Ruenin Posted May 16, 2008 Posted May 16, 2008 I had just gotten all of my parts in for my new box. I went with an AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition, MSI K9A2 CF-F, 2x2GB OCZ DDR2 1066 Reaper, BFG 8800GT 512MB DDR3, OCZ Gamextreme 700W SLI PSU, and a Western Digital 150GB Raptor. The whole thing set me back about $1000 but it's still the cheapest machine I've ever built due to incredible prices on parts right now. Anyway, I got everything put together and fired it up. First thing I noticed was that the BIOS has the memory clock speed set to 800MHz. I set it to 1066 and restarted. Ok, all good. I attempted to install Windows, and although it booted from the disc, it immediately blue screened. I figured it must be booting from the old Vista install on the hard drive (I had initially built it using my old 80GB Baraccuda), so I brought up the boot menu and forced it to look first at the DVD+RW drive. Again, same thing. I fired up a copy of XP Pro and that started loading immediately, so I knew it was probably the disc. Being that I work in IT, I had access to another copy, so I threw that in to no avail. Now I was beginning to suspect a problem. I tried installing it with only one 2GB stick of RAM (several times, in all slots) with no luck. I set the RAM back to 800MHz in the BIOS and restarted, and after that, I couldn't even get back into the BIOS. In fact, I took everything off the board except the power and I couldn't even get a beep code out of it. I'm sending it back to Newegg on Monday. Meanwhile, I went out and got the CF-Fs big brother, the K9A2 Platinum. So far, so good. Everything fired up, Windows loaded just fine, and the RAM is running at 1066 with no issues. Not sure what caused the problem initially, but I was ready to write off MSI for good (I'm a DFI loyalist, but I'd heard good things about MSI and thought they deserved a shot). Now that I have a board that is working, I'm happier with them. Hopefully newegg doesn't give me the runaround. So far, temps are in the low 30s with a Zalman CNPS9500 on it, 10 degrees cooler than when the same chip was in the K9A2 CF-F. I can't explain that, but since the board was faulty, who knows what else was going on. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
damian Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 its not the motherboards problem. The problem is your cpu. The MSI K9A2 CF-F does not support 125w cpu's, and your AMD 9850 has a 125w of thermal power. Although, MSI did release a revision of the MSI CF-F that supports 125w cpus a couple weeks ago. If thats not the problem my guess is you just had a faulty board or your ram wasnt compatible with the CF-F Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruenin Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 This was definitely the rev. 2 motherboard. I checked that when I ordered it, and the bright red sticker on the motherboard was a dead giveaway. The new Platinum edition is working great. The Raptor is loud as hell when it seeks, something I'm a little disappointed about, but at least it's fast. I've had it all up and running for most of the day now and I'm just getting the finishing touches installed in Vista x64 (no driver issues so far). Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
damian Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 if you had 2, 7200RPM HDD's in raid 0 they would be faster, quieter, and produce less heat the a single raptor, oh and cost less Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruenin Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 Yeah, so lot's of problems today. Well, one, really that keeps repeating itself. I'll start up WoW and I'm able to play for about 10 minutes (maybe less) then the machine hard locks. Last night, it was blue screens but now it's hard locking. Could it be related to using an Nvidia based graphics card on an ATI chipset? I've had issues like that before, but that was more than 5 years ago and I didn't think I would run into that again, but now that AMD is in bed with ATI.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
damian Posted May 17, 2008 Posted May 17, 2008 having an nvidia based card on an ATI chipset wont cuase any problems, at least it shouldnt. I see lot of people running ATI cards on nforce boards and Nvidia cards on X48 boards (my friends) and i havnt seen any problems neither have they. try updating your drivers, if thats not it maybe your cards is overheating...???... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruenin Posted May 18, 2008 Posted May 18, 2008 I downloaded nTune to monitor the heat on the card, and it is getting up into the mid 60s, but the fan was factory set to 30%. I cranked it up to 70% and now it's in the mid 50s instead, which I don't think is too bad. A couple of other things: I have the card in PCI-E slot 3 instead of 1 because the way my case is set up, there is simply no way to fit the video card in slot 1 and have room for the Raptor, mainly because of the RAM placement. Also, I noticed that Vista had not been activated and therefor had not installed SP1 yet. I activated the software and downloaded SP1 as well as the newest mainboard drivers from MSI. Their "instructions" for flashing the BIOS are not helpful enough to give me confidence to do it, but I know that I'm on 1.3 and 1.5 is out. Last night I was getting a lot of BSODs that seemed to point to a memory issue. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and MEMORY_(somethingsomething) being the two most common I saw. I did get one that was a Host Service Error but I have no idea what that could be. This machine will run solid for an hour or two and then it won't run worth a damn for more than a few minutes. It's all over the place. I still get booted out of WoW regularly with critical errors but it seems to be happening with less frequency. I'm wondering if maybe it's having trouble because I didn't move my entire WoW folder over, cache and all. I don't know... I've never had so many problems with a new build. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
damian Posted May 18, 2008 Posted May 18, 2008 could be that your ram is faulty, have you overclocked anything? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruenin Posted May 18, 2008 Posted May 18, 2008 No overclocking this time. I am running a RAM stress test right now. I just got a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON-PAGED_AREA error which had previously been because of a memory stick gone bad in a previous build. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
damian Posted May 19, 2008 Posted May 19, 2008 RMA your ram buddy Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
hardnrg Posted May 19, 2008 Posted May 19, 2008 what voltage are you running the RAM at? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ruenin Posted May 19, 2008 Posted May 19, 2008 The RAM was running at 2.1V, just as spec'd. I've had it with this build. I've gotten RMAs for the RAM and processor and I'm returning the motherboard to Microcenter. Screw this. I'm picking up this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813188024 , this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115017 , and this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820145197 so I can start all over. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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