Chaintech 7NJL6

So there seems to be a really wide spectrum of opinions on this board.
But I have what I think is a unique problem... in that I that I
couldn't find reference to it here. Several actually.

When the system is powered down and unplugged and then reattached and
powered up, the board clicks repeatedly and the primary hard drive has
problems firing up (the rpm drops each time the board clicks... power
issue?) Occasionally it will stall and just give a single beep every 5
seconds. Hitting Reset or doing a quick start solves the problem
though. Once the drive gets full power and Windows loads, its stable.
(I've tried multiple drives and all have the same result.

The second problem is one I just noticed two days ago. I was working on
the pc and had it plugged into a power strip... the same one that runs
two other pc's (perfectly stable.) Neither of the other boxes were
plugged in, and the pc spontaneously rebooted. This happened probably
about eigth times before I plugged it into a UPS. It hasn't had a
problem since. The reboots had no apparent rhyme or reason.

The final problem is completely unrelated I think. With my old Gainward
MX400 64Mb I had absolutely no problems whatsoever. However, I recently
purchased a PNY GeForce 6600 256Mb. At higher game resolution settings
(on the original Half-Life), artifacts appeared intermittantly, but no
system instability. nVidia said this was a driver. On Return to Castle
Wolfenstein, the entire system would freeze. I lowered the settings and
had the same result. Upgraded the video drivers and had the same
result, as well as freezing whenever a video was activated.

Any ideas or direction would be very helpful.

Sys Specs:
Chaintech 7NJL6 (obviously)... think think there's a newer bios ver.
nForce 2 chipset
Athlon XP 3000+
1.5 GB PC3200 (two PNY, one Ultra)
twin Maxtor 60GB 7200's (the master is starting to get louder... used
to be in a mobile pc)
PNY GeForce 6600 256Mb
Windows 2000
ArcticLite silent fans
No ad-ware, viruses, or mal-ware that were detected as of yesterday.

The motherboard is solid-state; I cannot imagine what would b
"clicking" unless it's coming through the case's front speaker.

I recommend that you seriously test the boot drive for impendin
failure. Listen closely to determine if the clicking is coming fro
the hard drive.

Another thing to try is re-seating the ATX power connector from th
power supply to the board

How is that Ultra memory stick working out? Do you have it in th
middle slot? Try removing it and see if you get better stabilit
with only the two PNY sticks, in slots 0 and 2

Think I may have fixed all but one problem...

2 - The Ultra memory is rock-steady. The PNY for some as yet unknown
reason was topping out at 150 F. Heatspreaders are on the way.

3 - nForce drivers were faulty. nVidia released a new version
11/22/05... fixed the video problem.

Back to the first problem...

I know the mobo is solid. The clicking is the power cycling to the
harddrive. It IS the harddrive... but what's weird is, its any
harddrive. The old master is still running loud... but power still
cycles. The new WD has the same problem. So did a new Hitachi. And a
another new Maxtor.

Take a look at this lin
http://www.overclockers.com/articles696
With that amount of RAM & speed, it might apply. Also might b
indication the PS isn't cutting the load with that much RAM
Or maybe the MOBO can't handle carrying that much current. I'm no
sure anyone has troubleshot it from this angle. I've seen where som
claim a swap of everything but MOBO and no problems, but was th
problem centered around this issue? FAIK, it might have been a mob
mounting problem they didn't realize and there have been some o
those

Does anyone know if this MObO will take registered ram
Spec in book says unregistered, parity or non. From the articl
listed, it seems registered would be better

Also those current requirements stir questions relating to STR. Lik
how much current is required in that state. I see my PS stand-by 5
line only has 2A

I've been wondering about the PS myself. The actual currents fall short
of what is spec'd. 380w PS that has only 220w continuous? I expected
more from Raptor.

Additionally, it finally dawned on me that the mobo has no aux power
connector. So the idea that the board may be under powered has
substance. According to the article, the chips I have are the best
possible configuration... all are x16.

Fixes so far:
1 - remounted mobo
2 - reseated cpu (had a bit too much grease)
3 - pulled PNY chips

Ideas to try:
1 - swap in older gpu (w/o fan)
2 - try single PNY chip (problem may arise when dual channel is active)
3 - swap in larger PS

I'll have to try and isolate the problem further before I could tell
you whether the mobo problem is a power issue. As far as the RAM is
concerned, I'm inclined to say unregistered, but I haven't tried
registered in it yet.

> Anonymouswrote:

>
> Additionally, it finally dawned on me that the mobo has no aux
power
> connector. So the idea that the board may be under powered has
> substance. According to the article, the chips I have are the best
> possible configuration... all are x16.
>

I think you may be on to something. Read the following quote:

"As motherboards and processors evolved, the need for power became
greater. In particular, chipsets
and DIMMs were designed to run on 3.3v, increasing the current demand
at that voltage. In addition,
most boards included CPU voltage regulators that were designed to
convert +5v power into the
unique voltage levels required by the processors the board supported.
Eventually, the high current
demands on the +3.3v and +5v outputs were proving too much for the
design of the connectors and
terminals. Each of the terminals in the main power connector are rated
for 6 amps (A), which allows
for a maximum draw of 18A of +3.3v power and 24A of +5v power. These
maximums match the ratings
of an approximately 250-watt-rated power supply. Because motherboards
with high-speed processors
and multiple cards installed could draw more power than that and power
supply manufacturers
were building supplies with 300-watt and higher ratings, melted
connectors were becoming more and
more common. The terminals in the main connector would overheat under
such a load.

To allow for additional power from the supply to the motherboard,
Intel modified the ATX specification
to add a second auxiliary power connector for high power draw ATX
motherboards and 250-watt
or higher rated supplies. The criteria was such that if the
motherboard could draw more than 18A of
+3.3v power, and/or more than 24A of +5v power, then the auxiliary
connector would be required to
carry the additional load. These higher levels of power are needed in
systems using 250 to 300 watt or
greater supplies.

The ATX Auxiliary Connector is a 6-pin Molex-type connector, similar
to one of the motherboard
power connectors used on AT/LPX supplies. The terminals in this type
of connector are rated for
5 amps per pin at up to 250 volts. The connector is normally keyed to
prevent a misaligned
connection."

http://www.quepublishing.com/content...89727455_5.pdf

Guy
There is some misrepresentation in that piece. I've used a ton o
these molex pins and pins of this size will accomadate up to 16 g
wire which will handle far more than 6A. It would be more in th
order of 10A, but I don't know what guage of wire is ran to th
connector and of course the runs on the MOBO would be an issue. The
are not very thick and I don't know if there are several runs, mayb
in different layers of the board from each pin. Also runs inside th
mobo rather than on the surface will not dissapate the heat as well
From the link I posted you can see that carefully choosing your RA
can decrease the current demand. Also I've noted that in the manua
it states 2.5 V RAM. Having looked through quite a bit of the stuff
I feel like I'm trying to arrange the alphabet in a bowl of soup
I've seen some saying 2.5, 2.6, 2.5 to 2.8, 2.6 to 2.8, plus som
saying 2.5 at pc2800 & 2.6 needed for running at pc3200. So
guess the next step is a response from Chaintech as to how rigid tha
voltage is. I see in the manual where the cpu core voltage change
with some cpu's, but have no idea how it is accomplished. And have t
wonder if voltage is adjusted when you do custom settings in the bios
And the same for RAM voltage. I think it mentioned in my posted lin
that as the voltage goes up so does the current

I've often thought those molex pins were elcheapo, but they haven'
been used in circuits keeping the plane in the air for a long time
Still fires aren't good. They do come gold plated as well and I woul
have hoped for at least that on power critical circuits of a computer
even though it doesn't fly

I had that clacking of the HDD, and tracked it to a power issue
Possibly a short, but no proof of that. But after reseating eac
connector several times to scrape away any surface oxidation and the
lightly coating with silicone grease to prevent any further oxidation
it fired up and had no problems since about 6 months ago. Since yo
are using two drives, Guest, make sure you have the jumpers correctl
installed on the drives also. I think this mobo is also supposed to b
able to do cable select.
Find a reference for this brand of bios to learn the meaning of th
beep code. Listen carefully to make sure it isn't a string of shor
beeps packed closely together
Speed fan will give you temps but nothing else at this time, excep
data to HDD
I avoid conductive paste because it is damn near impossible to get th
correct amount. Too much and you short pins, not enough and you know
It seems phase change material is highly recommended and supposed t
do a better job of filling voids than paste. Not sure that lappin
helps as I never tried
You say you have 3K XP. Is that one with 333 or 400 FSB
What speeds are you running it and the RAM at
Dual channel is supposed to be active only when using slot 1 &
(or 0 & 2), although I've seen contrary posts without supportin
test data

This 3000 XP is the 333 MHz version; the RAM is PC 3200, and the boar
memory frequency setting is 200 MHz. It is 8 ns RAM running with
CAS latency of 3. At 2.5, it becomes unstable.

The FSB is set at 166, and I had to clear the CMOS several times whil
attempting to overclock the chip to 200

I have not bothered to lap a heatsink; nothing I have at my workbenc
is more precise than a manufacturing plant. I am more likely to beve
the edges than make the bottom flatter

"" wrote:
> So there seems to be a really wide spectrum of opinions on
> this board.
> But I have what I think is a unique problem... in that I that
> I
> couldn't find reference to it here. Several actually.
>
> When the system is powered down and unplugged and then
> reattached and
> powered up, the board clicks repeatedly and the primary hard
> drive has
> problems firing up (the rpm drops each time the board
> clicks... power
> issue?) Occasionally it will stall and just give a single beep
> every 5
> seconds. Hitting Reset or doing a quick start solves the
> problem
> though. Once the drive gets full power and Windows loads, its
> stable.
> (I've tried multiple drives and all have the same result.
>
> The second problem is one I just noticed two days ago. I was
> working on
> the pc and had it plugged into a power strip... the same one
> that runs
> two other pc's (perfectly stable.) Neither of the other boxes
> were
> plugged in, and the pc spontaneously rebooted. This happened
> probably
> about eigth times before I plugged it into a UPS. It hasn't
> had a
> problem since. The reboots had no apparent rhyme or reason.
>
> The final problem is completely unrelated I think. With my old
> Gainward
> MX400 64Mb I had absolutely no problems whatsoever. However, I
> recently
> purchased a PNY GeForce 6600 256Mb. At higher game resolution
> settings
> (on the original Half-Life), artifacts appeared
> intermittantly, but no
> system instability. nVidia said this was a driver. On Return
> to Castle
> Wolfenstein, the entire system would freeze. I lowered the
> settings and
> had the same result. Upgraded the video drivers and had the
> same
> result, as well as freezing whenever a video was activated.
>
> Any ideas or direction would be very helpful.
>
> Sys Specs:
> Chaintech 7NJL6 (obviously)... think think there's a newer
> bios ver.
> nForce 2 chipset
> Athlon XP 3000+
> 1.5 GB PC3200 (two PNY, one Ultra)
> twin Maxtor 60GB 7200's (the master is starting to get
> louder... used
> to be in a mobile pc)
> PNY GeForce 6600 256Mb
> Windows 2000
> ArcticLite silent fans
> No ad-ware, viruses, or mal-ware that were detected as of
> yesterday.

on the cold boot, does the post screen come on and the bios have
troubles finding the drives?


let’s see if i can list one possible fix that you have yet to try.

try different cables, double check the jumpers on the drives(including
the roms), try a different psu(what’s the brand and model number, what
do your 5v & 12v rails read in the bios?) or it could just be the
maxtor that’s causing the problem.

you might want to maxtor website and download testing software to test
the drives.



power strip: go into your bios/power management/power on after power
fail/off.




that beep is probably memory related. i would suspect it would go away
with just the 2 pny strips. you more than likely need to set your
memory manually. i would try setting the timings to the slowest of the
2 brands your using. run memory86 and see if there is problem with
either the timings or a stick of memory.

http://www.memtest86.com/

ud

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