Replacement for unstable ASUS P5QL-VM EPU?

[ioplex]

Hi All,

After about a year of running happily without any environmental changes that I know of, it seems the motherboard in my ASUS Essentio CM5570-AP002 has become unstable. Sometimes the boot drive is not recognised. And if it is, sometimes it kernel panics. And if it boots, the network invariably quits 10 seconds into trying to copy data off the machine. I was able to read large amounts of data from the drive using an external cradle connected to another machine so it's not the disk. I tried using each of the 3 DIMMs by themselves with no change in behavior. So I think it's the motherboard.

So the question is, can I just get any new Micro ATX motherboard? The current specs are:

ASUS P5QL-VM EPU
PCIE X16 20
DDR3 240 pin DIMM 1066 (oc) / 800 / 667
LGA 775
Intel G43

Can someone recommend a replacement?

Something that had an eSATA port would be a plus.

I would also be interested in getting something with a CPU that has VT-x or AMD-v (virtualization features) since the machine is basically only used for running VMWare VMs (and as storage for backups).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Mike

 

[mosox]

i think you have DDR2 ram. How about that?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.572324
You can use your RAM.

 

[ioplex]

This definitely looks like a possibility. It's not much more than buying a board for the existing E5300. I just need to pull the old board out and make sure there are no obvious cable / connectivity problems.

However it does use significantly more power. Does anyone know if I can mess with the clocking of this GIGABYTE board? Specifically, I'm thinking about underclocking so that it runs cool and quiet.

 

[mosox]

For VT you need some power and an extra core is very useful. You can lower the CPU voltage to 1.2-1.24 without underclocking or even more with a bit of that. There's this one but more expensive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103917
but the other one runs cool and quiet too (the mobo has a cool$quiet feature, it underclocks the CPU automatically when more power is not needed).

 

[ioplex]

Well I pulled out the board and I see a few problems.

1) The power supply is only 115 watts whereas the AMD II X3 is 95 watts itself.

2) The CPU power connector from the power supply is 4 pins whereas the GIGABYTE board has an 8 pin connector.

Searching all of the other possibilities I get these boards:

Foxconn G41M-S
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186185
This board looks VERY much like the ASUS P5QL-VM EPU
It doesn't look like it has connectors for all the extra card reader jazz and extra USB ports but I don't care. My only concern would be the quality of the board.

ASUS P5QL-VM DO/CSM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131401
This looks like basically the newer model of the current board. I suspect this would be the most likely to function with the existing power supply, CPU and memory.

And some Intel boards that don't have VGA but I think I might have an extra DVI cable around:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121389
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121355

Is the Foxconn board not worth messing around with?

Mike

 

[mosox]

Get another PSU, that one is crap. You can use 4 pin in 8 pin but get a new PSU.

 

[ioplex]

Actually I was wrong. It's a 250 watt PSU (300 watts peak). I ordered the GIGABYTE / AMD II X3 combo originally recommended. Let's see what happens with that.

Incidentally, for posterity, I flashed the BIOS (using the latest ROM on a USB thumb drive and the ASUS EZ Flash 2 utility) but the newer BIOS produced no improvement. It still fails to even recognize the drive during POST. The AMIBIOS does not appear to allow changing the clock speed or ratio (which might have improved stability). But the fact that it ran well for a year and suddenly does not indicates pretty clearly that something burned out somewhere so I might as well take the opportunity to upgrade the mobo and CPU.

I'll try to follow up with the result but if I get distracted (and I am easily distracted), thanks very much for the guidance.

Mike

 

[ioplex]

Best answer selected by ioplex.

 

[ratspitt]

Actually I was wrong. It's a 250 watt PSU (300 watts peak). I ordered the GIGABYTE / AMD II X3 combo originally recommended. Let's see what happens with that.

Incidentally, for posterity, I flashed the BIOS (using the latest ROM on a USB thumb drive and the ASUS EZ Flash 2 utility) but the newer BIOS produced no improvement. It still fails to even recognize the drive during POST. The AMIBIOS does not appear to allow changing the clock speed or ratio (which might have improved stability). But the fact that it ran well for a year and suddenly does not indicates pretty clearly that something burned out somewhere so I might as well take the opportunity to upgrade the mobo and CPU.

I'll try to follow up with the result but if I get distracted (and I am easily distracted), thanks very much for the guidance.

Mike

I had issues with this mb restarting randomly. i found 3 bad capacitors on the mb . look at the capacitors and if any of them have a domed top . they top should be flat . google image bad capacitors for examples
im not that great with a soldering iron and i replaced them in about 30 min cost of repair under 5$

 

[rcallen77]

@ratspitt is spot on.
I had the same exact problem. 6 bad electrolytic capacitors. Replaced them and the motherboard is good as new.
Ended up putting a new HD thinking that was the problem but it was the capacitors all along.