Strange prob. with XEON PIII 550 2MB

PLZ....HELP

I have a Intel Xeon PIII 550 with 2mb cach (slot 2) and I have put this on a Gigabyte motherboard 6GXU with Intel 440GX chipset. The problem I have is that the machine starts up ok and cheks the memory the it starts loading from the A: device (since this is where I have the boot disk). After a minute or so it just freezes and stop booting. Nothing help but turning it off with the powerswitch on the powersupply on the back.

What can the problem be?? I thougth it could be overheating but that seams like a long shot since the board is installed in a big Chieftec tower with lots of air. Then I was thinking if the powersupply was to weak, but that is marked 340W max load and I have only a basic AGP grapics card, a SCSI HD, tow CD/DVD roms, a networkingcard and the motherboard installed so I do not think that can be it.

If there are any Hardware gurus that can help me I would be most greatfull.....


Bacardi/AVT

Have you tried a different boot disk of any kind just to see if it does that?

Knowledge is the key to understanding

I'm sure the heat sink is not installed correctly, if the contact area between the core and heat sink is too small, no matter how big your heat sink is or how much airflow there is in the case, the core will just keep heating up until it crashes. That would explain why the lockups happened at different times depending on how long the core was allowed to cool down between power-ups.

Remove the heat sink WITH GREAT CARE and clean the CPU core and heat sink contact surface with isopropyl alchol or some other non corrosive solvent, let both the heat sink and core dry then spread thermal paste all over the heat sink and remove the excess material from the heat sink with a sharp rasor blade or a new credit card. Apply a very small amount of thermal paste on the die, it should be thinner than cigarette paper or the paste will act as an insulator.

Read your heat sink manual to be sure you are installing it the good way.

I hope this post helped you figure things out, a P3 XEON, even at 550MHz, is kick ass piece of hardware !


Fok Speling Misstake