Fed up with A7N8X Deluxe...

[God]

First board lasted around a month before dying from BIOS corruption.

Bought a second one, which too died from the same thing a couple of weeks
later.

Today I received a *third* mobo. Put in CPU / RAM / PCI vid card.

Board defaults to 100Mhz FSB (I've got a 166 part, a Barton 2500+). I go in
BIOS, set FSB to 166.

Hit F10 (Save & exit), now the board won't boot.....

No boot block recovery either... floppy doesn't even seek...

The board lasted around 10 seconds...




I know it's not the CPU or RAM. Both work fine on that shitty POS I'm now
(still) using, a crappy el-cheapo board.

WTF is wrong with ASUS?

I need the data on my SATA drives. I'm using a RAID0 config. So I need a
board (or add-on card) with a 3112 Sata controller. So basically I'm
****ed...

 

[Alan]

What Ram are you using? I know you say it isn't the ram, but this chipset
is very particular.

I had exactly the same problem using 2 x 512 Samsung 3200 , although it is
recommended by Asus, and passed with memtest. I took the board back and it
was tested and replaced, a second board the same thing happened. The dealer
insisted it must be the board. I refused the new board, (or to select
another) and purchased new OCZ 3500 ram (more than 2x the cost), I haven't
had a problem since.

Hope this helps,

Alan

 

[JonnyCab®]

I'm using 2 sticks of Corsair 512MB XMS 3200 CAS2 in dual mode.

Not one lockup---ever.

 

[God]

Corsair PC3200 (works fine in other mobo). In fact, I'm typing on that exact
same RAM & CPU...

 

[God]

Maybe some of us are just lucky or maybe he forgot to pray to the
Silicon Gods? ;p

Last night I tried voodoo incantations, I sacrificed a cat to the hardware
gods. Tonight I'm gonna try sacrificing a Virgin too...

Do you think a rain dance could help?

No seriously, I'm taking the board back to the store in around half an
hour...

copy data onto another HD, get reimbursed, and never touch that board ever
again. (Sad, since the board has everything on it...)

 

[ct]

I have built two a7n8x computers with no problems except the "memory fails
message" by the little lady occasionally.
One thing I never see much on here is about proper handling of these
electronics. You need to us p[roper ESD (electro static discharge)
procedures when handling and installing these boards. Too much to explain
here, but look it up on Google or yahoo and do what it sez.
One little static charge can zap one of these boards in a heartbeat and it
may not show up for some time or maybe immediately. I worked for phone
Company and handled $50,000 boards and we did so very carefully (at least
most of us did).

I am using cheap PNY ram on one and high priced Corsair on other and can
tell no difference with amd 2500 Barton cpu.
Also, a tip, if you want a quieter machine get a Antec True Blue 400 watt
plus power supply and a vantec aeroflow tmd cpu cooler!

 

[God]

I know about ESD (I studied in Avionics)

I've been building my machines for the last 10 years.

Never had any problems (except for those three boards, all the same model)

Google it, Bios death is pretty frequent on those boards...

I have built two a7n8x computers with no problems except the "memory fails
message" by the little lady occasionally.
One thing I never see much on here is about proper handling of these
electronics. You need to us p[roper ESD (electro static discharge)
procedures when handling and installing these boards. Too much to explain
here, but look it up on Google or yahoo and do what it sez.
One little static charge can zap one of these boards in a heartbeat and it
may not show up for some time or maybe immediately. I worked for phone
Company and handled $50,000 boards and we did so very carefully (at least
most of us did).

I am using cheap PNY ram on one and high priced Corsair on other and can
tell no difference with amd 2500 Barton cpu.
Also, a tip, if you want a quieter machine get a Antec True Blue 400 watt
plus power supply and a vantec aeroflow tmd cpu cooler!

Corsair PC3200 (works fine in other mobo). In fact, I'm typing on that exact
same RAM & CPU...

it

is and
it

I

go I'm
now

need

a

 

[Len]

I've watched an 18 year old and a 16 year old build systems with this board
from scratch! They have gone in and played with CMOS settings (trying to
overclock) time and time again without a problem!

They both run Windows XP Pro which is about as tough on hardware as any MS
OS. One has a Barton 2500+ the other a T'bred 2100+ the 18 year old is
using SATA Raid 0 on this board. Both boards have been running for several
months!

You should be pretty shame faced to state that after 10 years of building
computers you can trash 3 THREE MB's! That is probably the record!

Fed up with people who don't have a clue trashing systems and blaming it on
the hardware!

Just my 2 cents...
Len

I know about ESD (I studied in Avionics)

I've been building my machines for the last 10 years.

Never had any problems (except for those three boards, all the same model)

Google it, Bios death is pretty frequent on those boards...

I have built two a7n8x computers with no problems except the "memory fails
message" by the little lady occasionally.
One thing I never see much on here is about proper handling of these
electronics. You need to us p[roper ESD (electro static discharge)
procedures when handling and installing these boards. Too much to explain
here, but look it up on Google or yahoo and do what it sez.
One little static charge can zap one of these boards in a heartbeat and it
may not show up for some time or maybe immediately. I worked for phone
Company and handled $50,000 boards and we did so very carefully (at least
most of us did).

I am using cheap PNY ram on one and high priced Corsair on other and can
tell no difference with amd 2500 Barton cpu.
Also, a tip, if you want a quieter machine get a Antec True Blue 400 watt
plus power supply and a vantec aeroflow tmd cpu cooler!

Corsair PC3200 (works fine in other mobo). In fact, I'm typing on that exact
same RAM & CPU...


What Ram are you using? I know you say it isn't the ram, but this chipset
is very particular.

I had exactly the same problem using 2 x 512 Samsung 3200 , although

it

is
recommended by Asus, and passed with memtest. I took the board back and
it
was tested and replaced, a second board the same thing happened. The
dealer
insisted it must be the board. I refused the new board, (or to select
another) and purchased new OCZ 3500 ram (more than 2x the cost), I haven't
had a problem since.

Hope this helps,

Alan



First board lasted around a month before dying from BIOS corruption.

Bought a second one, which too died from the same thing a couple of
weeks
later.

Today I received a *third* mobo. Put in CPU / RAM / PCI vid card.

Board defaults to 100Mhz FSB (I've got a 166 part, a Barton

2500+).

I need

 

[MrDancer]

You should be pretty shame faced to state that after 10 years of building
computers you can trash 3 THREE MB's! That is probably the record!

Fed up with people who don't have a clue trashing systems and blaming it on
the hardware!

FWIW, my first A7N8X D was FUBAR'ed. It's the 6th or 7th computer I've
built, but this is the first one that had problems. It would always freeze
when the ASUS splash screen came on at bootup. I tried everything,
different RAM, different CPU, different jumper settings, cleared CMOS in
between all those, etc. and nothing.... finally RMA'd the mobo, new one
came in and it installed perfectly. So, yeah, some of these mobos are
defective, although three in a row seems a little unbelievable.

 

[God]

I'm really sorry...

Never realised you where the supreme being.

Has it occured to you the three mobos I was talking about were those A7N8X
Dx boards?

I've built the following over the years...

-486 elcheapo board (in fact, 3-4 systems)
-P166 Asus TXP4 (later enhanced with a 266Mhz K6-2)
-Abit BH6 with Celly 300a@450
-Abit BP6 with dual Cellys 400@600
-Asus P3V4x with P3/533b (now my dad's machine)
-Asus CuV4x with P3/667 (733 and 933 later on)
-Gigabyte with P3-800 (still in use)
-Gigabyte with Cel2 800@1200
-ECS crappy board with 2100+ Palomino
-A7N8X (three dead) with Barton 2500+

Along with a couple of rackmounts for my friends (dual Xeons & MPs)

Given the fact that a crappy board (ECS) runs better than my three
A7Nsomething, did it ever come to you there could be a problem with those
boards?

(considering that I'm working in IT, & that I was in Avionics for a while,
someone might think I know a thing or two about ESD & such...)

Assembling a PC is kinda child's play when you're able to repair auto-pilots
& Radar systems.

So if you're not happy, just don't ****ing read my posts. Now go crawl back
under that rock of yours.

I've watched an 18 year old and a 16 year old build systems with this board
from scratch! They have gone in and played with CMOS settings (trying to
overclock) time and time again without a problem!

They both run Windows XP Pro which is about as tough on hardware as any MS
OS. One has a Barton 2500+ the other a T'bred 2100+ the 18 year old is
using SATA Raid 0 on this board. Both boards have been running for several
months!

You should be pretty shame faced to state that after 10 years of building
computers you can trash 3 THREE MB's! That is probably the record!

Fed up with people who don't have a clue trashing systems and blaming it on
the hardware!

Just my 2 cents...
Len

I know about ESD (I studied in Avionics)

I've been building my machines for the last 10 years.

Never had any problems (except for those three boards, all the same model)

Google it, Bios death is pretty frequent on those boards...

I have built two a7n8x computers with no problems except the "memory fails
message" by the little lady occasionally.
One thing I never see much on here is about proper handling of these
electronics. You need to us p[roper ESD (electro static discharge)
procedures when handling and installing these boards. Too much to explain
here, but look it up on Google or yahoo and do what it sez.
One little static charge can zap one of these boards in a heartbeat

and

it although
it back
and 2500+). POS
I'm I
need