Old system weirdness

[porina]

Last night I dug out my Core 2 era bits to see if I could get it working again. I bought the mobo used off ebay and the socket does have damaged pins, but the only missing one is power related so not important. I had previously used this system to get the 50% overclock achievement in 3DMark on Steam.

 

Mobo: Foxconn P35A

CPU: Core 2 duo E6300

Ram: 2x512MB DDR2-666, 2x1GB DDR2-800

PSU: random old piece of crap

GPU: "fake" NVS 300 according to GPU-Z (GT216 not GT218 expected)

 

After much trial and error, the system sometimes boots with the 2x512MB sticks in slots 2 and 4. It never booted in 1 and 3, and the 1GB sticks don't seem to want to work anywhere. I previously used all sticks in this mobo at the same time. When it boots, everything seems to work normally. When it doesn't boot, on the next successful boot, it complains about CMOS settings being invalid. I have tried replacing the battery, the old one was around 2.5v so low but not excessively so. New one is over 3v and didn't make a difference.

 

The PSU is crap, I do intend to move a Corsair HX1000i on it next to rule that in or out. Any other ideas?

[komar]

Tricky one this be will. 

My suggestions would be first get a stable (no need to be good, just stable) PSU. Then get some pencil eraser (rubber) and make sure all the ram pins are nice and  shinny. Seriously, you won't believe how many times this has revived not showing ram sticks for me.  Third, if this MB has sat a long time, give it as I like to call it, the Tech Yes City clean therapy. Even without brake cleaner, I've washed mbs with water and brush, just make sure you give it plenty of time to dry off (placing a heater or under direct sun light helps a lot) before powering it.

IDK what else other than visually inspection that all caps are fine.

Sometimes. like my first FM2 board, they get unstable and it's beyond fixing without soldering...

[Guest]

I would inspect the motherboard for any loose or damaged capacitors. Also, get a stable psu if you can. 

[porina]

Tried new PSU, cleaning ram stick. Didn't help. Tried the 1GB sticks one at a time, bingo. One of them seems to have gone bad. If it is anywhere in the mobo then no boot. The other stick works fine.

[speed258]

3 hours ago, komar said:

Tricky one this be will. 

My suggestions would be first get a stable (no need to be good, just stable) PSU. Then get some pencil eraser (rubber) and make sure all the ram pins are nice and  shinny. Seriously, you won't believe how many times this has revived not showing ram sticks for me.  Third, if this MB has sat a long time, give it as I like to call it, the Tech Yes City clean therapy. Even without brake cleaner, I've washed mbs with water and brush, just make sure you give it plenty of time to dry off (placing a heater or under direct sun light helps a lot) before powering it.

IDK what else other than visually inspection that all caps are fine.

Sometimes. like my first FM2 board, they get unstable and it's beyond fixing without soldering...

Same with my current Asus M4A77T mobo if I just remove SINGLE ram stick (i have 4) it goes crazy, so I have to remove all of them and then reinsert one by one, meaning I add one, boot pc till it post and turn off then add another boot pc till post and then again and then good to go.