SATA Problem After OC

[AKM880]

My motherboard (Biostar P4M900-M4) cannot recognize my DVD Burner (SATA) if I OC my P4 2AGhz to 2.24 or more. Any ideas? Unfortunately I do not have any voltage control on this board. It still happens if I set my RAM to either 200Mhz/266Mhz/333Mhz settings.

 

[Mugz]

Is your main HDD on the older PATA standard?

Those VIA chipsets have a horrible tendency to 'lose' the SATA controller over a certain FSB setting. Your best bet would be to install a separate SATA controller card and use that, or (for preference) go for a board with more overclock-friendly core logic.

The alternative is to see if the board will go for the BSel mod. If it will, then you can strap that chip from a 200MHz FSB to, say, 266MHz.

Apparently what causes this is all of the system buses in a VIA chipset are permanently locked in ratio, so if you take the FSB too high then it raises the PCI bus, taking the SATA controller out of specification and 'losing' it.

 

[AKM880]

Thank you mugz for the explaination, I was quite confused when I couldn't get my DVD Drive to be recognized. Yes my HDD is on the old PATA channel, its temporary until I get a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black.

One question, my CPU is clocked at 2.45Ghz and stable with stock voltage, running it ike this makes the SATA controller go whack. Anyways does it fry something? Like if I decided to keep it at this will it fry the SATA controller?

I've read reviews (Newegg, LOL) that CPU's ahve reached 3.9Ghz on this board yet everything works fine.

 

[AKM880]

Or I can run it on the PATA channel 😛

 

[Mugz]

It won't fry it. All that happens is the SATA chip fails on initialisation and then switches itself off.

Your best bet is to install a PCIe SATA controller. I've got a Silicon Image 3114 controller (4-port) for this very issue - I've used it in three OC builds already - one VIA-based, one Intel 945 and my old Intel P35 board. It currently resides in my LAN box.

 

[AKM880]

Thank you. I can get it 2.46 stable but it won't recognize my stupid drive LOL. But anyways I have that cleared up. Now I have to figure out how to fiz the cable mangement with a 4 port SATA card.

Its for PCIe 1x right?

 

[AKM880]

Mugz

I got a different CPU in there now, but since the PCI bus gets whacked out when I overclock the VIA motherboard won't it make the SATA card whacked out too?