feature
hold "shift"..press and hold F2..press and hold Alt..press and hold F3..
you should see extra menu options pop up..disable NV/ATI Speed up
...I just removed not 2 hours ago my Corsair TwinX PC3200C2 PT and replaced
it with OCZ PC4000 EL gold...2x1gig
even running at stock speed it was more stable...have now attained 240x11
OC.I found that if I ran the voltage higher on the corsair it wasn't too
bad.
Have heard of people having similar issues with it in other forums also

dino wrote:
there alot of BIOS options also..
Cell Menu
disable Spread spectrum
disable cool'n' quiet
disable the auto overclock feature
hold "shift"..press and hold F2..press and hold Alt..press and hold
F3.. you should see extra menu options pop up..disable NV/ATI Speed up
..I just removed not 2 hours ago my Corsair TwinX PC3200C2 PT and
replaced it with OCZ PC4000 EL gold...2x1gig
even running at stock speed it was more stable...have now attained
240x11 OC.I found that if I ran the voltage higher on the corsair it
wasn't too bad.
Have heard of people having similar issues with it in other forums
also


Cool'n'quiet and dynamic overclocking were already disabled.
CPU spread spectrum was enabled, so I have disabled it, will see if that
helps.

I tried holding shift, press and hold F2, pres and hold Alt, then F3. I did
not see any extra menu options, this is from within the cell menu right?
And, holding shift the whole time?

Thanks, hopefully disabling the spread spectrum might help.


--
Don Burnette

I know that works on the K8N Neo2,Neo4-F...sometimes it takes a try or 2 to
get..when you finish you should have all 4 keys down.

Here is another place to get excellent answers

http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12

Have built 5 systems based on the K8N Neo4-f..all have it..plus I disabled
that option on my K8n Neo2-f..I myself am still considering the Platinum or
the Asus Deluxe-Sli and a new vid card..
MSI K8N Neo2-F 939
AMD A64-3700 San Diego(240x11)
OCZ PC4000-2048El Gold
ATI X800XL (442 gpu-1100 mem)
etc...

Ah, I was not keeping the first keys held down while pressing the subsequent
keys...

I will try it again, but will wait a couple of days and see if disabling
spread spectrum makes any difference. Maybe I will get lucky and that will
solve it..

I would like to start overclocking this system, but want to wait till it is
stable of course first.

I went from a K8N Neo2 Platinum board, with an XP64 3500+, which was rock
solid, to this K8N Neo4 Plat, X2 4400+ system.

Thanks for the tips!

Don



dino wrote:
I know that works on the K8N Neo2,Neo4-F...sometimes it takes a try
or 2 to get..when you finish you should have all 4 keys down.

Here is another place to get excellent answers

http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12

Have built 5 systems based on the K8N Neo4-f..all have it..plus I
disabled that option on my K8n Neo2-f..I myself am still considering
the Platinum or the Asus Deluxe-Sli and a new vid card..
MSI K8N Neo2-F 939
AMD A64-3700 San Diego(240x11)
OCZ PC4000-2048El Gold
ATI X800XL (442 gpu-1100 mem)
etc...

Sounds like HD problem to me.

Hav you checked event viewer to see what events have taken place at the time
of shutdown or lockup?


"Don Burnette" wrote in message
...
I just recently assembled a new Athlon dual core system .
Athlon XP4400+ dual core cpu
MSI K8N Neo4 Plat Nforce4 mb
Saphire Radeon X850XT PCIe video card.
2gb of Corsair LL matched ( 2 ea 1gb) ddr ram
2 ea 250 gb WD Sata Hard drives

I have not overclocked the system yet, all running at default settings. I
did up my memory voltage slighty to see if that would help, it has not. I
also upped my vcore slightly.

I am having some stability issues. About once or twice a day, my machine
will just lock up. I have to press the power switch and hold it in, to get
the machine to shut down, then reboot. It seems to usually happen when I
am
browsing the internet or reading newsgroups. Has not happened while
playing
a game yet, but, I don't game but about a couple hours a week.

It did it this evening when I booted it after getting home, then after
shutting down and rebooting, it went through a checkdisk and corrected
some
errors. It did it last weekend, and would not boot, said it was corrupt,
and I ended up having to do a repair install of XP Pro.

Heat is not an issue, my system temp is around 28c, cpu temp at idle is
32c,
under load the highest I have seen is 40c.

I am baffled by what is happening. I did a complete new clean install of
XP
Pro SP2, and have all updates.

I am using an Antec True Power 530 watt power supply, but it is the 20 pin
( plus 4 ) connector, and the power connector on the motherboard is the
newer 24 pin connector ( plus 4). Someone posted here recently that there
might be some stability issues when using the 20 pin in the 24 pin
connector? I know MSI 's manual says it should be fine.

I looked briefly at Newegg, and did not see any 24 pin connector power
supplies, at least under the Antec name, or perhaps I just missed it? All
I
saw showed as 20 pin ( plus4) , the plus4 meaning I presume the other
small
4 pin connector that gets plugged into the mb as well.

Would appreciate any advice, I am wondering if going with a new power
connector that has the 24 pin connector to match the motherboard might
solve
the problem. I see nothing in XP's event viewer either that gives a hint
of
the problem.

Also, looking at my voltages using Speedfan, I noticed my 3.3 volt rail is
showing 3.1 volts, wonder if that might have something to do with it? I
believe this power supply has an adjustment where I could adjust the 3.3
volt setting.


Thanks for any advice,



--
Don Burnette

Yes, nothing showing up in event viewer.

I took someone's advice from the other day, and disabled cpu spread spectrum
in the bios. So far it seems to be stable, knocking on wood...

Thanks,

Don

don wrote:
Sounds like HD problem to me.

Hav you checked event viewer to see what events have taken place at
the time of shutdown or lockup?


"Don Burnette" wrote in message
...
I just recently assembled a new Athlon dual core system .
Athlon XP4400+ dual core cpu
MSI K8N Neo4 Plat Nforce4 mb
Saphire Radeon X850XT PCIe video card.
2gb of Corsair LL matched ( 2 ea 1gb) ddr ram
2 ea 250 gb WD Sata Hard drives

I have not overclocked the system yet, all running at default
settings. I did up my memory voltage slighty to see if that would
help, it has not. I also upped my vcore slightly.

I am having some stability issues. About once or twice a day, my
machine will just lock up. I have to press the power switch and hold
it in, to get the machine to shut down, then reboot. It seems to
usually happen when I am browsing the internet or reading
newsgroups. Has not happened while playing a game yet, but, I don't
game but about a couple hours a week.

It did it this evening when I booted it after getting home, then
after shutting down and rebooting, it went through a checkdisk and
corrected some errors. It did it last weekend, and would not boot,
said it was corrupt, and I ended up having to do a repair install of
XP Pro.

Heat is not an issue, my system temp is around 28c, cpu temp at idle
is 32c, under load the highest I have seen is 40c.

I am baffled by what is happening. I did a complete new clean
install of XP Pro SP2, and have all updates.

I am using an Antec True Power 530 watt power supply, but it is the
20 pin ( plus 4 ) connector, and the power connector on the
motherboard is the newer 24 pin connector ( plus 4). Someone posted
here recently that there might be some stability issues when using
the 20 pin in the 24 pin connector? I know MSI 's manual says it
should be fine.

I looked briefly at Newegg, and did not see any 24 pin connector
power supplies, at least under the Antec name, or perhaps I just
missed it? All I saw showed as 20 pin ( plus4) , the plus4 meaning I
presume the other small 4 pin connector that gets plugged into the
mb as well.

Would appreciate any advice, I am wondering if going with a new power
connector that has the 24 pin connector to match the motherboard
might solve the problem. I see nothing in XP's event viewer either
that gives a hint of the problem.

Also, looking at my voltages using Speedfan, I noticed my 3.3 volt
rail is showing 3.1 volts, wonder if that might have something to do
with it? I believe this power supply has an adjustment where I could
adjust the 3.3 volt setting.


Thanks for any advice,



--
Don Burnette

Well damn, I spoke too soon

Locked up on me this am using OE.. it seems to mainly happen when using
either OE or IE.
Nothing whatsoever in event viewer...

I could try removing the Nvidie ide sw drivers. Would these affect sata
drives? I currently do not have any pata drives in my system..



Don



Don Burnette wrote:
Yes, nothing showing up in event viewer.

I took someone's advice from the other day, and disabled cpu spread
spectrum in the bios. So far it seems to be stable, knocking on
wood...
Thanks,

Don

don wrote:
Sounds like HD problem to me.

Hav you checked event viewer to see what events have taken place at
the time of shutdown or lockup?


"Don Burnette" wrote in message
...
I just recently assembled a new Athlon dual core system .
Athlon XP4400+ dual core cpu
MSI K8N Neo4 Plat Nforce4 mb
Saphire Radeon X850XT PCIe video card.
2gb of Corsair LL matched ( 2 ea 1gb) ddr ram
2 ea 250 gb WD Sata Hard drives

I have not overclocked the system yet, all running at default
settings. I did up my memory voltage slighty to see if that would
help, it has not. I also upped my vcore slightly.

I am having some stability issues. About once or twice a day, my
machine will just lock up. I have to press the power switch and hold
it in, to get the machine to shut down, then reboot. It seems to
usually happen when I am browsing the internet or reading
newsgroups. Has not happened while playing a game yet, but, I don't
game but about a couple hours a week.

It did it this evening when I booted it after getting home, then
after shutting down and rebooting, it went through a checkdisk and
corrected some errors. It did it last weekend, and would not boot,
said it was corrupt, and I ended up having to do a repair install of
XP Pro.

Heat is not an issue, my system temp is around 28c, cpu temp at idle
is 32c, under load the highest I have seen is 40c.

I am baffled by what is happening. I did a complete new clean
install of XP Pro SP2, and have all updates.

I am using an Antec True Power 530 watt power supply, but it is the
20 pin ( plus 4 ) connector, and the power connector on the
motherboard is the newer 24 pin connector ( plus 4). Someone posted
here recently that there might be some stability issues when using
the 20 pin in the 24 pin connector? I know MSI 's manual says it
should be fine.

I looked briefly at Newegg, and did not see any 24 pin connector
power supplies, at least under the Antec name, or perhaps I just
missed it? All I saw showed as 20 pin ( plus4) , the plus4 meaning I
presume the other small 4 pin connector that gets plugged into the
mb as well.

Would appreciate any advice, I am wondering if going with a new
power connector that has the 24 pin connector to match the
motherboard might solve the problem. I see nothing in XP's event
viewer either that gives a hint of the problem.

Also, looking at my voltages using Speedfan, I noticed my 3.3 volt
rail is showing 3.1 volts, wonder if that might have something to do
with it? I believe this power supply has an adjustment where I could
adjust the 3.3 volt setting.


Thanks for any advice,



--
Don Burnette

Bill wrote:
Don Burnette wrote:

I could try removing the Nvidie ide sw drivers. Would these affect
sata drives? I currently do not have any pata drives in my system..

It might be the SATA drivers which are not needed with service pack 2.
You only need the drivers if you're running a RAID configuration.

I am using an Antec True Power 530 watt power supply, but it is
the 20 pin ( plus 4 ) connector, and the power connector on the
motherboard is the newer 24 pin connector ( plus 4). Someone
posted here recently that there might be some stability issues
when using the 20 pin in the 24 pin connector? I know MSI 's
manual says it should be fine.

To clear things up, there are only two types of ATX power connectors
on motherboards. Either the 20-pin or newer 24-pin.

The Antec power supply you have is compatible with both types because
its connector is a 20-pin with a 4-pin extension that attaches to the
end of the 20-pin and fits both motherboard connections.

Make sure you have the full 24-pin power connectors plugged into the
board.

Hmm, I have the 20 pin plugged into the 24 pin connector on the motherboard,
and then, I have the small square 4 pin connector, plugged into a seperate
small square 4 pin connector on the motherboard...

Is this not right?


--
Don Burnette