SN85G4V2 Overheating problems...

S

SeeyouauntieH

n00b
Joined
Jul 22, 2004
Messages
16
First of all, here are the specs on my box:

AMD Athlon64 3200+
1 Gig Mushkin Level 1 PC-3200
Maxtor 200gig HDD
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Lite On Dual Layer 8x DVD Burner

Nothing else should be terribly applicable.

Anyway. The system was locking up like crazy while playing games (And sometimes while not playing games) when I had a second HDD in there, which was a 160 gig Maxtor. Eventually I got fed up with it, and took the second HDD out. The random reboots and lockups while in windows dissapeared completely, but I still got lockups (though not as frequent) while playing Far Cry, and today Doom 3. Now, before taking the drive out I'd be able to play all of 15 minutes, today it took about 3 hours for the system to lockup. I'm almost positive it's my 9800 Pro overheating, as vpu recover went nuts a few times, and...of course, it only frequently happens while playing games.

Now, I do intend on installing dual 60mm blowholes on the top of the case in the near future, as well as cutting out the rear fan guard. My question, though, is should I really have to do this for this to work? I mean, shouldn't the system be stable enough without me making all of these mods?

I'm just wondering what other people's experience has been with Shuttles. Does anyone have a system working with similar components? Or do you literally /have/ to mod your shuttle to get it working with higher end components like these?

Thanks in advance,

JZ
 
cutting out the rear grill is almost necessary on any shuttle. that is the first thing you should do.

Greg
 
You might also want to make sure your BIOS is updated to the latest and greatest. The 034 Build of the BIOS fixes the CPU temps being reported incorrectly in Windows. Also, memtest that sucker as your crashes actually might be due to your memory. The Shuttle boxes are bit picky when it comes to ram. Create a ISO boot CD and run that sucker a few passes.

Edit: Oh, I just read the Mushkin memory you are running. Could be your problem as it was for me. I just swapped an SN85G4v1 out for my current rig due to the crashes of running the memory at CAS2. Retarding the memory down and upping the voltage stablilized my Shuttle. What's wierd is the memory shows up on Shuttle's site as "approved". Arg...

Regards,

-E
 
I relaxed my memory timings down a bit and the instability has completely dissapeared!

The thought never even crossed my mind that it could be my memory, but I ran memtest and sure enough it was.

Thanks a lot guys, you've just taken away a lot of headaches :p

JZ
 
I run my Mushkin memory at 2-2-2-6 and I don't have any overheating problems. Do you have the latest BIOS from shuttle? I would do that first if you haven't already. When I was originally putting together my system I had memory issues too, but I upped the voltage and it worked fine. The Mushkin memory should run at 2.8v or even higher without any problems and it will probably make all your memtest errors go away :)

I have my fans running in the "smart and silent" (or whatever they call it) mode and only after extended hours of EQ2 will the fan start spinning fast enough for me to hear it. What pisses me off is that dinky little fan on my 9600Pro makes the most noise coming from my computer :p
 
I will give a try to upping the voltage tonight. Simply by turning the cas to 2.5 the world of overclocking opened up to me and I have the thing stable at 2.42 ghz :p Once I get my mods done hopefully I can do 2.5ghz.

Shuttles just got a whole lot cooler for me :)
 
Well for me, running at 2.8v (the highest the Shuttle would run) didn't stabilize my memory. It wasn't until I retarded the CAS latency to 3 that it was happy. Not what I paid for in regards to memory. I cannot blame Shuttle for this so much as Mushkin. When I moved to an MSI board, I cannot run this memory in pairs without reducing from 200Mhz down to 166. Then (and only then) does my memory errors and box instabilities go away.
Glad to hear everything is ok for you now.

-E
 
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