Abit as8 - 3rd eye speed issues

scratchnasty

Distinguished
May 8, 2005
19
0
18,510
I recently picked up the ABIT as8-3rd eye MOBO and tossed in some Mushkin Dual DDR3200 (2x512), a Pentium 4 3Ghz with HT and 800Mhz FSB, dual WD Caviar 80GB SATA hard drives in a RAID 0 array and a Radeon 9600 vid card with 256MB RAM.

When I first got all of the components installed and all of the case wires plugged into the board I booted, adjusted the BIOS for the RAID, saved the changes and rebooted. As soon as the system started to boot and I tried to use the MOBO utility to build the RAID volume I get this screaching alarm through the system speaker in the front of the case. The POST monitor on the board stopped at "FF" which doesn't make any sense to me at all. However all of the components were working flawlessly. I checked all of my connections, power, etc. and everything was as it should have been. So I unplugged the speaker cable to the MB and proceeded to install Win XP. Installation went perfectly so I decided to plug the speaker back in. I booted, no screaching. I rebooted to test it, screaching again but only on the Win XP spalash screen, after which it stopped. It did this every time so I just left the speaker unplugged, everything was working fine. No heating issues at all, like I said before everything seems to be in perfect order.

Next thing I get into is gaming. I was looking forward to this, it was the whole reason I built the thing. Now when I get into the games they run about half as fast as the old P3 1.3Ghz I just replaced! I don't understand the problem....everything works until I try to game and then all of the games I play run incredibly slow....slower than what I just replaced. For the life of me I have no idea what could be causing this...which is why I'm here, asking the experts. I'd really appreciate anything you guys could do to help...I'm at my wits end right now, ready to replace the board entirely and get an ASUS or something.
 
Looks as though I've solved my own problem. Apparently the thermal paste on the heatsink was not adequate...it was spread to thin. I ran to the store, picked up some thermal grease and placed it on the proc. I dropped the heatsink back in and made sure it was properly secured....problem solved. No more alarms and the games run smooth like women's silk underwear. Jackpot!