New Snow Leopard Build - Occasionally will not boot

[BudCrow]

Hey, so I had a fully functioning SL build (went with 10.6.8 cause of support).

Everything is fine, expect that every fourth time the computer stops booting. It just sits there at the Apple logo with no spining countdown timer. It will boot into safe mode in this state.

I'm running an OCZ vertex 2, which I don't like, but it's what I have ATM.
Gigabyte X58A - OC
8GB Vengance Ram @ 1066
A three disk RAID
MSI Geforce 8400 512MB -Soon for upgrade

So initially it wouldn't boot verbose, it would just go straight to the black screen. After a permissions repair it went further but stalled at ACPI. The only way I could get it to work was to reset the BIOS to fail safe, change the boot order, ACHI and HPTET to 64 (which I don't think works on OSX?).

If anyone has any ideas on how to troubleshoot this intermittent issue, I'd be grateful.

I'm pretty sure it's not CMOS reset as sometimes now it will boot just by restarting after a failure.

 

[potemkin]

AHCI = yes
HPET must be set to 64 anything else will not work in OSX.
Every guide says this.
Safe defaults are for Windows and they probably will not work there.
Safe means safe for board.
You have very slow ram.
Check what you have it set to in bios.
What are you trying to boot from?

To boot verbose,hit space bar at boot and then use down arrow to select it or type -v on boot line.

 

[BudCrow]

AHCI = yes
HPET must be set to 64 anything else will not work in OSX.
Every guide says this.
Safe defaults are for Windows and they probably will not work there.
Safe means safe for board.
You have very slow ram.
Check what you have it set to in bios.
What are you trying to boot from?

To boot verbose,hit space bar at boot and then use down arrow to select it or type -v on boot line.

I'm aware of all that.

That is the correct speed RAM, it does the job fine thanks.

My main issue is that the system is not booting every time. I've got all the settings you listed as I posted.

The only reason I have to use fail safe is to trick it into booting. This is a new motherboard btw.

I'm booting directly from the OCZ-which is the system drive with OSX on it.

Really not sure why it's acting like this or how to troubleshoot it. Any useful help is greatly appreciated.