Change of CPU has caused problems!

Good evening all. Could I please ask if anyone out there has got any advice for me:

I recently have upgraded the CPU on my Asus A8V mother board in order to try and squeeze a little more life out of my PC as I can't afford to get/build a new one just yet.

I used to have an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (San Diego) Chip, and have managed to acquire a new AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200+ (Manchester) chip and have replaced it.

I was very careful to clean the heat sink and apply a new application of Arctic Silver thermal paste as per the directions.

The computer will boot fine, and I am getting CPU temperatures (I have ASUS PC Probe running) of between 32C (idle) and up to 48C (gaming) so think that this is working ok.

However I keep getting freezes and crashes occurring pretty regularly. The system will just hang, and the HDD light just comes on and doesn't flash at all. I have to reboot and then all is fine again.

Where do I start???? I think most of the time this issue is due to overheating of the CPU, but I really don't think this is the case here?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

BoPeep:cry

AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200+
Asus A8V Motherboard
Windows XP (SP 3)
3GB RAM (2x 1GB + 2x 512MB)
ATi Radeon X`950 Pro

 

Hi

The first thing I would do if I were you is find out if there is a BIOS update for your motherboard. I'm betting a new processor might work better with a more recent BIOS revision.

As far as troubleshooting goes, the first step is to ensure that everything else inside is how it should be. I know when I'm messing with the CPU, the RAM, PCI cards, etc. usually come out so I have more room to work.

Try pulling the RAM and cards out, clean out the insides (canned air), and re-seat them in their slots again.

 

You will need to find out the revision number and BIOS number for your motherboard and the AMD part number for your CPU.

According to the supported CPU list for the A8V:

AMD part number
ADA4200DAA5BV
ADA4200BVBOX These are for board revision E-4, BIOS # 0205.

ADA4200DAA5CD
ADA4200CDBOX These are for board revision E-6, BIOS # 0208.


Those are the only Athlon 64 X2-4200 listed for the A8V. I'm guessing the AMD # ending in BOX is for a boxed retail CPU and the other # is for the OEM version.

Sam

 

Hi MCSMC

Thank you for replying. I think you may have solved the problem for me! Reseated all the RAM, GFX Card etc and also updated the BIOS.

Been running for 10hrs now with no crash - so hopefully this has solved it. Did give me a fright when the PC wouldn't boot, until I realised that flashing the BIOS had reset the default drive to my iTunes hard drive.... No wonder it wouldn't boot!

Thank you once again.

BoPeep:-D