First build problems! HELP

[Shady321]

I am still a noob but I did take a hardware class and several other computer related classes first. I bought a barebones setup from tiger that consisted of a case, Asus P5NSLI NVIDIA Socket 775 ATX Motherboard,
Intel Pentium D 940 3.20GHz OEM Processor, NEC Super Multi (AD-7170A) 18x DVD±RW DL OEM DVD Burner w/Software, Ultra X-Finity 500-Watt SATA/SLi Ready Power Supply. The rest I bought from zipzoom and newegg: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250620AS 250GB Serial ATA (3.0Gb/s) 7200RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer, BFG geforce 7950 gt oc (just one), Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail, Ultra / Fire / Socket 775 / P4 3.8Ghz / Copper Core / CPU Fan. Sorry about the mess had to copy paste. Basically it started first try, then everything worked except maybe it froze once or twice. When I started to try playing games(cod2, and others) it would almost instantly bsod, black screen, freeze ect. I tried several grapics drivers old and new with no results. I updated the bios and chipset and then It would last 30 mins or so before displaying input not supported on my lcd. I tried diff monitors. I rma'd the graphics and got another. Same issues only some freezing as well. As far as I could tell the power supply had enough on the 12v rails? The only thing I could find wrong and I am not sure when it started, but the irq 0 and 8 had yellow flags along with one device on the pci bus. I watched the temps which never got high at all except the graphics card which never broke 70C. I suspected the northbridge or something similiar. I sent back the mobo to tiger and told them I wanted something different. So I am trying to find a good mobo to go along with my specs. I was building a cheap gaming computer for wow and cod2 ect. Nothing special. Now I have read alot of bad reviews on almost every asus board im looking at. So, what should I do. Should I just suck it up and buy another asus which I will have to set all the timing and voltages and tweak until my eyes pop out? Any suggestions. I am somewhat new but I think I could set the timing manually and voltages without too much trouble. You think the p5nsli was just faulty or didnt like my ram(Pretty sure it was on the qualified list)? Everything else worked fine(movies, surfing) just not gaming. I was wondering if I should have messed with the timings and such but like I said it was working well except for games so i figured timings and voltage wouldnt make a diff.

 

[badge]

I am still a noob but I did take a hardware class and several other computer related classes first. I bought a barebones setup from tiger that consisted of a case, Asus P5NSLI NVIDIA Socket 775 ATX Motherboard,
Intel Pentium D 940 3.20GHz OEM Processor, NEC Super Multi (AD-7170A) 18x DVD±RW DL OEM DVD Burner w/Software, Ultra X-Finity 500-Watt SATA/SLi Ready Power Supply. The rest I bought from zipzoom and newegg: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250620AS 250GB Serial ATA (3.0Gb/s) 7200RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer, BFG geforce 7950 gt oc (just one), Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail, Ultra / Fire / Socket 775 / P4 3.8Ghz / Copper Core / CPU Fan. Sorry about the mess had to copy paste. Basically it started first try, then everything worked except maybe it froze once or twice. When I started to try playing games(cod2, and others) it would almost instantly bsod, black screen, freeze ect. I tried several grapics drivers old and new with no results. I updated the bios and chipset and then It would last 30 mins or so before displaying input not supported on my lcd. I tried diff monitors. I rma'd the graphics and got another. Same issues only some freezing as well. As far as I could tell the power supply had enough on the 12v rails? The only thing I could find wrong and I am not sure when it started, but the irq 0 and 8 had yellow flags along with one device on the pci bus. I watched the temps which never got high at all except the graphics card which never broke 70C. I suspected the northbridge or something similiar. I sent back the mobo to tiger and told them I wanted something different. So I am trying to find a good mobo to go along with my specs. I was building a cheap gaming computer for wow and cod2 ect. Nothing special. Now I have read alot of bad reviews on almost every asus board im looking at. So, what should I do. Should I just suck it up and buy another asus which I will have to set all the timing and voltages and tweak until my eyes pop out? Any suggestions. I am somewhat new but I think I could set the timing manually and voltages without too much trouble. You think the p5nsli was just faulty or didnt like my ram(Pretty sure it was on the qualified list)? Everything else worked fine(movies, surfing) just not gaming. I was wondering if I should have messed with the timings and such but like I said it was working well except for games so i figured timings and voltage wouldnt make a diff.

You had the system running, but when you tried to load software (play games) the system would crash. You should have increased the voltage to the RAM to mfg. specs or slighty more. Faulty RAM is often the cause of system crashes when trying to load software like you described. You know some hardware component was not functioning properly on your new system. I would look to the RAM first in that situation. Having some spare parts around including RAM really helps to troubleshoot a new system if problems occur. When you get the system up and running again regardless of what MB replacement you choose, try 1 DIMM in slot 1 if a crashing problem occurs. be sure to set the RAM voltage to mfg. specs in BIOS. I would try an Intel 965 chipset regardless of brand with the video card and processor you have. HTH.

 

[Shady321]

So set to the ram or mobo specs? Thanks for the help. The ram was brand new and that particular type of kingston had the highest reviews I found so I figured it was ok. Also yeah exactly what you said, installing and playing games was the problem. I believe the ram called for 1.8v and I believe thats what the mobo auto detected it as. It was also on the qualified list for the mobo. Something was wrong with the mobo also since the irq 0 and 8 showed flags, I thought that was a sign of a bad mobo. It would suprisingly run for almost 30 mins w/o problems, so I thought the ram was ok. BTW it was giving diff crashes but once I updated the bios it was only giving a input not supported error on my monitor and the crt monitor was saying hz? So I suspected the mobo/graphics first. The second graphics from rma'ing gave the same monitor error except it was freezing sometimes also. Sometimes it would freeze in game for about 30 secs and catch back up, sometimes not. But usually it was the monitor error on the screen. Thanks Again Shady

 

[badge]

So set to the ram or mobo specs?

Set the RAM voltage in BIOS to the RAM mfg's specs. If the RAM defaulted to 1.8v in BIOS, you cold try increasing the voltage to 1.9v. Also, try other RAM if you have it and are having a crashing problem when running software. Using only 1 DIMM in slot 1 may work with system errors like you were having. Try the other single DIMM in slot 1 if the first one still crashes. The ASUS P5B-Deluxe 965 chip supports your chip I believe. You were using an nvidia chip. The ASUS P5B-Deluxe may work for your situation. I'm not entirely sure it supports you exact CPU, I'm not familiar with it.

 

[Shady321]

Ok thanks, I was thinking of messing with the voltages but I wasnt sure. Hopefully it is just the ram because it has a lifetime warranty and was extremely cheap on newegg. Stupidly, I didnt try just one stick in, next time I will. Thx

 

[Crunch65]

Also check what Rev. # your board is. I'm on my second Rev. 2 board and am having the same problems as with my first one. The board will not always post, sometimes hitting reset will get it to start up, other times I must shut it completely down at the power supply switch, then restart. If you do not get the first beep at 5 seconds, you will not start up. This is one picky board. There are several posts on the Asus forums outlining this "cold start" problem.

Also make sure you have plenty of airflow through your case. The heatsink on the NorthBridge gets hot enough to fry an egg.

 

[Orbixx]

Jesus christ, try to paragraph next time, my eyes are bleeding.