Antec NEO PSU and Asrock Conroe945-DVI incompatibility

[NoDigital]

Been through an torturous time trying to get my Hackintosh to power on and be stable. I'm running

• Asrock Conroe945-DVI
  
• E6600
  
• XMS2 512MB panels
  
• Antec P180
  
• Antec NEO HE 500W PSU
  

I'm on my second m/b as it looked like a m/b problem (Tried different memory, timings, etc)

 

I've just tried a different PSU and the setup is now stable.

 

Antec had a lot of problems previously with this PSU and I wonder if its also causes problems with this board. I have a friend whos ASUS P5WD2 was never stable yet with the new Gigabyte DQ6 and its fancy regulation its stable at last.

 

Anyone else used a NEO HE with this board and found it to be ok???

 

FYI some links on Antec NEO PSU problems:

 

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=10...p;postcount=277

 

Discussion thread on the problem

 

As an addendum, the syptoms experienced were:

• Failure to POST with no video output
  
• No video output and repeated restarts within a couple of seconds of starting. Attached drives heard to reset.
  
• Random reboots, even while in BIOS setup, anywhere from 5s to 17min after startup
  
• Reboots that appear to power-off the machine, wait a couple of seconds then restart.
  

[joe75]

Those all sound like bios problems of the board. The only way a PSU could mess with you system is if you weren't getting correct power or voltage This is easily checked with a multi-meter. Antec makes excellent power supplies and the Neo series are very good.

[mdg]

Well,

 

I don't know if it's the PSU, but I am suffering from nearly the same problem and now I'm my second motherboard, etc. I say nearly because my problem is 100% the same reboot after reboot.

 

I do a clean install of 10.4.6 with SSE3. The install goes flawless. The comuper restarts itself (or I click restart) and on the reboot it goes through loading all the files (the screen that scrolls a million files, and a million miles per hor), which takes about 3-4 second, then the screen clears and it looks like the Apple UI is about to come up, and then the computer resets itself. It does this same thing every time on the hardware that I have tried below. Maybe someone here can help?

 

I have now an Asrock 945G DVI and a few days before this had the Asus p5l-vm 1394. I have a Conroe e6600. Here are the setups I tried:

 

 

Asus P5l-VM 1394 and now ASrock 945G DVI

Core 2 Duo 6600 (never swapped this)

Seasonic 380W PSU (never swapped this)

Seagate 320 Gb SATA Drive (tried a different 320 Gb, and then pulled yet another working 10.4.8 install hard disk out of my Intel 945G with Pentium D950 and stuck into this machine)

Pioneer 110D (tried 111D and Plextor)

2x1Gb SuperTalent PC6400 DDR2 800 (4-4-3-8) (Tried 3 different sets of Corsair PC6400 out of 3 different working machines with Intel Motherboards and Pentium D CPU"s)

Saphire X1600 Pro 512Mb (tried with just plain old onboard VGA, and then with the DVI riser card also -- both Asus and ASrock)

 

I won't talk about other accessories because I've unplugged them all.

 

I have swapped out everything in every possible combination other than the CPU and the PSU

 

----------------

Question:

----------------

 

Is there some "secret" step I am missing in doing this install? I have 2 other machines I built with Intel branded 945G's and Pentium D CPU's and everything works brilliant -- not problems!

 

Is there some secret BIOS setting, or some secret order by which the install has to be done, that's different than the other machines that I built?

 

Is it possible that either the CPU or the PSU are bad?

 

---I THOUGHT I'D SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST---

 

Both motherboards, in every combination of hardware, installed and ran Windows XP with no problems.

 

I am simply in a twilight zone and don't want to shell out another $450 for a PSU and new CPU and then RMA the ones I have.

 

Thoughts? Any input would be appreciated

 

/mdg