KT7-RAID chipset problems

[CamelToe]

This is my first post at this site. I have been interested in overclocking for a couple of weeks now and have been reading the boards and guides to get myself aquainted with the lingo and techniques. I seem to have a machine that is very overclockable and am anxious to try it, but tragedy struck last Tuesday night.

I was listening to music and working with the Warcraft 3 map editor when my machine froze. Thinking is was some Windows BS, I rebooted. To my astonishment it froze again about 1 minute after my session had logged on. Freezing is unusual on my machine, so I popped the case open and sure enough the chipset fan had stopped. I stopped using the machine until I could get another fan shipped to me.

I got the new fan 2 days ago and installed it. Now the machine boots like it did before, but consistently freezes about 30 seconds after logon.

Maybe I am just going through denial since this is my first high performance machine, but it seems odd that this would be the behavior of a fried chipset, especially since it doesnt matter what I do during the 30 seconds the machine is running(idol or otherwise). Has anyone ever had this happen to them or had the same behavior? Any advice, comments, or criticism would be appreciated.

 

[repo man11]

It could be that the thermal paste underneath the heatsink has been cooked into uselessness. You'll have to pull the board out of the case in order to remove the northbridge heatsink and reapply thermal grease.

 

[Gary Collins]

Check for swollen or burst caps around the video card and processor. Any of them and they have over heated and are ruined. For some reason Abit uses cheap sleve bearing fans on the northbridge chip and they sieze up. My advice put an oversize heatsink on it and order another fan with ball bearings. I have had three of them go bad. But unfortunately your northbridge chipset may be bad now. If so I would complain to Abit and see if they will fix it in warranty.

 

[CamelToe]

There are no swollen or burst caps that I can see anywhere. I ordered a Global Win fan for the chipset and used that with the Northbridge heatsink and applied new thermal compound with no success. I am going to try an oversized heatsink and see where that takes me. The only problem I can forsee is that Northbridge uses those spring loaded posts on the corners of the heatsink. Is there a good way to fasten the heatsink and fan to the mobo or is thermal adhesive my only option?

 

[hooziewhatsit]

When I put a new heatsink on mine, I put AS over most of it, but left two corners clean. There I put some super glue, and made sure the heatsink was where I wanted it.. If you do do this, make sure you put pressure on the heatsink for a while, just to make sure there aren't any air gaps inside.


BTW, Welcome to the Forum!!!

 

[Sonny]

Try the components one by one on another machine. I doubt it was the NB fan failure that caused this, but you never know, 'cause I had mine unplugged for a month after some dust cleaning. Check for memory failure, PSU(always suspect the PSU), CPU & even VC on another PC.