Need big help with NF7-M

My brother just installed an NF7-M with an XP2100+. It has an SK-7 with the big Sunon 80mm on it and AS3. He is using on-board everything and has to cards in the PCI or AGP slots. He has various IDE drives, 1 HD, 1CD, 1CDR, 1 ZIP I think.

He has never built a full computer before, but has upgraded. Now, stay with me here. He's 20 and reasonably smart. I have built several and was on the other end of the phone while he powered this up for the first time. This is with no OC, only 1st time boot.

He was unsure if he seated the HSF corectly, but he said he checked, and could not see any light between the HSF and CPU Core. He also checked that the HSF was sitting level on the CPU. I told him to be ready to yank the power cord if nothing happened "soon".

He hit the power button, and the thing booted. He went straight to the BIOS to check the temps. He was looking at them within 15Sec. The CPU Core was 36C. After 5min it was at 42C. It did not spike rapidly so I feel the HSF was installed correctly.

We turned off the System BIOS Shadow, Video BIOS shadow, both Spread Spectrums, and the Fast Write Support. (Because that's the way mine is, NF7 w/ Rad. 9000).

As he was going to a different menu, the thing locked up. He started to panic and pulled the plug. By now we had only been running for about 10min. When he tried to power up again, there was nothing on the display. We have cleared the CMOS several times (I know he did this correctly) and still nothing. The fans run. You can't hear if the HDD is spinning over the noise of the big Sunon 80mm.

He has tried another monitor. He has tried putting an old video card in the AGP slot. Still nothing. He has pulled out the CPU and said there is no discoloration or bad smell. I can't believe that the CPU got fried. I have never seen a burned one, but from what I have read, there should be some marks either on the front or back. The only thing I can come up with is that the MB died. But I can't understand why. There was no voltage increase, or unreasonably high temperature. I will ask him about the Power Supply ratings, I just thought of that. Any other insight would be helpful.

I called and checked on the power supply. It is 'rated' at 250W. The combined +5V and +3.3V are 160W. That should be enough to power this thing. Any other routes to try?

Bump.

Randalthas said:

I called and checked on the power supply. It is 'rated' at 250W. The combined +5V and +3.3V are 160W. That should be enough to power this thing. Any other routes to try?

Click to expand...

Well, combined 160w is REALLY cutting it close (if not to short) for this board I would Lean more toward 200w comb. I have a 400w with 330combined and NO problems at all.
Anyways, IMO, as to the "problem" I have helped another person with a very similar situation, only difference is he had not pulled the plug
So, to make a long story short, it turned out to be the good old BIOS chip corruption

And yes you guessed it, your going to have to either "HOT FLASH" i.e. from another board (not an option here it sounds) or purchase a ABIT nForce2 BIOS Survival Kit for NF7 v2.0 Series found here $11.00 because it sounds EXACTLY like the situation that Hound was in, and it fixed it with out a hitch!

Good Luck!

DpGravy

ExcaliberPC has the delux abit bios chip rescue kit for $16 including the chip romoval/placement tool. That extra $4 gets you a nifty little tool can be used on any other cmos chip swaps in the future.

What version of nf7 does your brother have? v1 & 1.2 aren't the same as v2 because v2 has a newer northbridge and requires the v2 bios. If you flash the wrong bios, it still won't work.

That power supply is really too small to do well with that board.

Thanks guys. It's V1.2. And we are going to order the V1.2 BIOS kit from Excaliber. I forgot about that. I agree on the power supply. He has since, tried another 300W with the system (from his roomates PIV system). That didn't help. But the 5V and 3.3V was rated the same as the 250W. I still think they are low at 16A and 20A. We'll try the BIOS first, since the thing did work briefly. I'll keep you posted.