G
Guest
Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.epox (More info?)
I have been using the 8KHA+ since the fall of 2001. It was the first time I
built a PC from scratch, and it brought me into a new level of performance
and expertise. The board had been running with a slight overclock (bus
pushed to 140 MHz) with the Athlon MP 2800+ CPU which replaced my original
XP 1800+, and it had been rock-stable for months. I even allowed me to beat
my SETI@Home record in 2004.
Last week, I stopped the machine, which was running 24/7, for an extended
period in order to install a new USB 2.0 PCI card and all the associated
cabling (I was running out of USB outlets). The machine never rebooted, kept
hanging at post code 68. I immediately suspected my new PCI card and removed
it, to no avail. I removed every other components, disabled all inboard
devices, switched memory modules, but it still wouldn't boot. Then, upon
close inspection of the board, I realized that 3 capacitors located near the
north bridge had burst! And an other smaller one to the left of the CPU was
leaking. How long ago had this happened, was it caused by the USB card, I
don't know. Maybe it just kept running because I never stopped it. "Et
voilà", my board is finished, I don't have the soldering skills to replace
these components and anyways, I was planning to upgrade my system to
Athlon64 level next Spring. Maybe my 8KHA+ felt this coming and commited
suicide! That was a sad end to a board that had served me well for over 3
years, and introduced me to the high-performance realm. I will always have
fond memories of it.
I am now temporarily using an Asus A7N8X-X borrowed from my boss. It works
fine but although it is based on the much-hyped nForce2/400 chipset, I
noticed a 10-15% *decrease* in performance, which is probably due to the
single-channel config (I am using the exact same components throughout, CPU,
memory, etc.) SETI@Home units used to take about 3½ hours, now take up to 4¼
hours to complete. In retrospect, this is a nice compliment to EPoX, for the
8KHA+ is a nearly 4-years old design! The Asus board clearly is a quality
product, but we are comparing a Ferrari to a GMC truck.
My system (at the time of the fatal cap burst):
EPoX 8KHA+ mobo, latest BIOS
Athlon MP 2800+ processor
Thermalright SK-7 heatsink w/ 80mm ThermalTake fan
2x Mushkin 512MB hi-perf 222 PC2100 memory
Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB
Western Digital Caviard 40MB 7200rpm (8MB cache) HDD
Generic No-name 50x CD-Rom (fast but noisy)
Intel Pro100+ Server NIC (bought from my employer at a ridiculous price)
Hercules Muse XL sound board
3Com 56k v.90 PCI modem
Symantec Firewall/VPN appliance 100
APC Smart UPS-1000
Enermax EG465P-VE whisper PSU
Antec 600-series case with plenty of fans
Good evening to all
GC
I have been using the 8KHA+ since the fall of 2001. It was the first time I
built a PC from scratch, and it brought me into a new level of performance
and expertise. The board had been running with a slight overclock (bus
pushed to 140 MHz) with the Athlon MP 2800+ CPU which replaced my original
XP 1800+, and it had been rock-stable for months. I even allowed me to beat
my SETI@Home record in 2004.
Last week, I stopped the machine, which was running 24/7, for an extended
period in order to install a new USB 2.0 PCI card and all the associated
cabling (I was running out of USB outlets). The machine never rebooted, kept
hanging at post code 68. I immediately suspected my new PCI card and removed
it, to no avail. I removed every other components, disabled all inboard
devices, switched memory modules, but it still wouldn't boot. Then, upon
close inspection of the board, I realized that 3 capacitors located near the
north bridge had burst! And an other smaller one to the left of the CPU was
leaking. How long ago had this happened, was it caused by the USB card, I
don't know. Maybe it just kept running because I never stopped it. "Et
voilà", my board is finished, I don't have the soldering skills to replace
these components and anyways, I was planning to upgrade my system to
Athlon64 level next Spring. Maybe my 8KHA+ felt this coming and commited
suicide! That was a sad end to a board that had served me well for over 3
years, and introduced me to the high-performance realm. I will always have
fond memories of it.
I am now temporarily using an Asus A7N8X-X borrowed from my boss. It works
fine but although it is based on the much-hyped nForce2/400 chipset, I
noticed a 10-15% *decrease* in performance, which is probably due to the
single-channel config (I am using the exact same components throughout, CPU,
memory, etc.) SETI@Home units used to take about 3½ hours, now take up to 4¼
hours to complete. In retrospect, this is a nice compliment to EPoX, for the
8KHA+ is a nearly 4-years old design! The Asus board clearly is a quality
product, but we are comparing a Ferrari to a GMC truck.
My system (at the time of the fatal cap burst):
EPoX 8KHA+ mobo, latest BIOS
Athlon MP 2800+ processor
Thermalright SK-7 heatsink w/ 80mm ThermalTake fan
2x Mushkin 512MB hi-perf 222 PC2100 memory
Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB
Western Digital Caviard 40MB 7200rpm (8MB cache) HDD
Generic No-name 50x CD-Rom (fast but noisy)
Intel Pro100+ Server NIC (bought from my employer at a ridiculous price)
Hercules Muse XL sound board
3Com 56k v.90 PCI modem
Symantec Firewall/VPN appliance 100
APC Smart UPS-1000
Enermax EG465P-VE whisper PSU
Antec 600-series case with plenty of fans
Good evening to all
GC