Troubleshooting KT333 system

[MrMikey]

I recently bought the following:

MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard
512MB PC2700 mushkin RAM
Athlon XP 1800+ processor
Leadtek GF4 Ti4400
430W power supply

After putting it all together, I'm having trouble running it at 133MHz FSB. It runs fine at up to 110 MHz FSB, but anything past that it has trouble loading up Windows. I've got it down to the bare bones... no network card or anything. I have a SCSI card I'm waiting to put in it, but to keep that from being a factor, I'm running a reliable IDE drive to boot from.

I've got the memory settings in the bios running off the host clock, all the timing set to the slowest possible, the AGP slot running at 1x, I've played with core voltage settings, memory voltage settings, AGP voltage settings, all to no avail.

I know that it's running cool because I have a case CPU temp monitor as well as MB monitor running, and the processor never goes 10deg C over ambient.

Again, it posts fine, but once it tries to load windows 2000, I keep getting blue screens. Pop it back down to 110MHz FSB, and everything is kosher and stable. This would be fine with me, but since it's an Athlon XP, the multiplier is locked and it's only running at around 1266MHz or so at 110 FSB.

How can I determine if it is the memory, the processor, or the motherboard?

 

[Xyphic]

With my last motherboard (ASUS A7V266-E) and Athlon XP 1800+, I saw the same type of problem. Mine started with games being unstable, then slowly progressed to Windows XP not booting at all at 133MHz FSB. As soon as I lowered it to 100MHz FSB, everything ran fine (including games). My CPU wasn't overly hot (55 deg C in a very warm house). I tried everything I could think of to get the thing running, but didn't have any luck. Eventually my CPU fried after I'd damaged it (minute chip on the edge - grrr) putting the heatsink back on after checking I'd applied the thermal paste properly... so I never did get the problem sorted out.

I just gave the motherboard to a friend and told him about the problem. He's got a spare Athlon XP lying around, so he's going to give it a go to see what happens. Interestingly, I only saw the problem after I'd installed a new GeForce3... I don't know if that was the problem, and I didn't get chance to check it out (due to CPU toasting).

I now have an A7V333 and everything is working perfectly.

Sorry I don't have a solution... I've seen this problem several times on various forums and I didn't find anything that fixed it. If anyone *does* know of a solution, I'll let my friend know!