New PC up and running... sort of

Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:27 am by The Evil Thing

After spending an eternity and a half trawling through magazines and web pages, I have found and assembled all my PC components. It now works... sort of.

At the moment the PC seems to crash and reset every so often and I've narrowed it down to the CPU. The BIOS doesn't seem to support it and is overclocking it on its own, and there's nothing I can do about it. With the CPU idling (sp?) just short of 100 centigrade you can imagine I would like to fix this problem before I end up with the world's most expensive baked chip. It also means that I can't play Freelancer

Enough with the boring preamble; I have downloaded the update I need for the BIOS and have to flash it in order to properly update it. Here comes the snag, when I boot into DOS I can't switch to the C: drive, it just keeps saying "Invalid drive specification". This means the BIOS cannot be updated because the files cannot be accessed. N.B. I have already tried putting the update files on a separate floppy but it still cannot update the BIOS, saying "Source file not found" which is quite logical if it can't find C: I suppose.

If it helps I have:

MSI 925X Neo Platinum (Motherboard)
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 540 3.2GHz with HTT (Socket 775) (CPU)
AwardBIOS w7054ims v1.0 (upgrading to v1.3) (BIOS)
SATA 120GB Seagate Barracuda (HDD)

Edited by - The Evil Thing on 3/29/2005 8:43:45 AM

Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:03 am by Major Striker

You went Pentium

Merc for hire...but only if you can afford it.

Tue Mar 29, 2005 11:33 am by Boscoe

Ok, a few things to try. Go into your bios (generally hitting del right away) and make sure you boot order list the floppy drive first. This way no matter what is booting on the hard drives is overwritten. Do the bios flash. make sure you don't shut down the computer during this!!! (did I emphasize that enough???

)

As for the heat, that's way way too high. You may want to invest in a better cooling fan and make sure you use silver oxide paste on the connection from the cpu to the cooling fan's base.

Give this a shot and let us know if it works.

Oh, I have to agree with Major Striker about going Intel.

My best recommendation is to chuck the cpu and mobo and go AMD Athlon 64 and a mobo which will support it. Just a thought.....

Edited by - Boscoe on 3/29/2005 12:37:47 PM

Tue Mar 29, 2005 4:58 pm by DSQrn

Just wondering, how much RAM. Currently thats all i care about in a computer... RAM RAM RAM!

Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:40 pm by Eh_Steve

If Intel = positive and AMD is negative, Intel + AMD < 0
I hope you understood that, don't even try if you dont get it immediately.

You definetly need to kick up that cooling system. Are you running the stock cooling system? That's not good if you are. Keep that thing so cold turkey would never go bad in it.

Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:51 am by The Evil Thing

To all those who think the heat's too high:
I agree totally, but until the damn BIOS stops overclocking it, there's not much I can do.

To DSQrn:
1GB

To those who protest at my use of Pentium:
I don't call 100 quid for a 3.2 a bad deal. When/if I get an AMD it will be an FX model. EDIT: Plus I got a cool "Intel Inside" sticker when I bought my CPU. I don't see any "AMD inside" stickers on Athlon machines.

Edited by - The Evil Thing on 3/30/2005 1:53:51 AM

Wed Mar 30, 2005 8:29 am by Eh_Steve

Yeah, while the BIOS is still overclocking, see how much you can do to keep it icy until you can figure out how to solve it, or someone who knows what to do gets on.

Intel Inside is a government warning required by law. Kind of like "Caution: Contents may be hot"

Tycho Brahe in "FLASH BIOS"!

Edited by - Eh_Steve on 3/30/2005 8:56:11 PM

Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:39 pm by Boscoe

Yup, by having that sticker on your PC all your friends will know that you paid too much for the processor.

Anyway, aside from the AMD vs Intel thing, which is all just a matter of personal opinions so I'm going to drop it as of now, have you flashed the bios yet?

Fri Apr 01, 2005 2:35 am by The Evil Thing

I managed to flash the BIOS (no, Eh_Steve

) using LiveUpdate. It successfully screwed up the BIOS making my computer unusable. I then used the recovery disk it suggested I make. The BIOS is now updated and runs fine. My chip is down to the comfortable level of 65C. I also took one of the panels off.

One small snag: the floppy drive doesn't work any more.

Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:26 pm by The Shroud (lurking)

take my dads design, 4 fans

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