power or mainboard problem?

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I had an Epox EP8-RDA which I recently discovered had some of the
faulty capacitors on it. It ran quite well for almost 2 years, up
until about a month ago. I sent it in under RMA and received the
another of the same item back, (either rebuilt or previously
returned).

I popped it in and turned it on. On first power up it was okay, the
bios complained about a changed chip so I entered the bios setup
utility.

After about 3 minutes of uptime it suddenly dropped. Now when I press
the power button the onboard POST led will flash for a second and all
the fans will begin to rotate. But only for the moment that my finger
is on the button. If I happen to leave my finger on for more than a
second (I know this is probably REALLY BAD) the POST led
blink,blink,blink.

I'm having a tough time figuring out what the problem could be and am
looking for pointers. What really perplexes me is that the thing was
up for almost three minutes. Could the cpu get too hot maybe? The
heatsink doesn't feel very warm. I had carefully(!) wiped off all the
old thermal paste and applied new. Could it be that the cpu was
dammaged by the bad board? Would it come up to the bios config
utility if the cpu was faulty?

Thanks for any info or ideas.

DGM

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

d1663m@charter.net (D.G. Meyer) wrote in message news:<2973caa1.0408271710.3e3d8ac8@posting.google.com>...
> I had an Epox EP8-RDA which I recently discovered had some of the
> faulty capacitors on it. It ran quite well for almost 2 years, up
> until about a month ago. I sent it in under RMA and received the
> another of the same item back, (either rebuilt or previously
> returned).
>
> I popped it in and turned it on. On first power up it was okay, the
> bios complained about a changed chip so I entered the bios setup
> utility.
>
> After about 3 minutes of uptime it suddenly dropped. Now when I press
> the power button the onboard POST led will flash for a second and all
> the fans will begin to rotate. But only for the moment that my finger
> is on the button. If I happen to leave my finger on for more than a
> second (I know this is probably REALLY BAD) the POST led
> blink,blink,blink.
>
> I'm having a tough time figuring out what the problem could be and am
> looking for pointers. What really perplexes me is that the thing was
> up for almost three minutes. Could the cpu get too hot maybe? The
> heatsink doesn't feel very warm. I had carefully(!) wiped off all the
> old thermal paste and applied new. Could it be that the cpu was
> dammaged by the bad board? Would it come up to the bios config
> utility if the cpu was faulty?
>
> Thanks for any info or ideas.
>
> DGM


Followup:

Antec 350W PSU. AMD Athlon XP 2400+ Epox EP8RDA mobo, I've removed
everything but the bare essentials and it still won't respond. I don't
have spare motherboards or systems to test on. I'm just not sure what
my next step would be. I don't know if I need to go back to Epox and
claim their POS motherboard fried my CPU. I don't know if that sounds
plausible enough. Does anybody think the capacitors on the motherboard
would have caused enough power fluctuation (despite the Antec PSU) to
end up taking the CPU with it? It just seemed strange to me that it
ran for a short time then quit.

Thanks,
Duane

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On 1 Sep 2004 17:30:18 -0700, duane.meyer@gmail.com (D. G. Meyer)
wrote:

>d1663m@charter.net (D.G. Meyer) wrote in message news:<2973caa1.0408271710.3e3d8ac8@posting.google.com>...
>> I had an Epox EP8-RDA which I recently discovered had some of the
>> faulty capacitors on it. It ran quite well for almost 2 years, up
>> until about a month ago. I sent it in under RMA and received the
>> another of the same item back, (either rebuilt or previously
>> returned).
>>
>> I popped it in and turned it on. On first power up it was okay, the
>> bios complained about a changed chip so I entered the bios setup
>> utility.
>>
>> After about 3 minutes of uptime it suddenly dropped.

What, EXACTLY, does "suddenly dropped" mean? Verbosity here
might help.


>> Now when I press
>> the power button the onboard POST led will flash for a second and all
>> the fans will begin to rotate. But only for the moment that my finger
>> is on the button. If I happen to leave my finger on for more than a
>> second (I know this is probably REALLY BAD) the POST led
>> blink,blink,blink.

Perhaps a short, check all cables, screws, etc.
If there is possibility of case problems, like not mounted
squarely on standoffs or (???) try pulling board out of case and
running it on table, but not on an anti-static bag (which
conducts electricity).


>>
>> I'm having a tough time figuring out what the problem could be and am
>> looking for pointers. What really perplexes me is that the thing was
>> up for almost three minutes. Could the cpu get too hot maybe? The
>> heatsink doesn't feel very warm. I had carefully(!) wiped off all the
>> old thermal paste and applied new. Could it be that the cpu was
>> dammaged by the bad board? Would it come up to the bios config
>> utility if the cpu was faulty?
>>
>> Thanks for any info or ideas.
>>
>> DGM
>
>
>Followup:
>
>Antec 350W PSU. AMD Athlon XP 2400+ Epox EP8RDA mobo, I've removed
>everything but the bare essentials and it still won't respond. I don't
>have spare motherboards or systems to test on. I'm just not sure what
>my next step would be. I don't know if I need to go back to Epox and
>claim their POS motherboard fried my CPU. I don't know if that sounds
>plausible enough. Does anybody think the capacitors on the motherboard
>would have caused enough power fluctuation (despite the Antec PSU) to
>end up taking the CPU with it? It just seemed strange to me that it
>ran for a short time then quit.
>
>Thanks,
>Duane

That the replacement board ran ok for 3 minutes, is a sign that
the old board did not damage the CPU. Could be heatsink wasn't
reinstalled properly and CPU was heat-stressed, etc, but we have
no way to confirm this, at this point. When I first assemble a
system, first thing I do after power-on is enter the bios health
monitor screen and check temp, voltage, etc. Any signs of
problem at that point is cause for immediate power down.

Having heatsink not feel hot isn't necessarily telling, it could
mean CPU was running cool (if it made good interface to CPU) or
could instead mean CPU was overheating because heatsink wasn't
making good contact, so little of the heat was being transferred
from CPU to 'sink.

Perhaps the replacement board is also faulty, or the power
supply. A dying board will be hard on a power supply, could be
the Antec is now failing too (or it could've even been the
primary failure point, that caused death of first board). Even
though Antecs are typically better than the average PSU, no make
is immune to failure, defect, etc. You might open it and inspect
the inside after it's been unplugged from AC for at least a few
minutes.


Try clearing motherboard CMOS. If it POSTS, load the
setup/failsafe/etc defaults in the bios menu. If possible, see
if underclocking helps to get it posting. You could pull CPU
and examine it too, but often there is no sign of failure on a
CPU, unless you happen to see darkness, bubbled coating, pins
bent/missing, or chipped/cracked core. Otherwise, the odds are
that it still works, but that is no guarantee.

Since the first board only ran for 3 minutes, I'd report this to
Epox, after checking the power supply. If you have a multimeter,
also take voltage readings through the back of the ATX connector
while system is in the on-but-not-POSTing state.


You wrote that you removed everything but bare essentials, but
does that include keyboard, mouse, drives, etc? Only heatsink
fan, single memory module, CPU, and video card should be
installed. If power supply is now marginal, an old lower-powered
video card might be more suitable to try (or perhaps video card
was damaged in addition to first motherboard).

If i had to randomly guess at odds of which part is bad, I'd
guess 65% power supply, 35% motherboard, or perhaps odds of 2nd
motherboard are higher if it also uses same (or other make of)
potentially defective capacitors, but then you didn't mention if
first capacitors were a known "potentially" defective brand, as
there are other reasons they might fail, like persistent
overheating from poor case airflow or other parts failure... we
don't have the board and can't survey it's damage.