AMD A8-3850 Llano 2.9GHz
Gigabyte GA-A75M-S2V
IN WIN BL631.300TBL MicroATX Slim Case 300W Power Supply
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600
Fedora 16 x86_64

Every once in a while my processor locks up, when I'm moving windows around or using Skype or any graphics-intense app. Typically I see grey vertical stripes on the screen. I haven't overclocked it.

Anyone have suggestions?

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations

Possibly one of following :

- not fully supported A8 gpu series in your Fedora,perhaps fixed later, driver etc.
- weak power supply

Is is the same problem if you run e.g Knoppix live-cd ?

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I had the same issue running the same HW on Windows XP. Every once in a while, running some game, it would lock up.

Tell me more about weak power supplies.

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations

I guess you need at least 400w of PSU or better go higher than that.

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AMD Athlon II X2 245 Overclocked 3.4Ghz
FSB: 235 Mhz
HT: 2115 Mhz
NB: 2350 Mhz
Multiplier: Stock x14.5
Vcore: 1.3500v
NB voltage: 1.200v
Cool'n'Quiet - Enabled
Stock Cooler
Temps: Min-28 Max-50(Full Load Prime95)

Interesting. I have an Apevia ATX-CW500WP4 PS in another box I'm not using right now. I'll give that a try.

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations

Auggh, doesn't fit in the slim case. Need a TFX PS. Went and bought the Athena Power AP-TFX40 400W PS from Newegg.

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations

OK. It's now been two weeks since I installed the AP-TFX40 400W PS. There has been no improvement with the bigger power supply: my system still reboots or freezes with vertical stripes about as often as before.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations

It's been three months. I've changed the case to a mini-tower to fit a 600W PSU (OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ600MXSP ATX12V V2.2), changed the motherboard to an ASUS F1A75-M PRO, but nothing has changed. I'll be mousing along and the AMD Fusion processor will lock up with vertical stripes, or just resets.

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations

Perhaps time then to RMA the processor.

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Not likely. This system used to have an A6-3500 (triple core) and I had upgraded to an A8-3850 thinking it was the CPU itself. No change.

Yesterday I swapped the last of the components, the G.SKILL 8GB DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL. It's been up 21 hours now (my MTBF has been 2-3 days). Another clue is that it would only halt or reset while I'm moving the mouse, on either operating system, motherboard, any power supply, etc. That could be just a distraction if this all turns out to be bad memory stick.

I saw a YouTube video of someone's "vertical stripes" with an AMD processor and they don't look like mine. Instead of solid gray stripes that blink in and out, mine are color pixelated thin stripes, and the lockup is immediate and total. I've been building my own computers since 1991 and have never seen anything like this. Very frustrating. Not knowing when one's own computer will suddenly halt really eats at you.

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations

Have you tried memtest86+ ?

http://www.memtest.org/

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Thanks for the suggestion go_for. I put the swapped-out memory sticks into another machine with the A6-3500 and ran Memtest86. It made it through the first pass but halted on the second:

Pass 38% ############
Test 99% #######################
Test #5 [Block move, 80 moves]
Testing: 184K - 2048M 7677M
Pattern:

Unexpected Interrupt - Halting

Type: ffffd990
PC: 00011896
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Please let me know if this is a smoking gun. My A8-3850 system has now been up for 1 day, 15 hours.

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations

well, it looks like you are getting somewhere after all this troubleshooting.
Wonder if the faulty stick(s) have warranty you can claim.
Other option is then to find&set manual timings+voltage for your RAM that would work around the problem.

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I won't bother for a $50 part. My A8-3850 system has now been up for 3 days, 3 hours. I've moved my mouse around in defiance, but it won't crash.

I'm thinking of rebuilding my original slim chassis with the 400W PSU. It was much quieter.

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To seek out GNU life and GNU civilizations