Problem with Asrock motherboard

[JimboASFC]

Hi guys

About 2 weeks ago I purchased an Asrock motherboard from Novatech as I had to replace my faulty Gigabyte board and Im having a weird problem with it that I cant fathom out.

The motherboard is a K7NF2-Raid, my processor is an AMD AthlonXP 3200+.

On this motherboard there are FSB jumpers to set the motherboard FSB. It clearly states on my processor packaging box that it has a 400Mhz FSB and runs at 2200Mhz (2.2Ghz).

When I set the motherboard jumper to 400FSB, the system boots fine, recognises my processor as an AMD Athlon 3200+ running at 2200Mhz in bios and windows but then the system just shuts down in about 2 mins. When it is set to 200FSB the system is stable but my processor is only recognised in Bios and in Windows as a AMD Athlon XP 1.09Ghz so my PC/processor is running slower than it should be.

Is there something Im doing wrong or a bios setting I should be looking at? Should I return the product as faulty?? I even bought a big *** Gigabyte cooler thinking it was my standard AMD fan and heatsink that originally came with the processor was faulty but its doing exactly the same thing. The processor was working fine on my previous board at 400FSB.

Any advice is much appreciated because Im well impressed with the speed of this motherboard when it runs on the 400FSB setting even if I can only see it for a couple of minutes.

This motherboard also has a dual channel RAM option - Ive tried both dual and single but exactly the same result on the 400FSB option...

There are also a bunch of jumper pins on this board called FID where you can set the multiplier settings - I dont really want to do this unless I absolutely have to...

The full spec of my system is :

450W Dual Fan PSU (Super Flower) (brand new)
AMD Athlon XP3200+
Asrock K7NF2-Raid (brand new)
2 x 512MB DDR Ram PC3200 400Mhz
ATI Sapphire X1600Pro 8xAGP 512MB (brand new)
Sony DVD Rom
Plextor PX712A DVD Writer
Samsung 200GB Sata HDD (brand new)

Any advice??? Anyone heard of any similar problem with this board???

[Coops]

What BIOS version does your board currently have on it?

[JimboASFC]

The latest (according to Asrocks website anyway) - P1.20

Jimbo

[Coops]

Ok, when you moved the CPU from your old Mainboard to your new one. Did you before you started using it.

Remove and clean all the thermal Paste from the heat sink and fan. You would have required a cleaning fluid design to break down thermal interface material for this.

Remove and clean all the thermal Paste from the CPU core.

Apply new Heat transfer paste between the CPU core and Heat sink.

If you did'nt do this, it could be one of the reasons why this board is behaving this way. Not saying its the answer but just need to check.

[JimboASFC]

Well I didnt use any cleaning fluid but I did wipe both the CPU and heatsink clean and put some fresh paste on. Plus when i put the new Gigabyte cooler on, that was obviously clean as it was a new one out of the box so I added paste to that cooler

Jimbo

[Gripper]

Just a thought - and a question: did you install all the NVidia NForce drivers? And if so, have you tried uninstalling them all?

Have a related problem myself, which I've just solved in this way.

Same (new) mobo, with Athlon 3000 (333FSB), 1024Mb DDR400, ATI9600GT 256, 80Gb Maxtor system drive, 120Gb SATA. This Asrock m/b was a replacement for an MSI that stopped recognizing the memory.

Built perfectly, but crashed randomly, with BSOD; no amount of BIOS tweaking would solve it. Since I've had problems with NForce before, I tried uninstalling them all (couldn't isolate the troublesome one - not audio, disabled since on PCI 5.1 optical) and problem solved.

Most recent drivers on Asrock site are 2005, so probably same as on current CD.

My question is: are there any potential problems down the road by not using the chipset drivers? Only the 'SM bus controller' is showing up in yellow in DM. Or is there a trick to getting the NForce drivers to actually work?

[Nox]

On my nf4 board the manufacturer advises not to instal the sw ide driver when the option presents iteself. That was a DFI, and pretty much undocumented in the regular channels.

Nox

[JimboASFC]

Well now my system doesnt even boot!! Ive tried it out of the case with just the ram, processor and vga card connected - cleared CMOS - nothing. Fans are on but nothing else happens now. What happened was a freind of mine told me to try the multiplier settings at 5.5 - seemed to be stable on the 400FSB setting but it would still shut down after say 2/3 hours of being on. I had to keep the side panel off my PC otherwise it would still shut down within minutes. I lost count how many times I tried to reapply thermal paste - thinking I was putting too much on or too little. Anyway after one of these instances when it shut down a few nights ago, when I rebooted it said that windows/system32/root couldnt be found so I thought great - windows has corrupted now. Tried the repair no luck so had to format - reloading Windows the machine froze so I reset it and since then has not come back on at all. Doesnt make the POST boot beep or anything. As the motherboard I bought from Novatech wasnt that expensive Im not too bothered but I aint buying Asrock again thats for sure. I think its my processor that was on its last legs anyway but with no spare socket a/462 processors easily available its hard for me to test so time for a new processor and motherboard... Gutted...

Jimbo