Posts by ironfalcon60
8 posts shown.
Larry Ortiz5 said:From what I've seen, looks like the motherboard finally kicked the bucket. If you can, try grabbing another board with the same socket—pop your current CPU in there and see if the rig actually boots up. Might also be worth swapping out the CMOS battery just to rule it out...
My first thought was just to grab a new motherboard—didn't even think about testing it like that.
Thanks for the tip 👍
So, I don't even know where to start—just spent way too much time scrolling through forums looking for a fix. I can build and tear down a PC with my eyes closed, so I’m turning to you guys for some actual help.
Basically, about four days ago, I decided to strip down my Cooler Master NR600 just to give it a good cleaning, nothing unusual. Everything seemed fine until I put it all back together and tried to boot. Now, it’s like the motherboard is dead—zero signs of life. The fan LEDs kick on, sure, but the monitor, mouse, and keyboard are completely unresponsive. At first, I figured I just missed a connection somewhere, so I shut it down and double-checked everything. It looked solid. Then I tried the old "magic fix"—reseating every single component—but nope, still nothing. Tried clearing the CMOS thinking that might jumpstart things, but another disappointment. I even tried booting with just one 2GB RAM stick, then swapped it for the other identical one... nothing. I even reseated the CPU, which shouldn't have been necessary since it was working fine before the cleaning, but hey, desperation is a hell of a thing. Since I have no clue which part is bricking the whole system, I'm stuck. I've pretty much ruled out the monitor and the RAM. I'm also leaning away from blaming the PSU, since it's relatively new and hasn't given me grief until now.
Setup:
Intel Core i5
Intel B85
Corsair Vengeance 4gb 1600
Geforce GTX 460
Corsair CX600
Western Digital 500gb hard drive
I'm at a total loss here, so give it your best shot.🙂
Jumping back in here—I decided to go another round with overclocking this Phenom 965. Managed to hit 3.6GHz at 1.456v without temps crossing 50c, even though AMD says 62c is the limit. But honestly? Anything past 3.6 is pure chaos. I tried pushing it to 3.9GHz at 1.51v, but the system couldn't even survive 4 minutes of Prime95 stress testing before folding. So yeah, I'm playing it safe with this one for now.
ASRock M3N78D Motherboard.
AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE (3.6GHz) processor.
The GeForce GTX 460—just a classic piece of hardware.
GTX 460 RAM-Corsair Vengeance 4
The Corsair CX 600—basically the budget workhorse of the power supply world. Not exactly high-end stuff, but it gets the job done if you aren't trying to run a NASA supercomputer out of your bedroom.
Just some extra Cooler Master 80mm fans—for that rear exhaust setup.
Just stick a 120mm fan on the side to pull some air in—simple as that.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU cooler.
So, I recently picked up some new gear to finally overclock this Black Edition chip—you know, the one with the unlocked multipliers. It should’ve been a total breeze, right? I figured with a solid aftermarket cooler, hitting 3.8 GHz would be easy money. Well, surprise surprise—turns out nothing is ever that simple. After spending way too much time messing around with the multiplier and voltage settings, I realized this specific chip is just plain unstable. It's a bit of a headache, honestly. After grinding through endless stress tests in Prime95, these are the only settings that actually hold steady:
Core speed: 3600 MHz
Multiplier-x18.0
Core Voltage-1.440V — honestly, that’s pushing it—just asking.
Running some stress tests and seeing temps hit 58—which is actually fine, since AMD says the limit for this chip is 62—but I'm still playing it safe. Since I’m pretty much a rookie when it comes to overclocking, I didn't want to mess with the Northbridge voltage or frequency just yet... but I did take a shot at bumping up the multipliers and CPU voltage.
The most I ever dared to push was 1.5V at a 19x multiplier—which basically just gave me the Blue Screen of Death after a minute or two.
Is there any way to actually get this system stable at 3.8 or 3.9 GHz? I’ve already thrown a ton of stuff at it—clearly nothing's working yet—so now I'm wondering if I just flushed my cash down the toilet or if this last option might actually pull through.
Hey there.
Not sure how much that 80+ rating actually matters if my old 550W unit couldn't even cut it—is there anything with higher wattage out there? Just want to be sure I don't end up with a blown rig in a month.
Edit—I’m not about to flush money down the drain if I’m planning an upgrade anyway—plus, there isn't even any room left in the case to make it happen.
I need a new PSU for this build—I was running an Xilencos 550W with a dual-core setup before, but I swapped it out for a Phenom that pulls 140W, and the power supply just gave up the ghost after a bit. Since I'm pretty much a newbie at this, I really don't want to blow a ton of cash on some cheap junk that's just gonna die on me again.
ASRock M3N78D CPU-AMD Phenom II Black Edition 965
ASRock M3N78D CPU-AMD Phenom II Black Edition 965 (3.4GHz)
Corsair Vengeance RAM—4GB at 1600MHz.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (1GB GDDR5)
Just an old 500GB Western Digital Caviar spinning at 7200RPM—basically a relic from a different era.
From ironfalcon60 to Ivica22
Not gonna happen.
Read the first post, man.