defective amd's out of the box

[madiaz]

hello,

i have had very bad luck with amd's cpu's. or maybe with the retailer. i bought an athlon 1 gig and blue screened on the very last step of installing win pro. after 3 weeks new processor and new a7a ( think retailer fried that too during testing) a second machine was giving me problems so i decided to repace m.board, celery, and p.supply. w/biostar, 300w spply, and duron 950. after install no boot??? was told by tech to send back cpu. he said chances are 1 in 2 million of this happening. if possible i would like some feedback in regard to defective amd's from factory. the reason is if i am not reimbursed within 1 week i may consider taking legal actions against retailer if indeed tech person is correct. cmon 2 months to build 2 systems? i am confident it is not i because i touch metal and always ground myself to case via wrist strap.

i plan on getting a new m.board. lookin at dragon plus. will not modify new board or cpu. i am going to overclock till i fry the asus a7a and gig athlon however in another of my mad experiments. swiftech cooler on the way.

extremely satisfied with the amd 1 gig. tested and proven. for the new cpu i am unsure if to go with the athlon 1400 or xp 1500. any suggestions?
thank you,
m.a.d.

[FRANK]

Try a new hobby!

Seriously.

Welcome to the forum.

I think that maybe you should look at your procedures. Granted that any procuct made in the volumes that these computer parts are today, will have a certain number of problems. I believe that you are way above the normal,.

If you built 50 systems that would put you in the 6% failure range, way more than most.

Good Luck!

[madiaz]

procedures? what could i possibly be doing wrong? the only things i can think of causing this are electrostatic discharge or something happening during shipping. any ideas would be great.

[CrystalMethod]

There's a bunch of stuff that can screw up the works. Electro-static discharge is the least of them. I've rarely seen a anything come back where I work because of electro-static discharge duing assembly, packaging, or handling. I've built hundreds of systems (literally), but there's a few things you should look into before you start laying blame on people. Do you have the latest BIOS for that board? Did you clear your CMOS when you installed the Duron? Did you try different memory (sometimes it comes down to part#, and not just manufacturer)? Try removing all the cards except for vid card? What I'm getting at, is to work out all the possibilities yourself before you decide to blame "X" person, or "X" company.

[madiaz]

thanks for the suggestions. i tried all of that. i did not clear cmos though because it is a brand new board. can not flash it because machine does not post. tried 2 different sets of video cards 2 different sticks of memory. checked jumpers on the board. this problem with the cpu is happening on a completly different machine than the first. from what i gather the forces of amd do not like me very well

[killem1x1]

What did you purchase from the retailer? A complete system, or components?, and what exactly are they telling you?

[madiaz]

hi,
i bought online all components and assembled myself my first pc. asus a7a and 1 gigg athlon. after assembling it blue screened at very last step of os install. called retailer and sent board and cpu back for testing. i was told cpu just barely failed test and m.board tested great. got back new cpu and same m.board from retailer. installed and no post. sent back (again) board and cpu. cpu tested fine motherboard did not. got back same cpu and new board. now everything is peachy.


decided to replace p.supply, intel and celery with a new duron and biostar board on a different pc. received new board, processor and p.supply. assembled/ no post. everything lights up except nothing on screen except flashing power lights.

called retailer. advised to check jumpers which are fine. was told to send back cpu. called an hour later to demand refund because of my loss in productivity but mostly by my dissatisfaction with techs attitude with me. same reason i will not buy asus again. i would rather talk to someone who might not know it all but knows what respect is than a genius with no manners. i just needed feedback on amd failures to justify my anger towards retailer.
thank you,
this forum is phenomenal. i have learned more in 3 hours here than 8 months in my hillbilly neck of the woods.

[Skywarp99]

Your experience is typical for someone building his own system for the first time. It happened to me in 1993. In my case either the memory was bad, cheap generic stuff or I didn't push it in far enough. Had to take it back to the guy I purchased the stuff from and have him check it all out. Ther isn't a lot to building a computer, but you do have to know a lot of trivial tricks to make one work. The picking of the components is really an art. If just one component is bad or cheap quality then problems.

Simple tips:

Make sure ram is all the way in the slot. It's hard to believe how much force is required to fully seat memory. Easy mistake for new builders who are afraid of breaking parts.

CPUs need to be checked for bent pins with 460 or 370 pins only one bent pin could cause no boots. Check the pins before inserting in the ZIF socket. If the CPU doesn not fall into the socket then you have a bent pin. Try and straighten the pin with small needlenose pliers.

Ribbon cables have a red stripe on pin one. This must be aligned with the hard drive pin 1 and the ide socket pin one on the motherboard. If both ends are backwards hard drives can be fried. This happend to two friends.

If a drive power cable is plugged in wrong the power supply wont turn on due to the short. The small floppy power connector is the one that can get one pin off and cause a short that results in no power from power supply.

With all new 1 GHz and up CPUs if the heatsink isn't making full contact witht the CPU core the chip can fry in 5 seconds. AMD really has a problem here in that it takes a lot of force to attach most heatsinks.

Unless you bought the ram from www.crucial.com try different ram. Almost every online vender buys gray market ram that is suspect even if it has micron chips. I don't know how many time I bought ram from local computer stores that caused problems. Mushkin or Crucial is all I will buy. I have bought thousands of dollars of memory trust me here.

The motherboard should be mounted on metal standoffs where there is solder around the mounting holes of the motherboard. Use as many standoffs as you can to make the motherboard solidly mounted to the case. You wont short out the motherboard becasue these holes are designed for this very purpose.

Always try the first boot with just Video card, and no ide or floppy cables attached. The bare minimum will test the keyboard, CPU, memory, and video card. If these are a go then start adding stuff one at a time.


Mail order isn't a good idea for the first time vendor. Tech support is always going to be just send back and we replace. Newbies like yourself should find a local computer store that builds computers and sell components. That way you get to talk face to face with the tech, and if you are lucky you might make a friend.

Jerry

[madiaz]

jerry,

thanks but i do not need help with building a system. i had been upgrading the old pc before i got parts for the new one and took a+ classes twice.

my problem was the first amd was defective. proven because i was almost succesful loading os and when i installed new one works great. new duron on the way for upgraded pc.

thanks for the tip on the crucial memory. i will be buying some and it's nice to get feedback on solid parts.

[madiaz]

i am unsure if this is just a boring topic or if people think i am going to sue or what.

i am familiar with deception. nowhere does it say the a7a can't use rage chipset video cards. i learned the hard way only radeon will work. my printer did not work in win pro. (my fault i didn't check). i installed driver for different printer and now it works like a charm.

i plan on getting a new board and cpu and will overclock the one i have now. i have been looking at an oil cooler kit for cars that may be the ticket. however it is hard to do these things with a faulty part. so still i do not know if i am unlucky or if amds frequently come defective
thanks,
m.a.d.

[madiaz]

guess what gentlemen,

i just received new duron from different source and machine is sailing like a dream now.

hope i can count on you guys for help building a liquid cooled time machine in the future.

cheers,
m.a.d.