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Warning about the VNF4

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GV2NIX

Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2004
Location
Pyeongtaek, South Korea
I've purchased two of these boards over the past few weeks for two budget systems I was building for other people. The first one had a chipped chipset. Two of the corners were crushed. But, luckily the board worked fine. I was pretty happy with the board, so for the second system, I bought the same one. Again, the chipset was chipped, but this time all four corners were crushed. And this time, for an added surprise, there wasn't even any TIM between the HSF and the chipset. I put on some AS5 and turned it on. Dead. So I had to get an RMA and try and get a replacement days before Christmas. I shouldn't have pushed my luck.

I don't know if all of the chipsets on these boards are chipped, but I'm guessing that a good portion are. The chipset HSF is held on with pins and very weak springs. This allows it to rock back and fourth without much pressure. I don't even want to think about what these boards go through that would rock the HSF all over enough to crush all four corners. I heard that it was a known issue from gvblake22, but he hasn't had any problems, and the first board I bought appears to be working just fine.

The board is a great budget board, when working! Maybe I just got unlucky, but if boards are getting shipped out with chipped chipsets, working or not, either way, it's not a good thing. It only takes one bad board to ruin someone's day, so I figured I'd make a thread since I haven't seen anything about it here. I hope this was helpful to some people. Spend a few extra bucks and get a Gigabyte, MSI, or Abit. I don't know if the same thing is happening to higher-end VNF4 boards, maybe not, but why take a chance?
 
Im sorry youve had that experience with them.. personally ive had at least 4 of the ultra boards and i love them to death to bad i cant find them anywhere.. but now i just get the non ultra boards they are the same thing..
Eddie
 
I have a vnf4 and my friend built a system for his sister. Both of us havent had any problems with ours. I had to RMA mine(thought the mobo was dead but actually was the cpu), the service was fast. Sorry to hear about this though. It is a very good non ocing mobo though
 
Yeah, it's a great stable board! I just wish Chaintech would do something about the damaged chipsets. Even if they end up working, it can't be very good to have crushed corners. I wrote to them, but they didn't respond. Maybe it's too expensive to fix at this point. hopefully they'll address the problem when they re-tool for a new product or something.
 
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