General: Athlon 6000+ Vs GeForce 8800 GTS

Doesn't sound good, and I'm not entirely sure I see that Hiper as an upgrade.

Is it an electronic whistling, or fan related?

From an unfortunate bad batch of Hyper type "R" PSU's a couple of years back when one being tested for a roundup of PSU's by Trusted reviews blew up the expensive test equipment. Since then Hyper have been slated. I have one, my son has one and I have tested the output, Hi-pot and earths in both of them and they are both very good, reasonably accurate, stable on load and did pass all the tests with flying colours.

These are very popular units that not only look good they are as reliable as any other supply at a similar price. My Son had a very expensive Enermax PSU that blew up and destroyed the total sum of parts in his rig. the Hyper he now has has been running near constantly for around two years without any bother and mine works every time I boot the rig it's in.

I guess Spode will not agree with me, but I really wouldn't worry about your Hyper PSU CeeBee.

I have a rig with an ABIT mobo, it has had an 8800GTS in it and all was well. (650 Watt Corsair PSU) I have a horrible feeling the GFX card may be faulty and drawing more current than it should. it was probably a voltage reg that was glowing. do you have any other GFX cards you can try in that mobo?

One of my rigs is running a 6000+ AM2 dual core CeeBee, it now has an nVidia 8600 GT card in it as I put the GTS in my Intel rig.

It does seem like a GPU problem from the way you describe it. I don't recall anyone having power problems with nVidia chipsets, only some memory compatibility problems. Perhaps it's because it's mATX?
The GTS should have an extra power plug on it that comes directly from the PSU, so that should stop the board regs from being strained. The CPU could be a red herring, but it's worth going back to the Sempron and see what happens.

Coyote - you had the 8800GTS in the AM2 machine alongside the 6000+ at any point? The PCI-e 6pin connector apparantly is only rated to deliver 75W, the rest has to come via the motherboard.

Mike/Spode - the Hiper did have issues with early Type-R's, but every indication is that they fixed them long ago. *really* fixed them - they seem to be stable at 700W, without overheating. And the Antec is also supposed to be a good PSU, the problem happened with that PSU too...

Oh, and here's a pic of what burned on the Jetway... Surrounded by capacitors, I assume this is part of the power regulation circuitry.

Just an addendum - because I really couldn't be bothered to take out the Ath64 and put the Sempron back in, I underclocked the Athlon64. At 2.7Ghz (down from stock of 3.0) it stops beeping as soon as both cores hit 100%, but takes about 30 seconds for the long tone to start. Suggesting something's having to hit a critical temp. It's not the CPU - which is sitting happily at 29C for core 1, and 41c for core2 (at idle) and don't get a chance to heat up any further. (this core temp difference is, apparently, not unusual for someone using an Arctic Cooling Freezer pro 64 - yet another thing I'm gonna have to replace...)

At 2.6Ghz, the beeping stops during the 1 minute CPU stress test. So I fire up CS Source and run the video stress test - beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. 199fps average.

So I drop to 2.5Ghz. Beeeeep beep beeeeeeeeeep beep. 144fps average.

At 2.4Ghz, back to beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. 186fps average. Huh?

At 2.0Ghz, I get occasional beeps during the most stressful parts. 166fps.

I would guess that the tone will disappear altogether at somewhere between 1.9Ghz and 1.5Ghz, from the pattern above (ignoring 2.5Ghz where something screwy is going on). But I'm already at the speed of an Athlon 64 3800+. I'd drop the voltage a little too, but the mobo won't let me go below the stock. Up, yes. Down, nuh-huh. Besides, 1.35v is standard for a 3800+, which means it should be slurping up the exact same amount of juice. No way that a 3800+ is an exotic CPU, and must be sitting in many machines alongside an 8800GTS.

Thoughts? I'm leaning toward faulty GPU...

I was thinking on these lines as so many mATX boards are inexpensive, especially as they have built in graphics. It may well be the regulator chain may be weak. CeeBee, do you have to use a n mATX mobo?

If you go for a good quality mobo CeeBee, the regulators will be more than adequate. Abit, ASUS and Asrock are good reliable boards, Get the best you can afford, you may find most of the dearer boards have two PCI e slots for crossfire, don't worry too much about this as you really don't need to use them both. The Abit KN9 is a good solid mobo, not so good for overclocking, but the AMD 6000+ isn't either. Maplin seem to have some, but hunt around the net first
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?C=SO&U=strat340&ModuleNo=97464

The other thing you will find is the proliferation of SATA sockets and only one dual channel IDE socket. This may be enough for your needs, but one hard and one optical drive may not be enough. A new SATA HDD may be useful to load your O/S on and use the IDE for storage. You will find the SATA drives much faster. Seagate seem to be the most voted for these days with Western digital coming second. Avoid Hitachi and Maxstor at the moment as them ain't too good.

Can you test your GTS in another rig to make sure it's OK before you start spending out on mobo's?

That board at Maplin is the "S" version, which is slightly better than the standard KN9 I have. It has better heatsinks and it's bound to have bigger/better power regs. I wouldn't sell your 6000+ processor CeeBee, it is actually quite fast, and it does multitask very well. for everyday use it's perfect. (Well, as perfect as you need)

The mobo is really easy to update the bios should you need to. I hope you get it sorted, it's very annoying when a rig doesn't behave!

Ok, I just installed a KN9S. Default settings, memory timings a little slow (6-6-6-18 @ 800Mhz), CPU at 3Ghz, and it beeps again during startup. And during the CS source video stress test.

Gonna try underclocking it again, but I'm a VERY unhappy bunny right now. This is mobo number 3. Yes, the first one was a Jetway piece of garbage, but the second was a high-end mATX board from Abit, and the 3rd is one Coyote has had the same setup running just fine in.

Just to see if it would help, I've tried using the 8pin PCIe cable (using an 8-6pin PCIe adapter) instead of the 6 pin cable. No change, still beeeeeeeeeeeeping at me.

Time to try the underclock.

*edit* - 2.4Ghz tried, same effect as with the Asus mATX board.

Not a happy bunny.

Yeah, the memory timings I can adjust - that's not a problem. The problem is with this damned card.

Maybe I'll try it in my bro's rig next weekend, and see how it works out (or his 9800GTS in my machine).

I was thinking that - so I'm gonna haul my machine to his place and see if his 9800 makes my machine go all beeepity.

Just tried my brother's Inno3D 9800GTS 512MB in the machine, and at 2.4Ghz, 200.23 fps and no beeping in the HL2/CS: Source video stress test. At 3Ghz, 227.31fps and no beeping.

LOL!