System boots at 1.2 Ghz but not 1.6Ghz (Case closed)

[Paul]

Soyo K7V+ Mobo
AMD Athlon XP 1900+
2 Crucial 256MB RAM sticks.

System was working fine before. Switched out CPU heatsink fan.
System boots @ 12 X 100 fine but will not boot at 12 * 133

When the fsb is set to 133, boot process gets to
"Pri. Master Disk : LBA, ATA 100, "
and freezes.

I don't know how this can be. Is it actually overheating? The heatsink is a Thermalright SK-6. Previous fan was a Delta 60mm, replaced with a Sunon 60mm.

Temps in the bios show 53C and ~30C in Windows. (This is at 1.2Ghz)
I just cannot get this thing to boot at 1.6Ghz again. I tried changing settings in the bios that would correlate to the IDE devices but still nothing.

Any ideas?

 

[Unforgiven]

could very well be overheating. mount the old fan (if it is still operational) and see if you can boot to 133 fsb. temps arent unreasonably high but 53C in the bios is pretty alarming on boot up for a 1.2 ghz chip running at minimal cpu cycles.

 

[Paul]

I was actually trying the old fan just now. Got the delta strapped back on and it does go further in the boot process. I get to the previous boot failed select a choice menu of the pre xp boot. It stops here however, and won't show the XP "white boot bar" at the bottom of the screen. Weird. Setting the CPU to 1.2 Ghz will allow it to boot into XP once again.

Temps with the Delta are 45C in the bios and 25C in Windows.

 

[TheStu]

Have you confirmed your RAM is still good? Run Memtest to see if possibly one the sticks has gone bad...

 

[Paul]

ok, will give memtest a run

 

[Unforgiven]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Have you confirmed your RAM is still good? Run Memtest to see if possibly one the sticks has gone bad...

exactly my thoughts. as soon as you said it got futher and almost loaded the "white bar" for windows xp, that was the first thing that came to mind. try booting with just one stick at a time and see if that makes any difference and do as TheStu suggested and run memtest!

 

[mechBgon]

Also, confirm that your heatsink is on the right way (third photo here). If you had the clip out of the heatsink itself, confirm that its pressure point (which is offset towards one end) is over the CPU core, too.

Besides that, power issues come to mind too. If you're powering a high-output Delta off of a mobo 3-pin header... don't do that Power it directly from the PSU using a 3-pin-to-4-pin adapter. What PSU you using there, anyway?

Lastly, since many SOYO boards have Fan-Off Control, you will want to disable FOC in the BIOS. Hold down the Insert key while powering up, so you can get into the BIOS (hopefully), and disable FOC. I think you'll find it under PC HEALTH STATUS.

 

[mechBgon]

Oh, and since it's a clip-down Thermalright heatsink, also check out my further Thermalright tip here.

 

[Paul]

I ran MemTest 3.0 for about 40 minutes and it seems like RAM is a-ok.
I also re-adjusted the heatsink and sure enough, I can now boot into windows with the Sunon fan too!
Thanks for the tip mechBgon, I didn't think I had mis-aligned the heatsink.

My system is noticebly quieter without that Delta.