I just installed a TT Volcano 7+ with some antec reference silver thermal compound (yeah yeah, I know it's not AS3 but it's better than that white goop you get with everything) and I let it sit overnight before even powering up the system. I also put new (bigger) ramsinks on the back of my GF4 Ti 4200 which blocks the first ram slot so I had to move my ram to the second slot. I also put some TT ramsinks on my ram, but I had been running with those on for a day or two before installing the new HSF & ramsinks for my GF4. Now I seem to have trouble running the system at anywhere near the FSB I used to be able to. I'm stuck at a measly 140MHz vs. my previous 151MHz. I can't even get into Windows above this speed (I get the dreaded BSOD mentioning KMODE error and some memory address, it says to turn off bios caching and shadowing which I did but that didn't exactly do the trick). Any ideas what the problem could be? Did I put too much silver compound on the CPU? Is it the ram slot I'm using? Those are the only two things I can think of really... Any advice would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance

Max, It is very possible that you applied to much compound. Too much can be as bad as not enough. The best way to apply the compound is to apply a pea sized ball on the base of the HS. This is than spread out very thinly and evenly using a credit card or other thin yet flexible utiensil. Lay the HS on your processor for a second and than remove it checking for a nice even application of compound to the face of the CPU. If the pattern looks good lay the HS back on and secure it in position. As far as HS on your memory. Honestly, the only memory that from what I have read that really benefits or needs HS's is Rambus. This stuff will burn you it gets that hot. Do I think they are hurting your OC'ing no but the benfit is probably nill. I would say that at this point if your CPU temps look good than the problem is probably coming from the position of the memory in the slots. I have seen problems go away simply by moving memory to a different slot. The only other thing you can try is to reset your CMOS, go in and setup your bios to the way you prefer and try it again. You may find this will get rid of the issue's your experiencing.Bobby

Bobby, that's pretty much what I figured... I've been running Prime95 torture test for the last couple hours and temps haven't gone above 41 degrees celsius (even @ 1.75V) so I'm gonna say it's not the temps ;) I'm thinking I'll have to take off the ramsink on my GF4 that's blocking my mem slot 1 and put the memory back there. If that doesn't take care of the problem I'm pretty much stuck for ideas...thanks,Max Cowgill

I may be blowing smoke here, but I thought that if you only had 1 stick of memory, that it had to go in slot #1. I could be wrong though. Would not be the first time.Ron

nah, you can put it wherever you want. Slot 1 almost always works the best in my experience though. I just had to move my ram to slot 2 (and then slot 3) because the giant ramsinks I put on the back of my video card were blocking the #1 slot.-Max Cowgill

Max, You can try what I did when I was running my XP2400+ on a KT333 Dragon Ultra PE. If you have access to a bandsaw or a hacksaw w a fine toothed blade just cut down the HS till they clear the memory in the slot your looking to use. I did that and after cutting them down took a dremel w an aluminum oxide stone and polished up the edges. Worked great after that.

This post should be moved to the hardware forum.Has nothing to do with FS

Hello Bobby,I see you have 1 Gig memory, how much Virtual Memory did you define?Thanks in advanceEmile EBBRBrussels

:-roll I'm sure you can find something better to do than roam the internet looking for posts on forums and telling people their posts don't belong in said forums. No one's being hurt by my post. It's not like I started a flame war or took up massive amounts of valuable bandwidth. Besides that, who are you to determine whether my post is FS-related or not anyway? Are you a forum moderator/site administrator? (the answer to that is no) My post is FS-related because FS is what I use my computer for. The only reason I even built this computer is so I could use FS. I have zero (count em zero) other games installed on my computer. If you really have a problem with this thread being in the "wrong" forum, contact a forum moderator or send me a private message. Besides, I don't see anyone else complaining...I'm done with this thread now. I got all the help I could (I assume) and am now waiting on the arrival of a new motherboard. Hopefully that will solve my problems so I can get back to flight sim.-Max Cowgill

Emile, Even though I am running a Gig of memory I still chose to run a small swap file. I set it's size as a minimum of 512Megs and a maximum of 512. I haven't really noticed yet if it is being used but I figured it wouldn't hurt.Bobby