K7S5A 133/133 Problems - Ram?

[BarnyardMonkey]

I know this board has had its problems for alot of people,as well as i've had in the past with it.

I came across this board again in someones system that i built,and its having some of the famous lockup problems.


But i believe this one may be caused by the cheap Sdram he has. (PC133 "so it reads")


Anyways, heres the problem with this setup:

The system will run fine in everything but Games.
As soon as the system starts a game it will lockup,or within a couple mins.
All up to date drivers are installed.

-Newest SIS Drivers
-Det Drivers (Have tried 3 earlier sets before the newest as well)
-DX9
-Latest SB Live! Drivers

So i tried changing the Ram settings to "Safe" in the BIOS thinking it was a Ram problem,
and that actually let the games play a little bit longer,but still would lockup.

So i changed the FSB to 100/100 from 133/133 and the system seems to be stable now.


So was hoping maybe it could possibly be the Sdram causing this problem.
he will be getting a stick of DDR to replace the Sdram.

But was hoping maybe i could get some opinions as to what else could be the problem.


I was thinking PSU and Ram,but now mainly thinking Ram.
I also tried 2 other sticks of generic Ram,and most of the time they would lockup going into windows,or a few mins in windows.


Specs:

K7S5A v1X
Athlon XP 1600+
GF3 TI200
SB Live!
2x 20G Maxtor HD's
Corsair 256Mb PC133 Sdram
Hercules (generic?) 400W PSU (Came with the Case)


Any help would be appreciated.


Thanks.

 

[T2T III]

Is this owner open to getting a new motherboard? With boards running at such great prices, I don't think it's worth spending 2 hours of diagnosis time to get the situation nailed down. It seems with the K7S5A boards, it's either "hit" or "miss" with them. I had one - it was great. But, I've read that there have also been a fair number of issues with them, too.

 

[BarnyardMonkey]

Thats what i pretty much told him.
That if the new stick of DDR doesn't fix the 133/133 Problem,then it may be best to just grab another board since these seem to be like you said.,"Hit or Miss".


But i did manage to get the one going in one of my systems here that was having problems some time ago.but it was locking up and restarting both.
It was due to the PSU not being up to par with this board.


Just figured i'd check some others thats maybe had this problem and got it going, incase the new Ram doesn't fix it.

To much time has been put into his system allready.
just looking for a quick fix after this Ram change. (If problems are still there)
Its beat me up these last few days.


Thanks.

 

[Peter]

That's most often a RAM problem, yes, but sometimes also poor CPU cooling or a weak power supply. Whatever you do, don't start swapping out parts unless you're sure there's something wrong with this particular part.

Check the temperatures and voltages in BIOS, revert the settings to "optimal" defaults, set to 133/133, and then run memtest from www.memtest.org

 

[MrCodeDude]

I don't know what was wrong with mine, but I for a long time could do 133/133. Then all of a sudden, machine locked up, would only post at 100/100. I switched procs (1800+ to 2000+ .. it wasn't anything big) and now it's doing 133/133 again.

Pssh, I dunno

 

[rstarr]

Sounds like a flaky bios problem.

 

[Peter]

CodeDude, probably your cooling solution degraded (clogged with dust, losing contact to the CPU, or something like that) and the reassembling fixed that. You wouldn't be the first ...