Trouble with "new" 8RDA3+

After my mobo swap yesterday, everything seemed ok. Today I am having
trouble booting into Windows XP. I just had to restart about 5 times to
complete the boot process. It hangs on the BIOS opening screen. Sometimes
everything appears as normal, sometimes not everything displays (e.g., the
drives info). Sometimes I can hit delete and get into the BIOS setup, other
times the keyboard doesn't respond and I have to do the ctrl-alt-del to
restart. Since this never happened with the old 8KHA+, I have to assume
it's the mobo but once up and running, everything is fine.

Fyi, this is rev 3.3 of the mobo PCB and the latest BIOS (7-29-04). I don't
have any non-standard hardware.

Any ideas out there? Thanks.

 

Down at the bottom of the main start up BIOS screen where the drives
log-in,
there is a display of voltages. temps and fanspeeds. Are any showing in
red?

 

Only one fan speed indicator but I think that's as much due to the sensor as
anything because the reading fluctuates in motherboard monitor also. If the
hard drive wasn't almost new (<6 months old) I'd suspect that because it
sounds a little funny but it could just be a resonance from the case.
Replaced the Athlon 1800+ with a 2700+ today and it took 2 tries to boot but
once it did, runs fine.

 

I'm going back to your original post on this board swap, and that second 4
pin power connector on the 8RDA3+.
Modern motherboards and PSU's use that second connector for CPU power.
Although you seem to be able to get your machine to run *sometimes*, I'd be
trying a different PSU *with* a separate 4 pin connector for the
motherboard. BTW, the separate 4 pin connector *is not* the same as the
extra 4 pins that can be split away from a modern 24 pin motherboard
connector. That split simply allows a new PSU to be used with older
motherboards that have a 20 pin connector.
I realize that it may not be practical for you to try a different PSU, but I
believe that connector is there for a reason. If you have a local dealer,
you may be able to try a new PSU, then return it if it doesn't help.

 

My Rosewill 400 PSU does have a separate 4 pin connector with two 12v lines
and two grounds. I will have to look at my other PC's PSU and see if that
has one also. If so I may try the swap. The fact that it freezes on the
BIOS boot screen would seem to eliminate the hard drive as the problem,
wouldn't it?

 

To reinforce what I told you, read this:

http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26212

I've had failure to fully POST (frozen boot screen) issues that were solved
by PSU replacement. Other failure to POST issues were cured by clearing
CMOS.

 

I will try the CMOS clear first since that's easy. I do have the correct
4-pin connector connected properly. It is keyed (unlike the other 4-pin
connector). I suppose it's possible that my power supply isn't up to snuff
even though it is new and allegedly 400 watts.

I've just noticed something else when I fired up the nVidia system utility:
the memory voltage is at 2.73 which shows up as red on the graph. Next time
I reboot I will have to manually clock that down. I know I didn't change
anything.

Thanks for you continued assistance. We'll get this figured out yet. One
of these days I'm going to buy a brand name PC, fully assembled and tested
and forgot all this fussing with the home built units