This is my first post - I was hoping it would be more upbeat but unfortunately its yet another litany of woe about my Asus P4S533 experience.
I've been having problem getting a system up using a P4S533 motherboard purchased from GoogleGear. I'm using it with a P4 2.4Ghz 533Mhz FSB and 512Mb of DDR400 memory from Corsair. I've done a lot of work with motherboards before - I used to work on operating systems for embedded computer systems so I've spent a lot of time handling mbos of all types and descriptions. So I don't believe I've inadvertantly fried the board or components although I know that in reality that kind of thing is always a possibility no matter how careful.
I'm also using a 300W powersupply from QuietPC (made by Q Technology), a Zalman 6000 series cooler, a VisionTek GeForce 3 graphics card, plus a DVD/CD-R drive from Samsung and a Maxtor 80B Ultra-IDE drive
The initial power on boot experience was fine - I got BIOS config screen, did fully memory checks, hardware monitoring looked good, all devices had been autodetected fine. I didn't fiddle with any of the settings (voltage, clock speed, bus speed ratios etc.) As far as I know the BIOS was running the CPU bus at 133 and memory at 333 - you have to manually go in to hit 400 on the memory bus which I didn't do. My goal was to buy fast components and not overclock because I want a very stable system running as a server at all time. Hence I left the board in jumperless mode, and let the BIOS do all its work.
So with everything looking good I proceeded to start to load WinXP/Pro from CD onto my hard drive. At that point all indications were that the hard drive (as the primary IDE master - DVD/CD was on the secondary IDE) was faulty. It was recognized okay but about 20% into formating the master partition it would always hang up and I'd have to reboot. Running diagnostics with the drive on another PC showed the drive had a fault. That's been RMA-ed to Maxtor.
So I borrowed a 10Gb Maxtor IDE drive and tried that - this time I completed diagnostics before installing it and everything was okay, so I booted up again and managed to do a complete format and the installer said "preparing to copy files". At that point the installation hung and I had to reboot. However after the reset I started getting the POST voice alerts saying the memory check had failed. Several reboots later it was still happening.
I removed and reseated the memory. Still happened. Tried a diffent slot (apart from slot 1). Still happened.
I then left the system alone (to cry...) and came back an hour later. I decided to try the jumper mode and set the dip switch to configure the mbo at 133Mhz and memory at 333Mhz. (on-on-on-off-off if I recall). On power up it worked! I got the BIOS screen again. I then reset the system to make sure it was repeatable and the BIOS memory check (I'd configured a full memory check) halted after about 10 seconds. After this the POST started giving me the long beeps to say there was no DRAM detected.
Subsequent to this I have not made any progress. I've unplugged all peripherals (including the USB header) except the speaker and on-off switch. I've reset the CMOS. I've tried all the memory slots. I've tried all the lower memory bus speeds. Having read on Anandtech many comments about the number of power connectors you need to have I've also unplugged the 4-pin disk-drive type PSU connector but that made no difference.
So my conclusion is that either my board is fried, or my memory is fried. Unfortunately I don't have another machine to try my Corsair DIMM in.
Also I know that the Corsair DDR400 memory is not listed on the supported list for this mobo - but then not many DIMMS are. We know that its really just Corsair DDR333 memory that has been tested to survive the overclocking possible via BIOS (which I DID NOT configure - the BIOS did all the configuring). Hence if anything it should be more stable than regular DDR333 right? Plus the Corasir DDR333 PC2700 memory has been used successfully by many people posting on AnandTech so I figure DDR400 would work fine.
Since the machine hung up and the memory went bad while it was just sitting there and I wasn't even touch it (and I have a power filter in use too) I really don't know if my failure is memory or mbo.
Finally my PSU is rated at 300W which I've seen several people say is fine for this board and CPU. I don't really suspect it as being a problem since everything was working with both drives and graphics card, so if it was a lack of power you'd expect it would never have worked, and would work without peripherals and graphics card. Note I don't have a fan speed control connected which I've seen listed as a problem for this board.
If its just a bad memory DIMM then RMA-ing the memory is the right thing to do.
But if the mobo is bad then it'll just continue to fail with or fry any new memory.
Maybe I should try to RMA both and cross my fingers...
The three things I really want to know:
1. Has anyone had an PC3200 experiences with this board yet.
2. Does memory spontaneously and completely fail like that? It had been running for about a total of an hour when the failure occured.
3. What voltage does the old VisionTek GeForce 3/64MB DDR board run at - its about a year old and AGP 2 and 4 compatible (before the Ti GeForces came out), could that be a problem? I can't find any tech info on its voltage anywhere. If the voltage were wrong would my board work this long before dying or would it die straight away with a puff of smoke and sizzling...
I've been having problem getting a system up using a P4S533 motherboard purchased from GoogleGear. I'm using it with a P4 2.4Ghz 533Mhz FSB and 512Mb of DDR400 memory from Corsair. I've done a lot of work with motherboards before - I used to work on operating systems for embedded computer systems so I've spent a lot of time handling mbos of all types and descriptions. So I don't believe I've inadvertantly fried the board or components although I know that in reality that kind of thing is always a possibility no matter how careful.
I'm also using a 300W powersupply from QuietPC (made by Q Technology), a Zalman 6000 series cooler, a VisionTek GeForce 3 graphics card, plus a DVD/CD-R drive from Samsung and a Maxtor 80B Ultra-IDE drive
The initial power on boot experience was fine - I got BIOS config screen, did fully memory checks, hardware monitoring looked good, all devices had been autodetected fine. I didn't fiddle with any of the settings (voltage, clock speed, bus speed ratios etc.) As far as I know the BIOS was running the CPU bus at 133 and memory at 333 - you have to manually go in to hit 400 on the memory bus which I didn't do. My goal was to buy fast components and not overclock because I want a very stable system running as a server at all time. Hence I left the board in jumperless mode, and let the BIOS do all its work.
So with everything looking good I proceeded to start to load WinXP/Pro from CD onto my hard drive. At that point all indications were that the hard drive (as the primary IDE master - DVD/CD was on the secondary IDE) was faulty. It was recognized okay but about 20% into formating the master partition it would always hang up and I'd have to reboot. Running diagnostics with the drive on another PC showed the drive had a fault. That's been RMA-ed to Maxtor.
So I borrowed a 10Gb Maxtor IDE drive and tried that - this time I completed diagnostics before installing it and everything was okay, so I booted up again and managed to do a complete format and the installer said "preparing to copy files". At that point the installation hung and I had to reboot. However after the reset I started getting the POST voice alerts saying the memory check had failed. Several reboots later it was still happening.
I removed and reseated the memory. Still happened. Tried a diffent slot (apart from slot 1). Still happened.
I then left the system alone (to cry...) and came back an hour later. I decided to try the jumper mode and set the dip switch to configure the mbo at 133Mhz and memory at 333Mhz. (on-on-on-off-off if I recall). On power up it worked! I got the BIOS screen again. I then reset the system to make sure it was repeatable and the BIOS memory check (I'd configured a full memory check) halted after about 10 seconds. After this the POST started giving me the long beeps to say there was no DRAM detected.
Subsequent to this I have not made any progress. I've unplugged all peripherals (including the USB header) except the speaker and on-off switch. I've reset the CMOS. I've tried all the memory slots. I've tried all the lower memory bus speeds. Having read on Anandtech many comments about the number of power connectors you need to have I've also unplugged the 4-pin disk-drive type PSU connector but that made no difference.
So my conclusion is that either my board is fried, or my memory is fried. Unfortunately I don't have another machine to try my Corsair DIMM in.
Also I know that the Corsair DDR400 memory is not listed on the supported list for this mobo - but then not many DIMMS are. We know that its really just Corsair DDR333 memory that has been tested to survive the overclocking possible via BIOS (which I DID NOT configure - the BIOS did all the configuring). Hence if anything it should be more stable than regular DDR333 right? Plus the Corasir DDR333 PC2700 memory has been used successfully by many people posting on AnandTech so I figure DDR400 would work fine.
Since the machine hung up and the memory went bad while it was just sitting there and I wasn't even touch it (and I have a power filter in use too) I really don't know if my failure is memory or mbo.
Finally my PSU is rated at 300W which I've seen several people say is fine for this board and CPU. I don't really suspect it as being a problem since everything was working with both drives and graphics card, so if it was a lack of power you'd expect it would never have worked, and would work without peripherals and graphics card. Note I don't have a fan speed control connected which I've seen listed as a problem for this board.
If its just a bad memory DIMM then RMA-ing the memory is the right thing to do.
But if the mobo is bad then it'll just continue to fail with or fry any new memory.
Maybe I should try to RMA both and cross my fingers...
The three things I really want to know:
1. Has anyone had an PC3200 experiences with this board yet.
2. Does memory spontaneously and completely fail like that? It had been running for about a total of an hour when the failure occured.
3. What voltage does the old VisionTek GeForce 3/64MB DDR board run at - its about a year old and AGP 2 and 4 compatible (before the Ti GeForces came out), could that be a problem? I can't find any tech info on its voltage anywhere. If the voltage were wrong would my board work this long before dying or would it die straight away with a puff of smoke and sizzling...