markm75

More mayhem here..

In trying to get vista reinstalled i sorta made progress at first..

I'm not sure why.. i think it was ram setting related.. perhaps.. i changed some bios ram settings at first.. setting the ram to 1.9v (somewhere online someone thought this was more correct, even though the specs said 1.8v).. then the installer popped right up...

However.. i then decided to get further along, i enabled the onboard raid, created the motherboard raid 5 for a few drives..

But every once in awhile on bootup i would get a freeze at "checking nvram".. which i believe is related to ram settings?? I also would see the intel raid area with the motherboard raid info.. but every once in awhile the drives listed would have a bunch of question marks next to them, it didnt look right (this would happen even without a "checking nvram freeze").. so i couldnt boot up at all..

So then i decided to pull the drive i was trying to work with the new image on and put the old one back in, but acronis it, so it was backed up (thinking maybe i had a bad drive before)..

I did this, got into acronis.. only to come in this morning to see it said it was 75% done with 50 minutes remaining (8 hours later), but completely froze.

So i guess perhaps i have 1 or 2 or 3 issues.. either my 850 watt coolmaster just isnt enough power for the dual ati 4870s, the 8, 4-pin icy docks and the bluray recorder/writer.. coupled with 1 80mm fan and two 120mm fans... or perhaps this ocz ram is either bad or a bad match for the p5e3.. or maybe the motherboard is bad, but i doubt this, as i ended up getting a 2nd one to rule that out..

Right now i'm trying the acronis with one video card pulled and the ram back at 1.8v.. (i also have manual timings of course)...

**So perhaps the online psu watt calculators are off.. maybe this 850 just isnt enough? Would that cause checking nvram freezes.. or is it ram settings (i swear i've tried every ram setting possible)..

I should add this bit, i just thought about..

I did have my usb flash drive plugged into the front of the pc during this mess.. if i'm understanding it correct, after a fresh search.. the checking nvram issue part.. this is more along the lines of flash memory.. so perhaps that is due to the flash drive being attached, it having a problem with that.. and not the memory onboard..

I dont know if having the usb flash could have caused the raid question mark corrupted display / settings issue or not though..

I forgot to mention, that before i decided to start trying a fresh image, my old image resulted in another bluescreen again..

The error was an irql stop 0x000000d1 on scsiport.sys

I'm not sure which storage adapter this fell under.. maybe the 3ware 9650 series card (pciex4)

Well i tried to boot to a linux CD for safe testing.. so at first i decided to shoot for the rated memory speed of 1600 on the ram.. basically no matter what settings i would use, it wouldnt be stable.. i unplugged everything from the pc except the cd drive.. it would often freeze on booting to linux.. i tried every combination of 1600mhz settings i could find and try, nothing worked.. i tried 2 sticks and 4.. same results..

So now i'm retesting at 1333.. but i've decided just to use my single vista image, data drives offline.. i will probably move to WINPE and use the program intel burn in (linpack) on that.. but for now i'm running LinPack in custom mode, set the memory to whatever was free (6000MB) and 20 iterations.. so far so good.. about 26C jump in temp though, but i have the room pretty cool, maxing at 58C so far (started around 30-32C)...

We shall see how this goes, however, even if i can run stable and at 1333, its disappointing, as i was really hoping to hit 1600mhz on the memory, although right now in testing, i have the fsb at 1600 and cpu overclocked at 3.6ghz, figured i'd go for it, as this is what i was shooting for.

I may consider order dhx (dominator) corsair 1600mhz ram from newegg on monday and give that a shot, or maybe if i can run stable at 1333, ill just live with it.. it cant be that much faster at 1600 can it?

I ran the linpack testing , 20 iterations, while set at 1333 mhz.. it passed all 20 tests this time...

This morning i decided to run it again.. i chose the first option this time, not the custom one, the one that does maximum stress.. i did 10 iterations of the test.. one of the tests failed this time.. 93% essentially..

I guess its back to the drawing board.. i guess what i may try next is going even lower on the clock speed, see if that passes.. if it does, this ram is almost certainly getting sold or returned somehow.

I'm also wondering this.. the p5e3 deluxe is rated at 1333 on the ram natively.. should i have bought 1333 native ram and overclocked that to 1600? (rather than either downclocking or overclocking to 1600mhz on 1600mhz ram).. perhaps this is why i've had so many issues, even running at 1333 on the ram?