SLI Crashing

[xm8]

System Specs:
Athlon 64 3200+
ASUS A8N Deluxe SLI
1 GB (2x512) OCZ Premier Memory
120 GB SATA Western Digital
Soundblaster Audigy 2
eVGA 6600GT x 2 in SLI
Antec NeoPower 480W Power Supply
CPU and GFX cards all watercooled on 2 seperate radiators and pumps

Okay so this computer has been running fine for about 2 weeks now, until today.
It used to run in SLI mode fine. The CPU is not overclocked. I had installed RivaTuner and overclocked the graphics cards a little and everything was fine. Then I decided to reformat again and start from fresh because there was too much residual junk from installing unnecessary junk that came with the motherboard. So everything works fine and dandy until last night where I decided to reinstall RivaTuner again and I over clocked the core by 10 Mhz and the memory by 50 Mhz. It ran, but an hour later the bottom half of my screen blacked out and looked staticy. So I restarted and it went away. Then I tried to play Counter-Strike: Source. It went fine for about 15 minutes and then just froze. I restarted, Windows detected a new VGA adapter and screen blacked out. So another restart, same thing. So restart into safe mode, uninstall the drivers and rivatuner, restart, reinstall drivers, enable SLI and everythings good. Then I try CS again and the exact same thing happens. So I repeat and this time it doesnt even detect SLI being an option. So reinstall drivers and did the whole driver cleaner. SLI is detected and enabled but now my computer freezes after it boots into windows no matter what I do. So reformat and installed drivers, but it still freezes after booting into windows with SLI. Sorry for the long post, but I can't seem to resolve this problem. Can anybody help?

[Yawgm0th]

Re: SLI Crashing

You could try resetting the CMOS in case something in the BIOS got screwed up, but it sounds more like a hardware problem than a software problem or even BIOS problem since reinstalling Windows doesn't fix it.

The thing about you specs that jumps out at me is the PSU. A 480W PSU is the minimum I'd recommend for a socket 939 system, but you're using an SLI system with a GB of RAM, PCI sound card, and two fairly power-hungry GPUs. I can't say for sure that the PSU is insufficient, becasue it is a good PSU, but I'd say there's a decent chance that a 480W won't cut it for that system.

[Amd_Lover2004]

Re: SLI Crashing

Sounds like it's not getting enough power and cutting out to me, happens with hard drives downstairs sometimes when under load.

[xm8]

Re: SLI Crashing

Hey thanks for the suggestions guys, but it turns out the second card just kind of crapped out
...
So I'm gonna return that and hope they don't tell that I pulled the heat sink off, stuck a waterblock on it, stuck ramsinks on it, overclocked it, etc. =P
And according to the ASUS manual, it said that a 400 Watt powersupply was sufficient for my set up
...
*shrug*

[Yawgm0th]

Re: SLI Crashing

And according to the ASUS manual, it said that a 400 Watt powersupply was sufficient for my set up

Are you sure you read it right? It more likely would have said 400W is the minumum for your setup. It's irrelevant anyway, since that's just plain wrong either way. You had a 480W PSU, which is the minimum I would recommend for a regular socket 939 system. I recommend well over 500W for any SLI system.

[Spongebob]

Re: SLI Crashing

After reading a P.C. magazine artical about PSU's powerfull enough for SLI. It looks like special huge units are coming into the picture. 850 watters with 4 seperate 12v rails, 1 for the CPU, 1 for devices, and 1 each for both video cards. Seems as if 2 power hunger cards are really going to suck up the juice. I'm curious to know if your system is really going to be stable with that unit your using........ please update becuase I'm thinking of doing this soon also.