lokokkee

I have just reassembled a P4 1.4 Mhz 423 pin on a new MSI Intel 850 chipset motherboard with 512 Mb Rambus ram and new casing with 400 watts PSU. (The old MB died on me some time back and took me a while to source this new one). The POST was OK, but I keep getting random reboot, as well as random hanging during my installation of Win XP Pro. The CPU temp monitor is OK, around 48-50 d. Centigrade, and the voltage looks normal. Tried a new program disk, switched to another CD drive, same problem. After all else failed, pulled out two pieces of the RDRAM, switched them around and presto, installation proceeded without hitch. What could be the problem? The RDRAM chips were working fine when installed in the previous MB, and have never failed a POST before and all four were matched pieces. The Win XP CDs were new and worked fine on my other PC.

Vonzack

Maybe the RDRam's weren't seated properly and you swapping them around has fixed the problem. Could also be a pairing problem with the RDRam, if you mix RAM the slowest has to be in the bank that the Mobo looks at to detect the speed/timing, then it applies this across the whole bank.

If you know it's OK now though it might be worthwhile swapping them back to see if the problem comes back, then you'll know if it's a seating problem or something else.

Cheers.

lokokkee

Thanks for the advice. The four pieces of RDRam were matched in size and speed, so that should not be the problem. What I don't understand is that if it is a seating problem, then why is it not picked up during POST, which indicated the correct RAM total. Also, why would it causes the intermittent hanging and rebooting, which I suspected to be faulty program disc and power supply respectively. When the thing hung, it was quite often at the same spot at transferring files to the PC, so I thought it was a read error on the disk and tried to load from another, but no joy. When I built my other PC after the first MB died, the machine also rebooted on startup and the PC store technician suggested a 400 watts PSU instead of the 350 unit that came with the case and it solved the problem. That's why I also opted for a 400 watts unit for the present PC, though it is only 1.4 Mh compared to 2.4 for the other one.