Take a deep breath...

I've got an M2N-SLI Delux Motherboard, with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400 and G.SKILL 2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800 (PC2 6400) on it. The first time I turned the system on, and before I installed Windows, the screen got all scrambled with little digital looking fuzzy squares and then the system froze. I reset the system and then it didn't do it again. I installed Windows and everything was fine until I turned the computer off, let it sit for a couple of hours, and then turned it back on. It did the screen scramble thing again after about 3 minutes. If I reset it seems to stablize and not do it again. Is this a RAM voltage, CPU, BIOS or Graphics problem?

Just for fun I changed the RAM votage to 1.9V. The manufacturer of the G. SKILL says it can run from 1.8-1.9V.

I turned the machine off and let it sit overnight.

10 hours later...

I turned it back on in the morning and after about 3 minutes of using Windows it did the screen scramble thing again, froze and then restarted itself. So obviously it's not a RAM problem. Keep in mind Windows works just fine. And after the initial freeze, if the system is restarted it works indefinitely and is just fine. Also keep in mind that this was happening before I installed Windows, so it is not a driver problem.
Is it possible that there is a cooling problem with the Graphics card? Is there such a thing where if the card is too cool it spazzes out and then a system error occurs??


help


Everything is plugged in correctly. I have a Zalman 9500A 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler for socket AM2. It is functioning normally. The CPU temperature fluctuates between 30 and 33 degrees Celsius. I used the specified amount of Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound between the CPU and heatsink. All case fans are also functioning normally. My EVGA 7600GT is plugged correctly into its PCI Express x16 slot.

The same error has occurred with two different motherboards of the same model.


I've updated my profile with my hardware information. Let me know if you can't see it.

Thanks!

I can't see it--did you check the box saying allow others to see my specs??

I couldn't figure out where I went to enter my hardware info. I'll just paste it here:

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Windsor 3.2GHz Socket AM2 125W Dual-Core Processor

G.SKILL 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory

Rosewill RP550-2 ATX12V v2.01 550W Power Supply

EVGA 256-P2-N615-TX GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card

Western Digital Caviar 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s HDD

ZALMAN 9500A 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler

That's fine-- here is my canned speech for having your hardware listed --so you can do it later if you wish:

I do not believe you could get your graphics card too cool with a fan.
liquid nitrogen-- maybe LOL.

Since this is happening in spite of Windows-- it is probably not that

Possibilities include:
Failing video card-- could you borrow one to try for a little while ?
not from heat necessarily-- chips do fail.
It could be the CPU
Motherboard ?
BIOS chip--
Power-supply

but lets's try the simple stuff first-- have you replaced your CMOS battery lately/ever? It could be that it's just barely strong enough to still work-- this is what remembers your BIOS settings-- and your system clock... and they are very cheap to buy... couple of bucks. If it was weak it ...could cause voltage fluxes.

Odd that you mention this, my laptop suffers from the near-same problem. I've found that it can't cold-boot.. i.e. it has to warm all the hardware up before it runs like a champ till I shut it off and let it sit for a while.

I've traced the problem back to the RAM.. got some new sticks.. and it hasn't done it since