GA-MA78GM-S2H power off problem

[mhouston100]

Hi guys, first post, and as always looking for some help.

Purchased a GA-MA78GM-S2H as an all in one solution for my HTPC, seems good well featured. Setup as follows:

GA-MA78GM-S2H (v1.1 I believe but ill check when i get home) F5 BIOS
Athlon X2 +4800
1x2GB DDR2 800 (Generic)
IDE HDD and DVD
Corsair TX750

Now when I set the board up, everything went fine, detected everything, loaded on Vista Ultimate 64 had no problems with the install. Just after the part where you enter the user name for the first time, the fans suddenly slowed right down and the screen started to woble for a few seconds then boom, power off. Would not power back on at all until I removed the power and cleared the CMOS. Second time I could log in but after starting the driver installation same thing. So the things i've tried:

*Vista 32 (exactly the same result)
*Tried one stick of Corsair Dominator 1066 RAM (boots fine but same result)
*Unplugged everything but CPU and HDD same result

Now the PSU works fine I can count that out, it just came out of my working gaming system which would put a LOT more load on it then this and the CPU works fine as I tested it in my other system.

The problem is that the board seems to work fine, installs windows etc but just seems to give up after a while, I have cleared the CMOS and tried both Failsafe default and Optimized defaults. After reading around a bit I have a few more things I can try tonight but do you guys have any other ideas?

The things I will be trying:

*Set Voltages manually (I can find no information on the generic ram as to what voltages it should be set at, any ideas?)
*Set memory timing manually (Once again no idea, but if I use the Corsair ram just to test it should be fine)
*Try with a SATA HDD
*Revert BIOS to F3 to test.
*Try with a Ubuntu Live CD (Though I doubt it has anything to do with windows specifically)

Anyone else have any ideas before I think about an RMA?

Thanks!

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-MA78GM-S2H power off problem

I would suggest you get some quality Ram, that you can at least know what voltage it needs. Without the ram voltage set it will likely cause many errors.

Also, please set "Performance Enhance" to Standard in the MIT section of the BIOS if you have it there. I know nothing about AMD boards, but The Intel ones has this, and it is set to Turbo by default and often causes many issues.

What does CPU-z Show in the SPD tab?

Good idea to test a SATA Drive, your IDE drive or cable may be dying. Once you did get installed, did you ever get into windows to be able to load drivers or not?

Here is 1.1 BIOS page >>
GIGABYTE - Support - Motherboard - BIOS - GA-MA78GM-S2H (rev.1.1)

I see a few after F3, did you try F4 at all or F2 or F1? They all Support Your CPU

If you RMA, I would advise against a AMD/NVidia Chipset, especially since you are not using SLI. Get a Intel based board and some good ram

[mhouston100]

Re: GA-MA78GM-S2H power off problem

As to the RAM question, I did try it with both the generic 2GB stick as well as a single Corsair Dominator 1GB stick that I had confirmed is working. But as I said I will try and manually set the voltage and timing for that and see if that has any effect.

I think that the performance enhance is only for the Intel motherboards I dont recall it being in the BIOS when I ran through it, but i'll have a look.

The CPU was reported correctly by Vista, but i didn't have a chance to install CPU-Z, I might give it a look tonight and also make sure the details are correct for that.

The drivers did finish after a few lockups and restarts (as the installer automatically resumes even after a hard reset) but still the same issue.

As to the BIOS, it came preinstalled with the F5 but I read a round a little and a few posts were saying for troubleshooting to use the F3 as it was more stable but was just missing some features like problems with HDMI audio...

Yeah i'm not really a fan of intel, to many bad memories i guess :) Unfortunately because I already had the CPU / RAM / PSU I just got the best board to suit my needs... If I had to buy from scratch I would probably had more flexibility.

Thanks for the reply though, anyone else have any ideas?

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-MA78GM-S2H power off problem

Ya, in CPU-z SPD tab you should find your ram voltage and timings, Memset will also show you this, but I am not sure which Version work On AMD chipset. Not sure which yours is so you can check to see if it is supported >>>
Tweakers.fr

But like I said CPU-z will show you the SPD as well so you can at least see the set voltages. That is IF those generics are even SPD Programmed. They may not be at all.

Good luck, and hope some others stop in and help you more then I can

[mhouston100]

Re: GA-MA78GM-S2H power off problem

Ahh ok so CPU-Z 'may' be able to tell me what they SHOULD be set to as well as what they are set to (depending on wether they are pre-programmed)? I didn't know that, I have seen CPU-Z in action for quite a few years now, well you learn something new every day.

For the short period it runs before crashing I should be able to get that running and have a look.

Thanks again!

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-MA78GM-S2H power off problem

Yes, in SPD tab you will see available Programmed Settings. If there is any, but what I was more concerned with was voltage. I can give you settings, they do not matter it is the voltage you need to get correct

It is here >>>>



CPUID

[mhouston100]

Re: GA-MA78GM-S2H power off problem

Well good new for me and anyone else having this problem! Seems to be stable as now, I basically just raised the voltage for all three settings by one increment, so CPU, M/B and RAM all raised by one and its solid as a rock.

A bit more testing will tell me exactly which one but i'm suspecting the RAM as you said. So THANKS! Thanks for the help, thanks for the time and thanks for the knowledge. And thanks for everyone else who reads this and get there problem solved!

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-MA78GM-S2H power off problem

Yeah incorrect ram voltage can cause many errors. So can you post me your CPU-z image like shown above so I can tell you which voltage you should be using.

Thanks