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Here’s the results after several hours of running Memtest86:

DIMMA1/RAM1 + DIMMA2/RAM2 = ERRORS, 8 Passes, 20,000+
DIMMA1/RAM1 + DIMMA2/Empty = ERRORS, 3 Passes, 4,000+
DIMMA1/Empty + DIMMA2/RAM1 = ERRORS, 4 Passes, 793+ (2.7V)
DIMMA1/RAM2 + DIMMA2/Empty = No Errors after 6 passes, 30 minutes
DIMMA1/Empty + DIMMA2/RAM2 = No Errors after 75 passes, 6 hours and 30 minutes

The first stick of RAM had errors in both DIMM slots. Even after bumping up the voltage from 2.60V to 2.70V and slowing down the timings, I was still getting errors. The second stick however was a different story and didn’t have any errors in either slot. It was nearly 1:00AM when I decided to call it quits for the night so I let the good stick of RAM run overnight, over 6 hours, and when I woke up in the morning it was on its 75th pass with no errors. Memtest has once again successfully diagnosed bad RAM. Only one stick was actually bad of the pair, and Kingston claims 100% Tested. For now I’ve been running the machine with the one good stick and the original installation of Windows 2000 is working flawlessly. The next thing to do will be to run Prime95, but I can safely say that the motherboard wasn’t the cause of all the blue screens, it was a bad stick of RAM. Worth noting however, that even a stick of RAM that touts over 20,000 errors in a single hour, can actually allow an entire operating system to install and run and play games for several hours and only seem moderately buggy. Even though we all want systems that run benchmarks flawlessly, having a few errors in the RAM probably isn’t going to take down an entire system. I don’t know what the threshold is though, I personally like to see ZERO errors after hours and hours of running, because then I don’t wonder, what if?

Here’s a link to the datasheet for the RAM I got. I won’t knock Kingston, I mean this kind of thing happens, my other PC has Kingston RAM and I have no problems with it, but my main computer has Corsair and it works great too, and it’s overclocked. However, I think I’ll pick up a pair of Corsair’s ValueSelect RAM to replace these, just to be on the safe side.

Here’s the datasheet from Kingston on this RAM.

This is what one bad stick of RAM looks like after 1-1/2 hours under the gun of Memtest86

This is what one good stick of RAM looks like after 6-1/2 hours.

Here’s the update on the PC upgrade: All the parts arrived on Thursday and everything arrived in great shape. The Biostar open-box was certainly just that, it didn’t come with anything other than the mobo in a static bag and the box. Which was fine, I’ve got a bunch of IDE/SATA cables and the drivers I already downloaded and burned to a CD. But I was sort of hoping that it would come with the rear I/O panel, since those are specific to the motherboard, and hard to just buy alone, but alas I didn’t get one. Maybe I can buy one direct from Biostar for a couple of bucks?

Getting computer hardware is so much fun, it’s like Christmas. Eagerly I prepared on spot on the kitchen table and began the tear-down of the original Compaq computer. Pulling out the motherboard and installing the new Biostar motherboard went without any problems. I dropped in the AMD Athlon 64 and clamped down the heatsink, piece of cake. It is me, or does AMD’s method of attaching the heatsink to the CPU much nicer, quicker, easier and more efficient than Intel’s lame push-and-turn thingies? I can never tell if the heatsink is on there good enough, or whether or not I cracked the mobo trying. That was pretty much all there was to do, besides drop in the RAM, and I was ready to power up – and that’s when the first problem arose.

In short, the Compaq PSU I had intended on using doesn’t support the standard ATX pin outs for a 24-pin PSU. Well, 20 of the pins are right, but it’s the last 4 that Compaq pretty much decided to do whatever they want with. Before even turning on the computer, the Biostar mobo began blinking letting me know there was a problem. A quick search on the net revealed that sure enough the PSU isn’t compatible, those last 4 pins are all the wrong voltages.

Comparison of a Standard 24-pin ATX PSU vs. the Compaq PSU

             ATX        COMPAQ
Pin 11     +12V    3.3V
Pin 12     +3.3V   Fspd (Fan Speed)
Pin 23     +5V     3.3RS (Remote Sense)
Pin 24     GND     FS (Fan Sink)

It looks as though no damage could be done by simply hooking up the Compaq PSU, since its voltages are lower than what the mobo wants to see, but it could damage the PSU if it’s actually turned on. I didn’t push the power button, but unplugged the PSU and dropped in a 20-pin older ATX power supply. It worked for now, leaving the 4 extra sockets open, but I plan on getting a new PSU and case really soon.

Now there’s a lot that can go wrong when an old installation of Windows suddenly gets a bunch of new hardware, mainly a new motherboard. In some cases the machine won’t even boot, as has happened to me in the past. This time however Windows loaded up fine, before it went through its routine of finding new hardware and locating drivers. Some drivers it found, others I loaded manually with the CD like the chipset drivers, the audio drivers, and the video drivers. After several reboots and at a few blue screens of death, the new PC was up and running. It wasn’t pretty though, the standard PSU didn’t fit in the spot where the old Compaq PSU was, so there was gaping hole in the back and it was only being held in by one screw, so it was leaning sideways.

The next day things got worse, the computer was constantly flashing the blue screen of death and rebooting even while performing the simplest task. The blue screen error referenced ntoskernel.exe, which basically is to say that the NT (Windows 2000) Operating System Kernel is screwed up ,maybe. I fgured the next best thing to do in this case would be to simply re-format the drive and re-install Windows, which is sort of what I did. Only I couldn’t for the life of me find my Windows 2000 installation CD. We’ve been renovating the den the last couple months so all the computer stuff ended up in the garage, I have yet to see half of it make it back into the den. Then I remembered another operating system I have lying around that I could try out on the new PC – Windows Vista RC2. Well, why not? Well it’s not exactly Vista-Ready with its 512MB ram and integrated NVidia 6100 256MB graphics card. Although the AMD Athlon 64 3200+ should be enough to run it, I’ll have to do without the cool Aero Glass interface.

So I installed Vista, long story short (as if that’s possible with me) Vista actually works quite well, and the two games I installed played just fine. It feels a lot slower than 2000 did, but looks great. I downloaded all the updates, and the latest Vista drivers from nVidia’s web site and just messed and messed around for hours with it trying to get everything up and running. Unfortunately I was still getting blue screen errors, something I seriously haven’t see so many of since Windows 98. Could it be a hardware related issue? I know RC2 isn’t the final thing, but on my own computer I never saw the blue screen of death while trying it out, and now both 2000 and Vista were doing it. I think it’s time to check the hardware. So right now I’ve got Memtest86 running and by the second pass I’ve received 172 errors on tests 4, 6 and most of them on 7. Stupid Kingston RAM, I knew I should have got Corsair. Of course it could be related to the open-box Biostar motherboard I bought too. Anyway, now I’m running around trying to figure out what to do to get the kids PC running and stable again. I ended up picking up an Antec NSK 4400 Case and 380 PSU at Best Buy the other night for $62. So we basically built a whole new computer from scratch, and kept only the HDD from the old computer. So much for the cheap upgrade, but we’re still at a total cost of about $210 for what is basically a brand new Athlon 64 3200+ machine that actually runs Vista. Let’s see a budget eMachine do that for that price, even with 15 mail-in rebates. Now Memtest is on its 3rd pass and I’m at 310 errors, this time a bunch of them are on test 8. So the memory sucks or the mobo, or both.

The next steps will be to pull out one stick at a time and see if I can narrow it down to one stick or the other. Then I can pull pull out a stick or two of the DDR400 RAM that’s in my own computer and check that in the Biostar mobo, because I’ve run Memtest on it and it passes all tests without errors. So I should be able to figure out if it’s the RAM or not. I’m hoping the mobo is good, the RAM I can easily mail back to Newegg and pick up something else. If it’s not the RAM, then I’ve only got 1 week left to determine it’s the mobo and get an RMA and get it returned (open-box return policy is 15 days, not much time to break in a new PC). Now I’m up to 2,017 errros. Holy cow, it’s a wonder Vista even installed at all, let alone ran for several hours, but man was it buggy. And now we’re up to 7,401 errors. I wonder if adjusting the voltage would help? I’ll be back to update more later. 12,042 errors and counting….

Cool, new hardware!

Biostar mobo installed into the old case

The stock cooler for AMD’s Athlon 64 is a breeze to install (it’s not clipped down yet)

A day later, tossed the old case and PSU for an Antec 4400 w/380 PSU – much better!

The finished product, simple yet sleek and runs surprisingly cool and quiet

Installing Windows Vista RC2

First pass Memtest86 is finding errors, not a good sign

That’s a lot of red! Memtest86 plugging away diagnosing my hardware problems

My kids have an old Compaq Evo desktop computer we got them that they use mostly for playing games. Oddly enough, they do more “gaming” than I do, so it makes sense that they need a semi-modern computer in order to play all the cool games that are available for kids. Right now their computer consists of a Pentium IV Northwood Core 2.0Ghz Processor, 1GB of PC133 RAM made from 4 random sticks, and an ASUS GeForce 4 MX440-based graphics card. It’s running Windows 2000 and for the most part is a decent machine. It took some work to get the fan noise under control, the noise was like a freaking 747, but after connecting all the fans to the PSU’s 5V line instead of the 12V line, it is tolerable now. However, the recent pack of games they received for Christmas just would not play worth a darn. The frame rates were irritatingly slow and the sound stuttered at every word. It’s so sad, and it’s about time they get an upgrade, so they can play their games the way they were meant to be played, with normal sound and flicker-free frame rates.

I’ve been shopping for computer hardware for a while now for my own computer, picking out the best motherboard and graphics card combo to go with my new Core 2 Dual CPU, and so far we’re looking at over $1k, just for an upgrade, which means keeping the case, the HDD, the CD/DVD burner, etc. But for the kids, they don’t need top-of-the-line gear, just something better than what they’ve got. It’s easy to pick the best, latest, newest hardware, it’s more challenging to pick the older hardware, the hardware that people aren’t buying as much of any more, the hardware that doesn’t get talked about anymore. But that’s what I need to do, and I need to do it for cheap.

For starters I need to pick a new CPU. So what’s better than a Intel’s Northwood core Pentium 4 2.0GHz processor? How about, just about anything else? My first choice is to go AMD, because up until C2D, AMD was walking all over Intel in performance, cost and power consumption. The formula is still true when comparing AMD against any of Intel’s older cores. I can can vouch for AMD as well since my HTPC/Media PC is running an old Athlon XP 2800+ and if I didn’t know any better I’d say it’s equally as fast or faster than my Intel P4 Prescott core running at 3.6Ghz. Booting into Windows takes half the time, for starters, with the AMD chip. In addition, every game we try and play on the old 2.0GHz P4 that chokes, plays flawlessly on the XP 2800+ machine in the living room. But I don’t need the kids playing their games on our 50″ HDTV (although they really like it). They need their own computer that works.

So I hopped on over the Newegg.com and clicked Processors->AMD->Desktop and sorted by lowest price. For a mere $45 you can get an Athlon 64 3000+ Venice core OEM CPU (no heatsink/fan), which would knock the pants off either of my other two computers, and probably my main computer too. The prices go up from there depending on what kind of performance you want you can pay just about anything your budget can afford. There’s some cost savings to buying an OEM chip (which doesn’t have a heatsink) over the retail chip, but it’s only about $10, much more than the cost of even the worst aftermarket heatsink/fan combo. Most people will toss the stock cooler for something more exotic anyway, especially if any kind of overclocking is to be involved, but in my case I think we’ll keep the stock cooler and run the chip at the stock clock speeds. So with that, the least expensive retail AMD chip I can get would be the Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 2.0GHz for only $59. Looks good, so I added to the cart. There was a combo deal with the CPU, so I got an ASUS CD-ROM drive for $5. I haven’t seen those much cheaper, and the drive in the computer has been having some issues.

Now onto picking the motherboard, this is the tough part, the decision here can ultimately make or break how easy and smooth the install goes and how reliable the overall system is. For the most part any motherboard should do, we don’t need extreme performance and a ton of fancy features. In fact the least expensive socket 939 mobo should do the trick. Only caveat is it needs have a Micro ATX form factor to fit into the existing case or when I decide to upgrade the case, I want it to be as small as possible and be mATX-ready. Also most Micro ATX boards have built-in graphics, and I’m hoping to get away without a dedicated card to bring the cost of the total upgrade down as much as possible. Besides, adding on a graphics card later on is easy to do. So I select AMD mobos with a 939 socket and sort by lowest price. A total of 7 motherboards fall under $59 (the same price as the CPU) so now all I have to do is pick the best one whether that be the highest rated the most reviewed or just the one that people complain about the least.

I’m partial to ASUS boards, even though my latest build was a dud, my P5P800 is still running strong and for the most part ASUS make great boards. Only this time I couldn’t convince myself that any of these boards were any good, based on the reviews. That’s when an open-box mobo caught my eye – the BIOSTAR TForce6100-939. Retail on that board as of this writing is $79, more than my budget for this upgrade, but the reviews this board has received were through the roof. Almost no complaints from nearly everyone whose bought one. And the open-box discount was a mere $32. I spent more than that the last time I went out to eat. $32 is a drop in the bucket, and if it turns out that the board really does have issues, which landed it on the open-box truck, then I can return it and pick up something else. But it certainly can’t hurt to try it out. So, I added it to the cart.

Last thing I need for this upgrade is RAM for the new mobo. I jumped over to Biostar’s web site to see if they’ve got any recommended RAM, since sometimes motherboards can be sensitive to the subtle yet different specs/performance from different mfg’s of RAM. Kingston shows up as one the recommended which is good because I’ve got 1G of Kingston RAM in my current machine and haven’t had any problems, and I can get 2×512 for $52. Only $2 more than the cheapest PC3200 DDR400 RAM available. I’ll gladly pay the $2 more if its on Biostar’s approved list. Stability issues due to incompatibility of RAM can be a nightmare to troubleshoot. So might an open-box mobo…we’ll have to cross our fingers on that one. But 512MB should be enough, I don’t see a need to go to 1G for this phase of the upgrade.

And so we’re done, and the grand total for the upgrade comes to $148 before shipping for the mobo, CPU, RAM and a CD-ROM drive. Which means for now we’ll be keeping the case, PSU, HDD, OS, 19″ monitor, CD-burner, keyboard and mouse, and I’ve got a PCI NIC card and Sound card that I can use if needed. So there’s room for more upgrades down the road, including the option to go to dual care, since the motherboard supports it. This machine may even warrant the Vista Ready seal of approval (well it might need more RAM and a dedicated graphics card) but for now the machine will still be running Windows 2000.

So with that I’ll try and write up how the upgrade goes and how the new PC performs when everything arrives, which should be before the weekend. Gotta love Newegg!

Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 2.0GHz CPU

BIOSTAR TForce6100-939 Motherboard