The Solutor wrote on 2026-09-11, 20:53:

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-11, 18:34:

It could very well be the CPU.

But my personal statistic (hundreds of machines per year in the golden years) tell's me that the RAM has more chances to be the culprit.

To put in numbers I faced hundreds of dead or unstable RAM sticks, while in three decades I collected the huge number of *five* malfunctioning CPUs obviously not counting the burnt Athlon XPs because a poorly installed heatsink, in that case the CPU was gone in seconds, often before reaching the BIOS summary.

Thanks for all the suggestions but I got hold of a pair OCZ Platinum (!) 1GB sticks and I've now run memtest for 5 passes without issues.
Aswell as played some games, for some reason SoF II and Jedi Knight II crashed the pc previously but other games worked fine. Should've just owned a second pair to test with but I got frustrated after having so many issues with this build. I'm gonna go ahead and toss the old Kingstons in the bin.

momaka wrote on 2026-09-15, 22:13:

I'm a fellow 939Dual-SATA2 owner here. Actually, I got two of them (both obtained used / 2nd hand). My relationship with these boards is a love-hate one... but more on that for another post.

I have two of them as well and additionally two of 939Dual-VSTA. All four perfectly stable since day one *knock on wood*. Best boards for tinkering ever! I even assembled a fully working dual GPU 939Dual-VSTA with Athlon64 X2 6400+ with 4 GB RAM (I have a daughter board for it), together with 3850 AGP and single slot Gainward GTX 750. I can switch GPUs in Windows 7 X64 on the fly (with Windows Key + P shortcut)! I use 3850 AGP for almost everything and GTX 750 mostly only for benchmarking Crysis and PhysX 😀

#4: point a large fan towards the board's Northbridge and Southbridge. These run very hot. In very hot climates, the chipsets could get permanently damaged. In my case, my 1st board has now a failing Southbridge, which was actually the main cause for the board BSOD/blue-screening on me after I used it extensively one hot summer. First, the SATA II port died. Then followed the onboard sound. Then then the onboard LAN went out only to come back "alive" about a month later... though it still crashes the system with a BSOD with heavy traffic going through it. The USB ports also did something similar, but rarely crash the system. What's interesting about my case is that CPU and memory-intensive tasks NEVER crash the system, or anything relating to the Northbridge (i.e. the PCI-E bus). In contrast, PCI bus experiences regular corruption (most notable on PCI video cards, where I get random artifacts... that is, if I can even get the PC to work.) And no, it's not a PSU issue, because I've tried several recapped and known-good PSUs in that system. It's just a dying Southbridge and nothing I can do about it. But if I don't use the LAN or SATA/SATA II ports or PCI slots, the system is rock-stable. So it's become my GPU test system, since the PCI-E and AGP slot are OK. In any case, I now only run this motherboard with a large fan pointed towards the chipsets... and with that, I've gotten a good 10 years of use out of it as a GPU test system.

Hmm... AGP bus is tied to the southbridge on these boards, not to the northbridge. Sata2 port is tied to the PCIe bus. This Sata2 solution is based on JMicron JMB360 which is connected internally to PCIe x1 port (that's why 939Dual-SATA2 has just one physical PCIe x1 port - the other one is used by JMicron JMB360).

Are you overclocking? Both [CPU - NB Link Speed] and [NB - SB Link Speed] set to 800 MHz? [PCIE Frequency (MHz)] under [Overclock Mode] set to 100 MHz and [Overclock Mode] set to [CPU,PCIE Async.]?

As a last idea, are you sure that those small capacitors between and around PCI slots are OK?

What OS are you using and how many PCI cards concurrently?

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-16, 19:13:

Thanks for all the suggestions

You're welcome

I'm gonna go ahead and toss the old Kingstons in the bin.

Don't do that, they are very likely perfectly working, just not compatible with that specific board or with your current firmware.

If you spend some time in the HW upgrade thread I linked you will see that often there were custom FWs meant (among other things) to fix compatibility problems with definite kind of RAM sticks.

Scratch everything I said, shit's back. The memtest worked flawlessly but the PC still freezes/crashes.
The crashes happens during workload, mainly when something is loading -> installing a game, loading bar ingame or launching a game. Not during active gaming or using Windows. I've been gaming for hours without issues, but when the loading comes it freezes.

I'll start again; temps are fine (Can't measure the temps of the 9800pro but the Zalman cooler is spinning), the sticks seems fine after 3 hours of memtest. CPU seems fine.

I'm all out of ideas and I'm just so tired. Is the PSU failing? The CPU? Drivers? The soundcard?
The 9800pro and audigy 2zs uses the modded drivers (Omega drivers and Daniel K's).
The motherboard Northbridge and southbridge parts both have heat sinks, I have no idea if it's enough. Every cap looks fine, I've triplechecked. If the jumpers is an normal issue on these boards I'll just replace this someday.

I'm gonna start looking for a replacement PSU (I changed fan on this one (took me total of two weeks to learn how to and get all the parts 🤣).
I'm also gonna try finding a different CPU.
What else?

Mister No wrote on 2026-09-16, 19:17:

Hmm... AGP bus is tied to the southbridge on these boards, not to the northbridge. Sata2 port is tied to the PCIe bus. This Sata […]
Show full quote

Hmm... AGP bus is tied to the southbridge on these boards, not to the northbridge. Sata2 port is tied to the PCIe bus. This Sata2 solution is based on JMicron JMB360 which is connected internally to PCIe x1 port (that's why 939Dual-SATA2 has just one physical PCIe x1 port - the other one is used by JMicron JMB360).

Are you overclocking? Both [CPU - NB Link Speed] and [NB - SB Link Speed] set to 800 MHz? [PCIE Frequency (MHz)] under [Overclock Mode] set to 100 MHz and [Overclock Mode] set to [CPU,PCIE Async.]?

As a last idea, are you sure that those small capacitors between and around PCI slots are OK?

What OS are you using and how many PCI cards concurrently?

The caps look ok. I'm not overclocking, using base BIOS settings (latest version). I only now tried raising DRAM voltage to "high" and manually pushing the sticks to 400mhz but this doesn't affect the freezes, happened before aswell.
I'm only using the AGP slot and 1 PCI for the soundcard.

Mister No wrote on 2026-09-14, 22:19:

To rule out the CPU as a culprit, downclock it to 1.8 GHz (9x200). If that doesn't help, try Prime95 under Windows and check if […]
Show full quote

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-11, 18:34:

Yeah my thought was also the CPU.
I have not tried underclocking or increasing CPU voltage, only DRAM voltage without success. How would one go forward doing it?
The PSU is Corsair HX650W from 2009, I changed the fan so it shouldnt be heat issues.

To rule out the CPU as a culprit, downclock it to 1.8 GHz (9x200). If that doesn't help, try Prime95 under Windows and check if the CPU temps skyrocket in a couple of minutes (that would be a sign of a dried paste under the heatspreader - socket 939 CPUs are not soldered!).

Heatsinks on the northbridge and southbridge are passive and paste beneath them is today certainly dry. Replace the paste, especially northbridge can run very hot on this motherboard.

Occasional blue screen in games could indicate GPU or driver problem as well, but first things first - you need to get rid of the errors in memtest.
The PSU is also very old and could be the reason of blue screens in games.

Important options in BIOS:

Spread Spectrum - [Disabled]
Cool'n'Quiet - [Disabled]

Memory Clock - [400MHz]
Flexibility Option - [Disabled]
MA Timing - [2T]
Burst Length - [4 Beats]
other memory options - [Auto]

I tried the options but it froze immediately when entering Windows this time. However, the CD in the rom started spinning right before, no idea if the loading there triggers something.
90% of the times I get a frozen screen, no sound or anything and then crash. Rest of the times I've gotten bluescreen (as told, not BSOD but just bluescreen, some buzzing in the headphones -> crash).
I'll try downclock it tomorrow.

I have NOT changed paste on the bridges, guess I'll try that aswell. The CPU is newly installed with fresh paste.

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-16, 21:01:

but when the loading comes it freezes.

...

What else?

Could be the HDD controller/divers/cables, what OS are you using? Where your HDD is/are connected?

Did you try to use SATA1 ports v.s. SATA2 one or viceversa?

Also try to move your soundcard, to the next slot, there may be unforeseen interactions depending on how the PCI bus is routed, but usually two adjacent slots are connected to different lines.

The Solutor wrote on 2026-09-16, 21:23:

Could be the HDD controller/divers/cables, what OS are you using? Where your HDD is/are connected? […]
Show full quote

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-16, 21:01:

but when the loading comes it freezes.

...

What else?

Could be the HDD controller/divers/cables, what OS are you using? Where your HDD is/are connected?

Did you try to use SATA1 ports v.s. SATA2 one or viceversa?

Also try to move your soundcard, to the next slot, there may be unforeseen interactions depending on how the PCI bus is routed, but usually two adjacent slots are connected to different lines.

I also turned off spread spectrum.
I just realized I got a 64 3200+ laying around, I'll try that tomorrow + replace paste on the north and southbridges.
I'm only using the SATA1 ports (DVDrom + SSD) since I heard bad things about the SATA2.

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-16, 21:29:

I'm only using the SATA1 ports (DVDrom + SSD) since I heard bad things about the SATA2.

The Jmicron chipset isn't the fastest controller in the world, but it usually works w/o much hassle, the ULI controller is good but is unsupported since Nvidia killed ULI, newer os may have troubles with it (albeit I don't remember special problems, but I used it mainly in raid mode)

momaka wrote on 2026-09-15, 22:13:

I'm a fellow 939Dual-SATA2 owner here. Actually, I got two of them (both obtained used / 2nd hand). My relationship with these b […]
Show full quote

I'm a fellow 939Dual-SATA2 owner here. Actually, I got two of them (both obtained used / 2nd hand). My relationship with these boards is a love-hate one... but more on that for another post.

There are multiple things that can cause this board to be unstable. @Mister_No hit the nail on the head with many of the suggestions he made. But I will add/elaborate a little further.

1st order of business: go into BIOS and DISABLE anything relating to SPREAD SPECTRUM.

2nd: try another CPU if you have a spare. A lower-power one would be highly advisable - something like the 3200+ with the Venice core.

#3: right under the CPU, there are many rows of jumper blocks. These are for the AsRock "CPU Upgrade Card". On my 2nd board, these were in very poor condition and causing all sorts of issues. As such, it is a good idea to remove and reinstall these jumper block a few times to clean up their contacts. If you have the nerves to go through each pair of jumper headers on the back of the motherboard to verify that they are connected by the jumper (as they should be), this would be even better.... though it is time consuming and tedious.

#4: point a large fan towards the board's Northbridge and Southbridge. These run very hot. In very hot climates, the chipsets could get permanently damaged. In my case, my 1st board has now a failing Southbridge, which was actually the main cause for the board BSOD/blue-screening on me after I used it extensively one hot summer. First, the SATA II port died. Then followed the onboard sound. Then then the onboard LAN went out only to come back "alive" about a month later... though it still crashes the system with a BSOD with heavy traffic going through it. The USB ports also did something similar, but rarely crash the system. What's interesting about my case is that CPU and memory-intensive tasks NEVER crash the system, or anything relating to the Northbridge (i.e. the PCI-E bus). In contrast, PCI bus experiences regular corruption (most notable on PCI video cards, where I get random artifacts... that is, if I can even get the PC to work.) And no, it's not a PSU issue, because I've tried several recapped and known-good PSUs in that system. It's just a dying Southbridge and nothing I can do about it. But if I don't use the LAN or SATA/SATA II ports or PCI slots, the system is rock-stable. So it's become my GPU test system, since the PCI-E and AGP slot are OK. In any case, I now only run this motherboard with a large fan pointed towards the chipsets... and with that, I've gotten a good 10 years of use out of it as a GPU test system.

#5: these boards use OST RLP or RLS caps for many of the small 6.3V 1000 uF caps scattered around the board. My 1st board was an earlier revision (based on the BIOS sticker) and used RLS caps. From these, not a single one went bad and I still have the caps in my spare parts bins for reusing/testing purposes. However, my 2nd 939Dual-SATA2 came with OST RLP, some of which were bulging when I got the board (and presumably why I got it for cheap, since it wasn't stable with those bad caps.) Therefore, just because the caps look "OK" on your board doesn't mean that they are. The CPU VRM caps could also be in the same boat, depending on which manufacturer AsRock used on your board. For example, my 1st board uses United Chemicon KZE for the CPU VRM high side (12V rail) and OST RLX for the VRM low side (CPU V_core). The latter are known to be problematic on motherboards (though in the case of the 939Dual-SATA2, probably a little less often, since AsRock seem to have done a pretty decent job with designing the CPU VRM to be pretty low-stress for the caps.) On my 2nd board, the CPU VRM high side caps are the same, but the CPU VRM low side caps are all Rubycon MBZ, if I remember correctly - a very reliable cap brand and series. That said, I do remember seeing a few of these boards with United Chemicon KZG, and those are also known to be problematic, even when they are not bulging.
So better check what's on your board and make not of it here, just in case.

I checked and the higher ones beside the CPU fan is OST RLX and the lower beside those is KZE caps. The rest around the PCI ports etc is OST RLP.
Not a single one is bulging.

Board revision is REV-G/A 1.05.

I'm currently testing the system after having changed paste on both chipsets+changed CPU. I was thinking, should I try connecting the dvddrive to the SATAII port anyway? Just by touching the heatsink on the southbridge (after changing paste) it already feels pretty hot. The north one's fine. Just to give the southbridge some headroom.

Edit: some pics to go along:
https://imgur.com/a/lVBo2hg

I think they needed a good clean.

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-17, 15:12:

I'm currently testing the system after having changed paste on both chipsets+changed CPU. I was thinking, should I try connecting the dvddrive to the SATAII port anyway? Just by touching the heatsink on the southbridge (after changing paste) it already feels pretty hot. The north one's fine. Just to give the southbridge some headroom.

Put a fan over the SB 😀
It might be under max tolerance but cooler is always better.

Nexxen wrote on 2026-09-17, 15:17:

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-17, 15:12:

I'm currently testing the system after having changed paste on both chipsets+changed CPU. I was thinking, should I try connecting the dvddrive to the SATAII port anyway? Just by touching the heatsink on the southbridge (after changing paste) it already feels pretty hot. The north one's fine. Just to give the southbridge some headroom.

Put a fan over the SB 😀
It might be under max tolerance but cooler is always better.

The GPU using the AGP slot is right over it, not much room left.
I installed drivers for the SATAII port and connected the dvddrive to it, makes more sense to use it for this rather than the harddrive if it's buggy.
Hopefully it eases the SB a bit.

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-17, 15:32:

The GPU using the AGP slot is right over it, not much room left. I installed drivers for the SATAII port and connected the dvddr […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2026-09-17, 15:17:

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-17, 15:12:

I'm currently testing the system after having changed paste on both chipsets+changed CPU. I was thinking, should I try connecting the dvddrive to the SATAII port anyway? Just by touching the heatsink on the southbridge (after changing paste) it already feels pretty hot. The north one's fine. Just to give the southbridge some headroom.

Put a fan over the SB 😀
It might be under max tolerance but cooler is always better.

The GPU using the AGP slot is right over it, not much room left.
I installed drivers for the SATAII port and connected the dvddrive to it, makes more sense to use it for this rather than the harddrive if it's buggy.
Hopefully it eases the SB a bit.

IDK but did they design those boards with tons of wishful thinking about the SB going hot?
I put a h/s on one that didn't have and a fan later on. Still good today.
Ok, they probably thought that one would buy new in a couple years??
Hope all goes well and have fun!!

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-16, 21:01:

Scratch everything I said, shit's back. The memtest worked flawlessly but the PC still freezes/crashes. The crashes happens duri […]
Show full quote

Scratch everything I said, shit's back. The memtest worked flawlessly but the PC still freezes/crashes.
The crashes happens during workload, mainly when something is loading -> installing a game, loading bar ingame or launching a game. Not during active gaming or using Windows. I've been gaming for hours without issues, but when the loading comes it freezes.

I'll start again; temps are fine (Can't measure the temps of the 9800pro but the Zalman cooler is spinning), the sticks seems fine after 3 hours of memtest. CPU seems fine.

I'm all out of ideas and I'm just so tired. Is the PSU failing? The CPU? Drivers? The soundcard?
The 9800pro and audigy 2zs uses the modded drivers (Omega drivers and Daniel K's).
The motherboard Northbridge and southbridge parts both have heat sinks, I have no idea if it's enough. Every cap looks fine, I've triplechecked. If the jumpers is an normal issue on these boards I'll just replace this someday.

I'm gonna start looking for a replacement PSU (I changed fan on this one (took me total of two weeks to learn how to and get all the parts 🤣).
I'm also gonna try finding a different CPU.
What else?

You need to isolate the source of the problem by replacing/removing the GPU, sound card and PSU (not necessarily in that order). It seems that you have/had multiple issues (tough luck!) - after you finally sorted out memory problems, random crashes still appear.

In your place, I would first disable onboard stuff you don't use. Under "Chipset Settings" in BIOS disable onboard LAN and audio and definitely disable "AGP Fast Write" (this setting is known to cause issues with Radeon 9800 on this board). After you have done this and you still have issues, replace the GPU. Maybe try PCIe GPU and not AGP? Then if you still have issues, replace the sound card. And lastly if you still have issues, replace the PSU.

You have already replaced memory sticks and found good working ones and you have checked capacitors and found them good. You have at this point additionally replaced CPU, GPU, sound card and PSU.

In the end, if nothing of the above helps and you have already set all the recommended options in BIOS previously discussed in this thread - then I am out of ideas.

wadstroem wrote on 2026-09-17, 15:32:

makes more sense to use it for this rather than the harddrive if it's buggy.

Again it's not buggy.

Not being the brightest controller on the planet !=buggy.

I used it on my board, and other we sold at the time, some of them run for a decade, in server setups, w/o a single problem.

Here the situation is pretty simple, RAM *maybe* can be ruled out, the CPU may be faulty, but it's statistically unlikely, everything else (according the OP) seem OK, last but not least the machine hangs loading the games, which means during traffic on the controller (The ULI not Jmicron, acoording to what the OP said).

So the most obvious test to do, is to disconnect the DVD, and to connect the HDD to the Jmicron controller and see what happen.

Given is a matter of 10 seconds to swap/disconnect some cable connectors, I have no idea why the OP has still to do that.

There isn't any guarantee that it solves the problem, but for sure, is the obvious next step.

Perhaps a pcie sata controller cost little more than 10 euro/dollars, could be a good idea to get one of them, no matter the status of the internal ones.

I'm going to update this journal of mine. "No change" means still freezes appearing, mainly when installing games. This is where I've experienced the freezes, but also during loading times in games. Mind, it also freezes when leaving the PC when the installation is waiting for a new CD during installation.

I've tried following:
Checked all caps on the mbb = every single one SEEMS fine atleast.
Changed cooling paste on north/south = no change
Changed RAM sticks which cleared 4 hours in memtest = no change
Replaced CPU = no change
Tested without soundcard = no change
Different CPU in PCIE = no change
DIFFERENT PSU = no change

Temps is FINE.
CPU's I've tried is Athlon 64 3200+, 64 x2 4200+ and x2 4400+.

The single thing I haven't tried yet before I'm throwing the motherboard (worth absolutely too much) out of the window is REPLACING THE OPTICAL DRIVE. Since stuff is happening when I'm mainly testing during installation of games.
I'm grateful for all the help but I'm thinking about selling everything and perhaps starting over.

I HAVE changed the BIOS settings as people have said in the thread, most of the stuff people mentioning is turned OFF. Most if not all is set at default, only changed the SATA settings some.

I've tried following:

Did you try what I suggested for 3/4 times? (swapping the places where the HDD is connected?)

The Solutor wrote on Yesterday, 18:28:

I've tried following:

Did you try what I suggested for 3/4 times? (swapping the places where the HDD is connected?)

"Different GPU in PCIE = no change" it's meant to say.

I tried connecting the HDD (SSD) to the jmicron controller, which I guess you mean the SATA II connector. Doing that, it struggled trying to boot into windows. I changed BIOS to boot from that port but I got BSOD when I finally got the Windows logo. I now have the HDD in the SATAI slot 1 instead of slot 2. The drive is in optical SATAII since I'm now testing if the SATAI port/slot 2 is the devil.
I've resetted CMOS multiple times during these tests, just to mention.