First post, by dormcat
- Rank
- Oldbie
I've got a system from an e-waste recycler: Asus P4C800 Deluxe + P4 HT Northwood 2.8 GHz + 2048 MB DDR (4 x 512) + ELSA Fire GL X2 256 MB + SB0220 + three HDD (40 GB PATA, 80 GB PATA, and 80 GB SATA).
Other than the ultra-heavy chassis and the ELSA Fire GL X2 with tons of "snowflakes," the floppy drive and three HDD were working, and MemTest86 showed no error on the four 512 MB DDR strips. I was about to give it a quick install of Windows XP when suddenly the system gave me "Overclocking failed! CPU Over Voltage Error!" warning. The CMOS battery was long dead so all BIOS options should be default values. The hardware monitor showed VCore with red font: 1.008V only. I replaced the PSU with two other ones but the problem wasn't going away (i.e. the problem might be on either MB or CPU). Worse yet, the startup became very unstable: only about 50% times can shown POST, while the other 50% would give me a blank screen i.e. fans were spinning but no display. I also noticed that starting up after long-time power off would not POST, but if I turned it off a few seconds and turn it back on then it would POST normally (for the record, the reset switch didn't work under any circumstance).
I searched the web but found no useful info. I even managed to update the BIOS from v1011 to v1019 (some said updating BIOS might fix the problem; even Asus claimed v1014 "fix the system hangs after clear CMOS") with a floppy but nothing helped.
The MB offered manual VCore adjustment but there's another problem:
- BIOS offered VCore from 1.525V to 1.950V
- Intel's website lists VID Voltage Range from 1.250V to 1.400V
- Wikipedia lists VCore from 1.475V to 1.525V
I'm really hesitant to adjust VCore manually this way, as the incorrect voltage could damage the CPU and/or the MB.
My questions:
- What's the possible cause (capacitors, MOSFET, etc.)? Could it be fixed without soldering and replacing components?
- Does the low VCore have anything to do with the 50% successful POST?
- Is it safe to adjust VCore manually to 1.525V with BIOS?
- What if I simply ignore the error message and run the system with low VCore?
Thanks in advance.
