Amd system build issues with stability

[ncc74656]

I am guiding a friend on how to build a system over skype. He lives far away so i cant go there myself to do it for him.

system specs are as follows:
6770 radeon: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16814102940
KHX 8GB 1600 ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16820104173
case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811148001
HD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16822136767
CPU AMD black 1100t: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16819103913
MB MSI GD65: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130604


He assembled the system and it booted properly with all stock bios settings as far as timings, voltage, and multipliers are concerned. i had him change basic boot order and disable his serial ports. We installed windows 7 ultimate and the system was working, i used team viewer to install all his drivers. upon myself installing all his amd chipset he got a bluescreen. I ended up sending him a iso of my windows 7 disk (he borrowed his disk from a friend) and reinstalled from that. windows installed properly, all drivers loaded, the system was running and he was playing WoW.
The system started to shut down both with and with out bluescreen randomly. I had him buy a new power supply as he was using an old one. the new PSU did not work (corsair from BB). This lead to his system not turning on or taking a long time to make it through post. He RMA'd his MB after it would no longer boot (i suspected ESD). The system now boots. Memtest passes for both sticks of ram, the ram will not enter dual channel mode. The system will not load windows, it restarts during startup. I had to have him manually set the ram timings, voltage, and speed in order to make it run at 1600 and to pass mem test. stock MB settings were giving it 1.3V, 9-11-11-28 timings.

When he had installed his new MB yesterday the system would not boot with the sata drives pluged in at first. after putsing in the bios we got them to boot. somthing seems very random about the errors he is getting.

My next step is to load him into a rescue cd and run prime to test his CPU. I currently assume its a under volting issue to the NB or CPU. has anyone else had this type of issue with there AMD comp? any thoughts will be apreacheated.

 

[buzznut]

1) Phenom II processors' memory controllers are only specified for DDR3 1333Mhz ram. That is likely the cause for some of the problems. Trying to run the ram at 1600Mhz without additional voltage can certainly cause stability issues.

You should run the ram at its default voltatge and timings, however set the ram to 1333Mhz speed in BIOS. Don't try to mess with other timings etc until you've acheived some sort of stability.

2) You've been "easter egging", meaning troubleshooting by replacing all the parts. This is gonna get expensive quick. Instead of assuming that its the PSU, mobo, etc, try doing some basic troubleshooting. Here's a link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-boot-video-problems
Have your friend check the troubleshooting link too.

3) As far as the software goes, if you want to run the HD in AHCI mode, you must change this in the BIOS BEFORE installing windows. Attempting to change the hard drive mode after installing in IDE mode will result in the symptoms you've described. However the PC will not run unless you resolve the memory issues first.

After you have fixed the memory, write back and detail all the steps you've tried and what symptoms remain. Take it one at a time, troubleshooting is a process of elimination and if you do too many things to the PC at once we can not determine the likely culprit of the problem.

 

[ncc74656]

The ram did not pass mem test with auto settings at 1600. i had to have him manually set the timings and voltages to make it stable. durring our first install of windows it was set at default with 1333. we have not bought any extra parts as the MB was under RMA through newegg. he had an old power suppily and that was my orignal thought behind the system restarts while in windows. we had the HD's set to AHCI before we installed and that did go through properly. currently the ram passes a 5 pass test in mem 86 at 1600Mhz, 1.652V and 9-9-9-27 timings with 2Tcmd rate. i am currently guiding him through the prime test in linux to determine if the cpu is erroring out

 

[ncc74656]

the computer is locking up in the bios. i am not certian why the auto settings for the ram have such jacked timings, why the computer would lock up in the bios with all the settings to auto or why we were able to get windows installed in the first place. also unsure as to why the ram can pass tests at 1333 and at 1600Mhz with proper settings then not work on the next restart. things are very very inconsistent wich is what makes me think it may have unclean power of some sort.

 

[ncc74656]

all i can think of is an incompatibility with the memory or a PSU issue at this point. from some research it seems people have been given a beta bios from MSI and they claim it has fixed there problem so calling MSI is my next step.

 

[ncc74656]

solved the problum, we went with a Z68 and a i5