lock ups

[garrett29]

ust updated my pc...

Specs:

Mobo: a8n-sli deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 fx-55
ram: 400mhz 2g DDR
Video: running sli 2 Geforce 7600s
Case: Xion with 450 wattage
HD: 2 200g sata drives running raid-0

anyways i run a game.... works great looks great settings all the way up then at random times it will freeze for random period of times and start running normal again. it has totally frozen once so far. its annoying everything is great other than the random lock ups in ANY GAME

[garrett29]

could it be because i dont have sli ready power supply???????? 92 people viewing now and i olny got 8 views? wow

[jlreich]

Welcome to the forums.

Have a little patience. Sometimes it takes awhile to get the right person to see your post. And we do this on a volunteer basis. And 90 people viewing could likely be all unregistered guests.

could it be because i dont have sli ready power supply?

Actually a 450W PSU is the first thing that jumped out at me. That is a little low for what you have in your system. I would go for something around 550W or higher. It doesn't necessarily have to an SLI ready PSU, but more power would be good. Although an nVidia SLI certified PSU would be ideal.

Another thing is did you get the latest drivers? Did you uninstall current drivers, reboot, and reinstall the latest from nVidia's website? That would be the first thing I would try if you haven't already.

Also if you decide to get a new PSU stick with known good brands like Antec, Seasonic, Thermaltake, PC Power and Cooling.

[garrett29]

i got latest drivers... it doesnt just do it in games does it if i stream video too

if it is a power issue why would it lock up for a second work again? wouldnt it just not run....

[jlreich]

if it is a power issue why would it lock up for a second work again? wouldnt it just not run....

If you are way underpowered it would likely be restarting instead of freezes. If you are on the borderline you are more likely to see the symptoms you are getting.

anyways i run a game.... random lock ups in ANY GAME

This lead me to believe it was doing it only in games. Or at least mostly games.

But it can be things other than a power problem.

Run Memtest. Either make a floppy or burn the ISO image to CD and boot from it. Run one stick of ram at a time if you have more than one stick. I recommend letting it run for at least an hour or more. If you get any errors replace the ram.

Check the system and CPU temps in the BIOS.

Check the temps on your video cards. nVidia has a monitoring program that will report the video card temps if you need it.

Check all you fans, most importantly the CPU and video card fans to make sure they running as they should.

If needed get a can of compressed air and blow the system out really good. Dust can cause both heat and power issues.

Test your hard drives with the manufacturers diagnostics.

I would rule out any hardware issues first, but it can also be a malware infection taking up CPU time. Are you running an up to date AV and firewall? Is windows up to date with all the security patches and bug fixes?

Are your chipset drivers up to date?

Hmm, you said you just updated your system. What components did you update?

[garrett29]

mobo
cpu
video

[jlreich]

Did you install the chipset/mobo drivers?

Did you do a fresh install of XP?

[garrett29]

updated all drivers
fresh xp pro
tried 2 PSUs
temps r fine....

only thing i come up with is bad mobo

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Maybe it's bad 'mojo', but before you condemn the 'mobo':

Was it a clean install, as in reformatted harddrive first? If not, do so.

Also:
Test your RAM with Memtest as requested.
Do a barebones boot
Try to see if it freezes in BIOS

[jlreich]

Yes it may be a bad mobo, but run the other tests first to make sure.

What PSU did you try? What kind of wattage etc?

Keep in mind an FX-55, two hard drives in Raid 0, 2GB ram, and two 7600's in SLI takes some juice to run. When you are running something like a game or other resource intensive apps, your running double of what the average system runs.

The more info you can give us of what you have tried and the results of it will better help us to help you.

[garrett29]

returned the mobo and processor got a dual core even cheaper lol and upgraded to DDR2 so...

still got SLI and two 7600s games work great....


i just dont see why i need over 500 watts just for sli? i mean i had a gaming system for more than a year on 300 watts... so 150 more watts for sli i thought was enough? b/c thats the only thing im really adding other than a more powerful cpu i dunno we will see everything is running so far.


acutally i used two psus 450 then used my old 300 watt system i put all my drives on the 300 the board on the 450 lol ghetto rigged but it works

all the memory ddr i used was used before in other systems.. my old and another.

and the fx-55 was brand new 300 dallors i started thinking why did i buy this damn thing sense dual cores are even cheaper i dunno

so i got a
Intel dou e6400
elitegroup nforce 570 board
and a 1gig stick of DDR2 (going to add a matching 1gig stick soon)
same old sli and raid-0

it seems alot stable and the other board had a chip u had to move around to get sli to work... i heard elitegroup was bad mobos but it seems to have out classed my asus a8n-sli deluxe..... that thing was buggy even the manual said memory wont add up right.... everytime i would isntall raid drivers for winxp it would crash the OS

[mjc]

i just dont see why i need over 500 watts just for sli? i mean i had a gaming system for more than a year on 300 watts... so 150 more watts for sli i thought was enough? b/c thats the only thing im really adding other than a more powerful cpu i dunno we will see everything is running so far.

Because you need to meet the power requirement minimums for both cards and still have enough headroom to operate during boot up (when the most power is needed).