i have an asus k8ne mb that drives me crazy.
when a restart the pc or power it up it sometimes hangs for about 1-2 minutes before it begins to detect the devices and boot; also the south bridge radior is HOT (i can't put my finger on it for more than a second; the bios monitor shows a temperature of about 35 celsius but my finger sais 100 ). mean while the hard drive make funny click noises. all the time the pc is hunged up the hdd led shows hdd activity and the monitor goes into stand-by. the really bad thing is that the sistem freazes when the boot loader screen (Windows XP) appears.
i tried a different psu - the same thing happend. a new hdd - the same.
my hdd can't be the problem since i mounted it on another pc and it worked flawlessly.
the graphics card doesn't really fit smoothly. could this be a problem???
i could use any hlp so please give me some ideas.

my configuration:
mb: asus k8ne socket 754 (latest bios version)
cpu: amd sempron 2800+ 64 bit socket 754 rev E6
ram: 2x256 ddr433 kingmax
hdd: western digital 80 gb s-ata 8mb cache
video: palit daytona geforce 3 ti200
psu: prolink 400W

Take in account that a good designed heatsink MUST be hotter than the device it is cooling.
Anyway you should feel your fingers burning over 50 °C that too much (temp difference is normally 5-10°C) so I think the BIOS readout is wrong.
The southbridge getting hot can be the chip itself damaged or a peripheral device (IDE, SATA, USB).
Check accurately all USB connections.

i don't have any usb devices on my system.
regarding the heatsink temperature i can say for sure that is way over what the normal temperature should be. when the system was working well the south bridge's radiator was hot but surely much cooler than now.
anyway thanks for your comment

The heatsink cannot be hotter than what it is cooling, it goes against the law of thermodynamics. You want the heatsink to be as cool as possible. If the heatsink is cool there are 2 possibilities:

1) You haven't connected your heatsink properly and so it isn't extracting heat from the component
or
2) The heatsink is connected properly and is spreading out the heat enough that the temperature isn't hot.

What is your chasis temp?

If you open the case and the ambient temp is HOT not slighty warm you may have an overheting problem... Have you checked how your cpus heatsink is doing? What are your cpu temps?

Alot of stuff unanswered.... Unlikely that it is an ambient temp thing since it happens on startup (unless it was already on for a while).

So you might want to test/reseat your cpu heatsink.

Are all your fans running?

there is nothing wrong with the cpu heatsink. the cpu temp doesn't go over 45 celsius in full load.
the case temp is good as well. i have 2 case fans that do the job.
the problem is the chipset's heatsink ( south bridge). i never tried to manually ajust it. everithing on the mb is just the way i bought it. i don't know if this makes any difference but i never had a pci device attached.

I Hope i could solve your problem

Firstly you change the bios to its default settings

IF STILL THE PROBLEM PERSISTS increase your ram you didnt mentioned about your ram.I think i am sureshot that doing so would solve up your problem.

WELL IF YOU could not load bios defaults try CLRTC should be given in the manual of your motherboard


I think you would get that flawless running again

If your hard drive makes click click noises it means a bad HDD (the read/write head is hitting the side (inside the HDD) of the HDD casing). when you try to use a different HDD is it brand new out of the box nothing on it, or does it have data on it. Try with out the HDD connected and see if it still takes 1 to 2 minutes. IF it doesnt then you got bad HDD. ive had a system with 2 HDD's in it that did the same thing when the 2nd onewent bad. all it had on it was data, no OS or anything. when i unplugged it everything worked fine.

Well i also had an old PATA hdd it gave click sound and was not detecting the hdd i seriously say you cant believe it was the problem of the PSU seriously.Sorry i did'nt saw your post correctly but increasing ram wont do.This thing can do.

let's see if I can help OK.

Everything that your describing says your having issues with your motherboard chip set. The hanging when components are detected, the hot to the touch heat sink etc. I would recommend two things, take your pick. buy a new north bridge fan, go to compusa or wherever and see if it is simply over heating, or you can add some additional cooling to the north bridge for example take a case fan and just point it at it, see if that cools it down.

either that or you can buy a new motherboard for a test.

Make sure y our motherboard has the latest bios. Do you over clock at all? Also does the heat sink on the chip set feel loose at all? Is it possible it's not making contact with the chip set? I don't know why it would be reading the temp as being only 35c if its running that hot, either the motherboard is going, you have a bad peripheral or the ambient air temp is very high.

Hope some of that helps. good luck!

thank u all guys. a have the up-date of thew story.
my western digital 80Gb Jd hard drive is ok. trhe only prblem it had was the fact the jumpers werrent set right.
the motherboard was toast. it wouldn't work at all and i had to change it.
i think it's some kind of incompatibility betwin the mb and the hdd. even with the jumpers set correctly it still has some long times when starting. this happens rarely but the problem hasn't disappered.
i don't know exeactly what the isue is but i hope some of u have learnt something out of this: do not buy asus k8n-e because it's not the best deal by far.
good luck and the best !

Yeah everything pointed to the motherboard, all components should be fine even if you went out and bought the very same model. it was probably a bad capacitor or something. Glad you figured it out, computers consist of so many different components from different manufacturers its amazing they work at all. It is amazing really isn't it? And to think we take that for granted everyday we turn it on and use it.