- Joined
- Jul 7, 2004
- Location
- Rocky Mountian High
A lament...
This saga began approx. a year ago with purchase of a bundled Soyo KT600 Dragon Plus v1.0 and an Athlon XP 2500+. I got the parts in and assembled the system but since the 550W PowMax PSU sounded like a 747 taking off I switched the PSU for a quiet 250w Compaq PSU. (This was a year of learning to say the least).
After a few months the Compaq PSU died, so put back in my PowMax PSU modded with quieter fans. But soon things like my built-in lan began to disappear from device manager, not to mention it didn't work. Eventually other strange things occured like sound disappeared and finally after trying to reseat the HSF and put on new TIM the system would not boot no matter what. So I tested several things and in late Jan 2005 sent the board to Soyo for a replacement.
The replacement came back ready to roll and it was very stable for 3 months, then the PowMax PSU died! (Actually it seemed to work except the system would not boot. Strangely, another 250watt, ancient ATX PSU brought the system back to life) OK, so I can take a hint. I got a new 400 Watt MDM Sure Power PSU, which had good reviews and is made by Superflower/TTGI which is a brand I like.
After a month of troublefree computing and OC'ing I stared having random reboots which quickly turned into rapid reboots, BSODs and POST errors (over about 24 hours). Finally the board quit recognizing RAM which tested good. The ancient 250W PSU did not magically bring it back to life and the 400W tests good with a DVM under load.
That day I ordered a new Asus A7V880 board. Not that Soyo is bad but I've seen PSU's die before and the motherboard not die or even be mortally wounded. I've just got that gut level lack of confidence that not even a warranty replacement will fix. I feel like a Dragon Slayer...(used to feel this way about tropical fish too, but again, after about a year, I learned how not to kill them either.)
BTW, if you are still reading this, any ideas on how to verify all the parts other than Prime 95, memtest and 3dMark?
This saga began approx. a year ago with purchase of a bundled Soyo KT600 Dragon Plus v1.0 and an Athlon XP 2500+. I got the parts in and assembled the system but since the 550W PowMax PSU sounded like a 747 taking off I switched the PSU for a quiet 250w Compaq PSU. (This was a year of learning to say the least).
After a few months the Compaq PSU died, so put back in my PowMax PSU modded with quieter fans. But soon things like my built-in lan began to disappear from device manager, not to mention it didn't work. Eventually other strange things occured like sound disappeared and finally after trying to reseat the HSF and put on new TIM the system would not boot no matter what. So I tested several things and in late Jan 2005 sent the board to Soyo for a replacement.
The replacement came back ready to roll and it was very stable for 3 months, then the PowMax PSU died! (Actually it seemed to work except the system would not boot. Strangely, another 250watt, ancient ATX PSU brought the system back to life) OK, so I can take a hint. I got a new 400 Watt MDM Sure Power PSU, which had good reviews and is made by Superflower/TTGI which is a brand I like.
After a month of troublefree computing and OC'ing I stared having random reboots which quickly turned into rapid reboots, BSODs and POST errors (over about 24 hours). Finally the board quit recognizing RAM which tested good. The ancient 250W PSU did not magically bring it back to life and the 400W tests good with a DVM under load.
That day I ordered a new Asus A7V880 board. Not that Soyo is bad but I've seen PSU's die before and the motherboard not die or even be mortally wounded. I've just got that gut level lack of confidence that not even a warranty replacement will fix. I feel like a Dragon Slayer...(used to feel this way about tropical fish too, but again, after about a year, I learned how not to kill them either.)
BTW, if you are still reading this, any ideas on how to verify all the parts other than Prime 95, memtest and 3dMark?
So I took the CPU into work where our lab (I work for a hard drive maker) has everything and we grabbed an Abit N7F and sure enough, my CPU was DEAD! 
