CPU - MOBO Problem resolution

[Adam Smith]

Hello,

I have an (in)stability PC Win2K Prof. problem that I have narrowed down
to either the MOBO or the CPU.

System hangs on reboots or boot, usually after POST & listing of
OS/Recovery Console choice.
MOBO A MSI-7125 ATX Board
CPU AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual core processor 3800+em
Seems impossible to test mother board, ran various Stress Test on CPU
such as CPU Burn-in, StressCPU and Mersenne Prime Test but these seem to
be designed to determine breaking point as a measure of breaking point
limits under overclocking, am I wrong? The system eventually comes down
and I do not know how to evaluate that event occurrence point - or is
there some test (memtest type w/ defined results or reference standards)
that I can use to eliminate the CPU as a potential problem source?

Thanks

-- Adam --

 

[Jim Garrison]

Hello,

I have an (in)stability PC Win2K Prof. problem that I have narrowed down
to either the MOBO or the CPU.

Have you swapped out the power supply? Often what is perceived as
cpu/mobo instability is a bad power supply.

 

[Adam Smith]

Have you swapped out the power supply? Often what is perceived as
cpu/mobo instability is a bad power supply.

Thanks Jim,

I was considering that, I did check the voltages and they were OK but
couldn't conveniently test for the amperage under load. I was thinking
of increasing the power on the PSU, I'll just go ahead and do that, will
see if that solves the problem.

Thanks again.

 

[Jim Garrison]

Thanks Jim,

I was considering that, I did check the voltages and they were OK but
couldn't conveniently test for the amperage under load. I was thinking
of increasing the power on the PSU, I'll just go ahead and do that, will
see if that solves the problem.

Thanks again.

If your PS is manufactured by Antec in the last 24 months the odds
of it being bad go WAY up. Antec had a large batch of bad
capacitors.

I've had 2 Antec PS go bad, and both were replaced under warranty.
In both cases, the voltages were OK when tested with a DVM with
PS_ON shorted to ground. Problems occurred only under load.

 

[DaveW]

CPU's almost never fail, unless they have been severely overclocked.
Motherboards, on the other hand, regularly fail.