Did I kill my nForce2?

[PenguinJim]

Hi guys, little help needed here....

I have the new ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo, and was messing around in the BIOS doing some mild overclocking (not even pushing the CPU temp above 50). But.... oh no! The system now fails to boot at all... :eek:

NOTHING displays on the screen, but that ASUS voice thingy tells me 'System failed Memory Test'. I thought I'd fried the memory, but it works on a friend's machine. I've tried every combination of the two DIMMs in the three slots (they're "TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 256MB CL2.5 Memory 184-P (for DDR-PC400MHz)" ). Could it be that the DIMM slots are damaged? I cannot figure out exactly what the problem is - I've tried wiping the CMOS thingy several times, but I'm not getting ANY kind of visual message at the start - just that voice. :confused:

Any help much appreciated. System specs below.

Oh, one more thing: I'd set the timings of the memory to CAS2 instead of 2.5 (seeing as it was sooo underclocked for 'Sync' mode) - could that have caused this? It ran fine for a while though...

Cheers

Athlon 1.33gig @ 1400 (140 FSB)
A7N8X Deluxe nForce2
2xTwinMOS 256meg 2.5CAS PC3200 @ 280 (140 FSB)
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 60gig
Lite-On 16x10x40 CDRW and Pioneer Slot DVDROM
360W Power Supply
Gainward Geforce4Ti4400

[ari]

Did you up the voltage to the DIMMs at all? That could have fried them... but I doubt it. I have an Albatron KX400+Pro. When I had a 2100+ on it, it used to boot up and say something incomprehensible over the pc speaker. I would hit the reset button and it would come up normally. Went away once I put a 2200 on there. Did it once with my 2700 also.

My friend's 8KTA3 didn't come up the 1st time also... needed a reset press before we got video.

Did you try removing all PCI cards... sometimes that helps....

Good luck.

[PenguinJim]

I don't think I upped the voltage in the DIMMS (that is to say, I wasn't trying to, didn't want to, and am 99% sure I didn't do it by accident). I don't have ANY PCI cards on there. I've tried booting without any IDE devices. When I try booting without a CPU in there, it tells me there's no CPU (voicey-style), so I put the CPU back (and HSF) and switch on and... System Failed Memory Test :(

Could it be..... that it's not my SYSTEM MEMORY, but my CMOS memory or BIOS or something that's the problem??? (I don't think so, but if I were all-knowledgeable, I'd have fixed this damn thing already ;))

The annoying thing is that the DIMMs work in a friend's machine. It's screwing up my diagnosis of exactly which component is the problem. I'm leaning towards the Northbridge at the moment, but I can't see how I would have damaged THAT???

Btw, I upped the VCore (I assume that's the CPU voltage). It goes from 1.750 to 1.850 in 0.025 increments... I had tried it at 1.800 once, but think I'd reduced it to 1.775 right before I got this problem. don't think that caused this, but again, any help appreciated!!!

Lol thank God this problem happened right now. I hadn't had any spare PCs for months, but this past fortnight I've had a couple just lying on my floor doing nothing.... just watching.... waiting.... staring....

[Blah]

Is that by chance Corsair PC3200 memory you're using? If so there are others with the same issues here (http://www.houseofhelp.com/v2/showthread.php?threadid=9056&perpage=15&pagenumber=1)

And more conversation at ArsTechnica (http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=77909774&m=8340983145)


Good Luck!!

[PenguinJim]

Thanks for those links. Unfortunately, I happened across them recently and tried their tricks.... still dead (well nearly dead... as inoperable as before). Have even tried different RAM (took a day or two to get). No joy. And I'm getting tired of flashing this thing's CMOS.

My memory is TwinMOS PC3200 CL2.5 DDR-400 style stuff, in the format of 2 256meg DIMMS, so my situation isn't quite identical.

Gonna RMA this POS. To all intents and purposes, it's deader than corduroy. But in my opinion this was just a slightly defective board, so I'm going to replace it with an identical Asus A7N8X, cos they are fabulous :D

[Nephilim]

Yeah, I ordered one this week. I hope I don't run into the same problem.

Asus boards are usually hard to beat in the quality arena.

[Cotita]

Most probably the FSB is too high for the mobo to post.

Remove everything from the card, Video card, ram, processor
remove the battery, disconect the power plug and clear the cmos, that will reset the bios completely. Double check the manual for cmos clearing instructions, since clearing cmos in some asus boards is somewhat tricky.

Install only the processor and turn it on, you should hear a message saying "system failed memory test", install 1 dimm in slot 1 and turn it on again. If it doesn't change the slot.

[Harnagel]

I had a weird thing where in order to reset the BIOS I had to

1) Turn the computer off

2) put the jumper in reset mode

3) Turn computer on

4) Turn computer back off

5) Put the jumper back to the normal spot

6) Turn computer back on

otherwise it wouldn't reset. It was an nForce2 board.

[PenguinJim]

Thanks for your suggestions guys, I tried them all today (most of them not for the first time) but the board still does not work and so I've bundled it back into it's box for the RMA man.

The only solution I did not try was to blu-tack 16 extra pins onto an old SDRAM stick and try and force that into a slot. Ah well, maybe next time ;)