Problematic P4 3.4 Prescott Upgrade

[Riko]

I currently have an Acer Aspire T310 with a P4 2.8 and I am trying to upgrade the CPU to a p4 3.4 prescott.

My PC works fine with the 2.8. When i put the 3.4 in I find that it is really difficult to get it to boot at all. My monitor is blank - there are no errors. I have upgraded the PSU to 480W and I have got a better heat sink/fan. Plus I have updated the bios.

I know the CPU works, because on odd occasion it has actually booted up?!

I have looked at the capacitors near the CPU and they look in good nick.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Riko]

My voltage is dropping?!

I thought my new power supply would cut it. Its a 485W Enermax EG465P-VE. I have 2 hard disks and a 6800 GT card (uses a power connector for its fan) and a USB expansion card.

I looks like the 12V supply is dropping. I have found unplugging some USB devices helps a little bit. I have tried switching round the power connecters, but the voltage seems to hover around 11.96v to 12.03v. With everything connected it drops to 11.76v which makes the odds of booting a lot harder. I dont appreciate why the intial startup voltage has to be 12V but later it works fine if it drops below this.

Apart from upgrading the power supply again. Any ideas?

 

[MetalX]

You don't need to upgrade the PSU again I'm pretty sure. Enermax is a really good brand of PSU. In fact I have the same one as you in my system. I'm pretty sure the system would be fine at 11.76v. My old PSU ran at 11.31 V pretty much all the time, and I used that PSU for 6 months before I got a new one. The system was fine all that time. Are you sure that your motherboard supports Prescotts? Or if it does, does it support CPUs of that speed?

 

[Riko]

I am writing this with my P4 3.4 CPU in, so i can get it to boot after a few attempts. I got it to boot on the second attempt after I unplugged my 60gb USB drive and USB PDA docking base from my USB expansion card (both of which have been plugged in without any problems using the P4 2.8 CPU). I guess both of theses are draining power from the motherboard.

I researched my motherboard and it supports this processor. The bios detects the hyper threading feature (displays all the correct details in the bios) and it is 100% stable when it is running. Would there be a jumper on the motherboard that could help?