I'm having problems with my new setup freezing: Athlon XP 1900+ 1.6GHz Creative 3DBlaster GeForce4 Ti4400 128MB Creative SoundBlaster Live 5.1 Digital MB: Gigabyte GA-7VRXP Crucial 256MB PC2100DDR Unbuffered (1 stick) Western Digital Caviar WD800JB 80GB HD Cooler Master DP5-7H53F Heat Sink 340W Chieftec PSU By freezing/locking up I mean that in Win2k the mouse pointer won't move and the keyboard does not respond, requiring the power to be switched off. Same happens in win98, except that sometimes the computer restarts itself instead of just freezing. This happens randomly and anytime some CPU intensive program is running. The computer only freezes when the FSB switch on the motherboard is set to 133MHz. After a bit research on boards.ie & computing.net (loads of people seem to be having the same problem with similar setups to mine, although no two solution seem to be the same), I decided to mess around with the various AGP, DDR & VCore voltages in BIOS. With VCore at 5% or "Normal" and a USB zip drive connected, I couldn't even get win2k to boot fully without freezing. I found that setting the VCore voltage to +7.5% (+1.8040V according to the "SIV for GBT" hardware monitor that came with the motherborad) solved my problem. AGP & DDR voltages made no difference on their own. I used BURNK7.exe from the cpuburn4.zip (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/attachment.php?s=dbde1214714f296fffc06f38477ac2b0&postid=452742) package I found in this boards.ie thread: (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=720f72302d78c7ea093afdc6b892eaa7&threadid=50373&perpage=20&highlight=lock&pagenumber=1) to test the stability. With burnk7.exe running and two 352x240 MPEGs playing the computer slowed to a snails pace but didn't freeze. I then set the VCore voltage to +10% (+1.900V to +1.920V). With burnk7.exe running 4 times at once I could open several MPEGs wit no slow down. Burnk7.exe caused instant freezes with the VCore volatge set at 5% or "Normal" (without the USB Zip drive connected). However now the idle CPU temperature is now around 57C, and with a few instances of burnk7.exe running the temperature get up to about 72C after about ten minutes. The VCore voltage also drops to about 1.8040V. System temperature is 40C idle, around 50C after ten minutes od burnk7.exe. I'm still concerned about the high CPU temperatures and the fact that the VCore voltage needed to be increased to gain stability, and I'm not even overclocking yet. Incidently, I used Unick (not to be confused with "Eunuch") Silicone Heat Transfer Compound when installing the heat sink. Could I have used too much? Anyone got ideas how to improve the situation or what may be causing the problem?

more volts to the chip=more heat more heat=more case fans I would suspect a power supply that does not make enough power on the +3.3 and +5.0v lines.I dont know the specs of the Chieftec but those lines should produce at least 190w total(more if you aim to OC) Check the AMD website for recommended PSU and compare .