bad gigabyte board or bad ram ?

[mattmatteh]

i just got a new gigabyte ga78gpm-ds2h board and got gentoo installed. thought everything was ok, but have been getting random lock ups, even during boot.

here is more detail about that: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-716353.html
sorry about the cross post, but think i am at the point now where i need to figure out a hardware problem.

i think i have a bad board or bad ram. i am not sure how to go about determining that. any suggestions ?

thanks
matt

[deanjo]

i just got a new gigabyte ga78gpm-ds2h board and got gentoo installed. thought everything was ok, but have been getting random lock ups, even during boot.

here is more detail about that: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-716353.html
sorry about the cross post, but think i am at the point now where i need to figure out a hardware problem.

i think i have a bad board or bad ram. i am not sure how to go about determining that. any suggestions ?

thanks
matt

Try one chip at a time and run memtest.

[RealNC]

As deanjo said, memtest all chips, one at a time. On gentoo, keyword the latest memtest86+ version:

echo "sys-apps/memtest86+" /etc/portage/package.keywords

emerge it (emerge sys-apps/memtest86+) and add a boot entry for it (the ebuild will give you a grub entry to use, but adjust the "root (hdN,N)" entry.)

[Kano]

When you use OC ram, then raise RAM voltage. Usually written on em.

[Methylene]

I'm running a gigabyte board and in order to get my ram running at 1066mhz at dual channel I had to pump up the voltage and break it in. It crashed for a while but after a few months the problem up and disappeared. Note that it seems gigabyte cheaps out on the voltage there, because I can't even get my ram to 2.2v like it says on the chip. only 2.1v... It's running fine these days though.

[Methylene]

judging by your post over there at the gentoo forums though there may be a hardware issue so who knows what will happen if you start messing with voltages... but hey, why not fry everything and make gigabyte replace it all till it works

[mattmatteh]

so far on stick 2 in slot one has not locked up, 22 hours.
i have 4 * 2GB sticks of kingston 1.8v, 6-6-6-?.

i see if i can get 48+ hours with out locking up and memtest each stick.

thank
matt

[mattmatteh]

it seems that the board is POS. i can not get any consistant results. thought i had bad ram, but can not isolate it. and usb dont really work. it just randomly stops.

[mattmatteh]

now that i am returning the POS gigabyte board i need to get something else now.

i am thinking about perhaps the same 780g and sb700 but different brand. what i dont like is the slow hard drive, flakey usb, video tearing and minor stuttering.

or ditch amd and go with an nvidia based board. i was thinking nvidia 750a or 8200. i havent looked at the linux support for nvidia yet. would that either of those have better usb, sata/ahci, video playback ?

thanks
matt

[deanjo]

or ditch amd and go with an nvidia based board. i was thinking nvidia 750a or 8200. i havent looked at the linux support for nvidia yet. would that either of those have better usb, sata/ahci, video playback ?

thanks
matt

Yes to all of the above.