Motherboard fried need recommendations :(

PC Configurations, motherboards, etc, etc

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orbita
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Post by orbita »

Just got home, turned my pc on.. Nothing.

Yesterday I replaced the northbridge fan with a big heatsink (designed for the job) and suspect the chip has fried..

Looks like im going to have to replace the board.

This machine is not my main music PC, but will probably get used later on for a dedicated VST engine. So I will probably equip it with a LUNA card so that I can send the vst synths to my main music machine via ADAT.

The motherboard will need to support an AMD XP1700 chip and 768mb of pc2700 DDR Ram.

RAID and onboard sound/lan is not required.

Id like something that is Stable, reliable with good PCI bandwidth. Ideally with no onboard fans.



Whats the current recommendations?
doodyrh
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Post by doodyrh »

On 2002-05-05 16:54, orbita wrote:
Yesterday I replaced the northbridge fan with a big heatsink (designed for the job) and suspect the chip has fried..
Ouch! :sad:
Sorry I can't be much help with the motherboard question.
Was this after using the QuietPC motherboard heatsink you mentioned in your Noise annoys thread.
Any ideas what went wrong? I was thinking of getting one.
orbita
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Post by orbita »

Hi, yes quite possibly. Not sure though. Its an Epox board and they are apparently notoriously dodgy.

I have those heatsinks running on 2 of my other computers with no problem. So Either:
-I damaged something while putting it on
-This Via chipset gets too hot for it
-or it was just coincidence and the board just broke.

you might be wise to phone quietpc.com and get them to verify that it works fine for your motherboard.
orbita
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Post by orbita »

Is it fair to say that if I am only going to have a 3dsp card in this machine at most (Luna) then it doesnt matter so much which I motherboard I get. ie my best bet is to get a nice new asus kt333 or something. Its either that or a gigabyte GA-7DX+ cos I need at least 3 dimm slots.
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at0m
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Post by at0m »

You talk about AMD, no cooling and something physically broken on your board.

If I'm not mistaken: (I admit having no AMD experience at all) Because AMD's tend to run very hot, they made them very thin and thus they are quite vulnerable. What's more, they need good cooling, or they could get fried easily.

my 2cents.
orbita
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Post by orbita »

hi atomic
My cpu has a very fat and nice alpha heatsink on it + quiet fan. I have no plans to remove that!

I was referring to the northboard chipset which normally comes with a thin heatsink and fan combination. the small size of the fan causes a horrible whining noise. I usually replace this combination with a much larger heatsink which is quiet and just as good as cooling. I suspect the reason they are not normally like this is the higher price for the large heatsink.

Anyway.. Upon closer inspection of my motherboard I suspect I put too much of the adhesive on the heatsink when i applied it becuase it looks like some dropped off and onto the motherboard. This is probably responsible for it not working.

So ive ordered myself one of those new Asus a7v333's partly becuase Asus are reliable and this board supports the pc2700 ddr ram i already have but mostly becuase it comes with a large heatsink on the northboard chip and no fan! :smile:

These new asus boards also have heat protection circuitry - something i believe intel chips or the motherboards have had for some time.
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Neutron
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Post by Neutron »

Those Chipset fans are a gimmic. it is a good idea to remove them and replace with heatsink only (see asus p4b266 chipset heatsink :smile:.

I doubt this could have fried your board unless some adhesive touched some pins of the chipset as you said. thats a shame, i hate it when i toast something!



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: defex on 2002-05-06 09:43 ]</font>
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Neutron
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Post by Neutron »

oh yeah dont forget the AMD FSB is still 266 so the 333 memory will do almost nothing.

similar to the days when intel tried to put RAMBUS on p3s
orbita
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Post by orbita »

I suspect those fans are put on cos they are probably damn cheap compared with larger heatsinks.

Yeah I've read there is little improvement in speed which doesnt really bother me. The Asus board are normally fairly solid and reliable which matters more.
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