I bought an Athlon x2 5200+ to replace my 3800, but didn't think I'd need to upgrade my PSU or anything (I have an Xclio 500W SLI PSU).

So I get the CPU and put it in after resetting CMOS, and fire it up. It gets to POST and says I have a new CPU and to check BIOS, so I check BIOS and notice it's saying I can only use 2GB of my 3GB RAM, but think nothing of it at and save and exit BIOS.
PC restarts and boots up again, after POST it just hangs at a black screen with a flashing white cursor where normally. Put my 3800 in and PC booted up fine.

I'm guessing I do need a new PSU then?

Do you have two gfx cards then?
If not, then I think a 500W psu should be adequate.

Can it only use 2GB of your 3GB ram? Maybe one of the sticks are faulty then perhaps.
Or they are of different brands and memory timings?

Well I'm not using 2 gfx cards atm, not enough room on my motherboard becasue of putting a sound card in when my onboard sound fucked up. Until I buy one of them PCI-E x1 wireless cards to fit in between the PCI-E slots, then I'm stuck with 1 gfx card.

And I can use 3GB fine. I have my 3800 in now atm and it can regonise all 3GB even in the BIOS.

I've seen computers with Athlon 5200's and overall higher specs than mine with a 450W PSU, so don't understand why mine aint having it.

And also, my gfx card (have a 7600GS) doesn't have a power connector on it, so it gets all its power straight from the mobo...

sounds more likely that your 500 is not giving you the full 500 anymore

Is the 3800 a single core? If so you may need to update your bios to a later version to support dual cores.

I very much doubt that an SLI ready PSU will have any trouble at all with a Dual core and 7600GS.

Which board and bios version do you have?

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No, the 3800 is dual core as well.
I have an Asus M2N-E SLI mobo with the latest BIOS. The BIOS can detect the correct processor when the 5200 is in, just the PC won't boot after POST.

Have you tried going into the BIOS and loading optimal defaults, or whatever it's called on your mobo.

Also to check for power issues unplug everything that's not needed, i.e just boot up with the boot drive, and graphics card attached.

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What BIOS version do you have? Looking at the support list some versions of the 5200+ need version 1201 or later http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/c...el=M2N-E%20SLI

Little peoblem that this version of the BIOS is not released yet...

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Hit it with a hammer.

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Hahah, that's a classic, please use this file that doesn't exist

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The 5200 I have is the 2MB cache version, but I aint sure which wattage one it is.

But thanks for linking that, I'll have a look around on that site.


Found the processor I have and it just linked to the BIOS version I have installed atm.

i know this might sound crazy but have u considered the cpu might be duff....

I thought that, and I've spoke to the guy on Ebay (I couldn't resist getting it. Won the auction at £58 :x) I bought it off and he said it was working fine before he upgraded, but he said he'd send me the receipt just incase it was the CPU itself.


But I thought to myself if the CPU was duff, would I be able to change the settings in BIOS still?

If the CPU is bad then it wouldn't POST at all :<

The CPU is duff

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Not so - I have seen a duff CPU in the past that would only fail when running one particular app (AutoCAD I think it was) - but no other issues had shown... Only when the CPU was replaced did AutoCAD work...

CPU's can fail in very odd ways.

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Had that RAM issue with my Asus card. Fixed it with memory remapping.
Can be found here BIOS/Advanced/Chipset/Northbridge Chipset Configuration

Hope it helps :P

some motherboards are really fussy about the memory. i used to have a few Nvidia mobo that only liked certain branded sticks.

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SWG Memories movie http://media.putfile.com/SWG-Memories-38
Song of the Day!
Ratty - Sunrise: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uhB2qOSId4A

Nvidia have historically made shit hot chipsets as far as performance goes, but jesus christ they can be temperamental bastards.

Buying a DFI Nforce motherboard is one of the cruelest forms of self punishment known to mankind.

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http://lern2play.mine.nu/ !