RMA mobo, memory, and cpu or wait?

[USERX15]

To me this sounds like a PSU issue.

[custom_coms]

Your try these: http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.p...8&postcount=534 ?

 

The memory can be causing prime to fail. Personally, I feel most people here are too quick to blame the psu. I agree it can be a problem, these boards demand a lot of power. When I first got my rig, only after 2 WEEKS of memory testing and experimenting did I drop a different stick in and get it to boot into windows. And I was a "beta" tester for the DFI nForce4 series. I mean, if he told us he had a crappy no brand name 350 watt or less, thats one thing. But its a 700 watt psu, the TOL unit from thermaltake (I udnerstand its not the bets psui out their). I'm willing to bet its the memory. Are u memtest stable for like 12 hours?

[Darialan]

I can put a computer together, but configuring the memory the way OCZTony is describing kinda goes beyond what I already know. So I'm confused and may need to be stepped through this.

[Darialan]

I ran memtest again on the new OCZ with both sticks in it.

 

TST Pass Failing address Good Bad Count

7 1 00007999874 - 121.5 MB a559e0b9 00020000 1

7 9 00001d9a930 - 29.6 MB 8e71f868 10000000 1

[Soap]

I don't have a N590 board, but, I'm very famaliar with troubleshooting.

 

Since you are having stability issues and to get it stable understand and do the following:

 

DFI boards, are by far the pickiest boards for having quality memory and PSU's.

Absolutely essential to know this when buying a DFI board.

I'm not implying you have to spend $400 - $500 dollars on a PS or over $300 on memory.

What I am saying is, know DFI boards are very picky in these areas of hardware.

With that said.......

 

Memory:

1. Running one stick of ram in slot 1 is suggested for now.

For running two sticks, use slots 2 and 4, but for now, just use slot 1.

 

2. Use ONLY ONE stick of ram for now, in slot 1 please do this.

Then run mem test to determine if in fact that stick is good or bad.

Mem test is fairly accurate in determining if the stick is good or bad, not always, but most times.

 

If its good(runs through the tests without error) leave it in for now and don't put the other stick in yet. First, run some other programs, (mainly games and stuff) to see how the stick will do running those games.

If everything goes fine ( no crashing, freezing or bsod or random reboots) then you have a good stick of ram. Take it out( the good ram) and lets try the other stick. Repeat this process with the newly placed ram in the same slot. You may have to adjust memory settings and voltages to get it to run through eme test successfully. If you can't get it to pass mem test with the adjusting of memory settings and volatges, you can definitely consider it a bad stick.

 

PSU:

A faulty PSU, acts somewhat similar to a bad stick of ram making it hard at times to determine which of the two are good or bad. The one characteristic that gives the PSU away is, in my experience random reboots.

 

Tip:

In other words, once you run mem test on the stick or sticks and learn either way good or bad. Then you need to respond accordingly. If stick or sticks are good, this points your attention to a faulty PSU.

 

The Bio settings:

DFI, more so since the NF4 boards have really expanded their bios and gearing it toward the overclocker, the N5 boards aren't any different in that aspect.

You should really run most of the bios settings at default just to get the thing stable first.

One can get to fiddling insides dfi's bios and not only get lost but more importantly make things worse. So, go with the default settings for now, with the exception of adjusting memory timings and voltages.

 

BSOD's:

The last two digits of the long code is very important, it will tell you whats wrong.

Google bsod and you will get there..

 

Shorting out:

Its mostly almost a thing of the past but it still happens.

To determine if the board is shorting out take it out the case and boot it up.

If the problem/s stops, all is good... then the back of the board is shorting out against the case or mobo tray.

Locate it and resolve it or try another case.

[Darialan]

In prime 95 what does it mean by FATAL ERROR: rounding was .5 0.4 was expected. This was on test 12.

 

I'll do memtest later tonight on this one stick of ram. That's what I'm running on right now.

[Soap]

For now, for the sake of not having to many things going on at once, one thing at a time.

Lets not use, "prime 95" lets just focus on running mem test to determine if the stick or sticks are bad first, then go from there. Run mem test overnight. Start it, and go to bed and check it in the morning.

 

You need to run your memory voltage at 2.17 and set the memory settings to whats listed on the module. Should be a sticker or something on the module that lists this. OR, you may have to loosen it up abit to give yourself some playing room to work with.

 

Either way, if most if not all efforts don't cause the stick to not pass mem test, its clearly bad ram. If it is bad ram, don't let it frustrate you to much. Send it back and try again.

 

Hint:

Use the exact same ram "happy" used in his tesing of the board.

It would sure make it alittle easier on your self.

I'm sure theres either a thread or post that he shared all that info in somewhere around here. It might serve you well to check it out and read it just to see what hardware he used with the board.

[Soap]

Heres a link to Happy's listed hardware he use with the N5 mobo.

http://www.angrygames.com/nf590sli-1.htm

[Darialan]

I ran memtest on one stick of ram for 2 passes and it failed. I then put in the other stick and it was on all night and never gave me a single error. Sounds like a ram issue yet again.

[Soap]

Good job.

Did you run some games with the good stick to see how it does?

If it did fine, keep it and rma only the bad stick.

If you bought them as a pair you may have to send both back.

Call or e-mail them and see what they have to say regarding rma both sticks or just the bad one.

[Darialan]

*loud sigh* The one stick that I thought was good has been in it for several hours and I've been in windows for at least 2 and a half....it crashed again while I was running prime 95. I don't know what it is. Is it bad ram? Is it both sticks? Is it my configuration? What do I do?

[Soap]

You've determined the stick is good. Don't mess with any additional memory settings just yet.

 

Prime 95, although changes and improvements have been made, its still mostly an app to test the CPU. Forget prime 95 for now, BUT if you feel compelled to run prime 95 your gonna have to up the voltage on your CPU to successfully run through. If you don't have a good heatsink and fan cooling the CPU don't up the voltage. If you do, just increase it small increments at a time, run the app and see how it gets you and repeat till your golden. Be careful, this is how folks burn up their CPU's. When you up the voltage and DON'T notice it going any farther in the test, thats when you stop increasing the voltage, or you can get it to warm and possible burn it up. I usually reach this point and back it down an increment and check it with prime again, and if it runs fairly decent throughout the test, I leave it there and go with it.

 

My current rig doesn't run prime 95 well at all, but my sticks pass mem test wonderfully, and I play games without any problems, a very stable DFI rig. Thats all I cared about, getting a mild OC on my sticks and CPU and I achieved that. Running prime successfully for hours on end wasn't all that significant to me. To each their own.

 

I would check with the store or whomever you brought the ram sticks from and see what their policy is and rma the bad stick only, if possible.

See, after all this you learned you don't have to buy another PSU and its only a faulty stick of ram.