Re: Suggestions for a good AM2+ mobo?
- From: "John" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:43:57 -0500
"~misfit~" <misfit61nz@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:485b033c$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hey all,
I'm Intel all the way at the moment. However, a friend bought a built-up
'gaming machine' (I've mentioned it before here, it's been nothing but
trouble) using an Asus M3A motherboard, a Phenom 9500 CPU, 1x2GB DDR2 module
and a 9600GT.
The machine's been a nightmare. Firstly it was supplied with a PSU that was
barely capable of 300W (Tt 420W). I replaced it with a reasonable 510W PSU,
reinstalled Windows (don't ask!), updated the BIOS and it seemed alright for
a while. I showed him how to raise vcore if it kept crashing.
Well, yesterday he rang me and asked about a replacement mobo. He's raised
vcore all the way (!) in BIOS, 1.550V and it's still crashing. I expressed
concern at the high voltage but he assured me that the two hardware
monitoring apps I'd given him, HWMonitor and CPU-Z both say that the vcore
is only 1.2xxV when in Windows. I also got him to raise VDIMM to (at the
moment) 2.05V. He doesn't have another stick of DDR2 to try and I only have
what's in this machine and I'm loathe to mess with it. My luck hasn't been
great of late. :-/
I've been sick so I advised him to get a single 1GB stick of DDR2 - 800 and
try that alone. However, if that doesn't work he wants me to advise on a
good mobo. (and fit it, reinstall Windows...) I like Asus personally
(followed by Gigabyte) but the vanilla M3A model that he has, going by
Googling, seems to have been a lemon. As I mentioned, I'm not au fait with
current AMD boards or chipsets so a suggestion or two would be nice. :-)
He'll pay between NZ$200 and $300. (US$150 - $200 by the time it gets here?)
Also, he's said that this is the last time he ever buys a PC on impulse.
I've built the last two machines for him and they've been trouble-free. He's
rather surprised that a PC can be this much trouble, LOL.
Another thing, I've heard that the first Phenoms, the 9x00 range, were
'flaky', that the 9x50 are much better. However, surely they're not *that*
bad that he needs to replace his CPU?
All input appreciated. He's desperate and is going to be calling me soon.
I'll look around but anyone with a positive experience with an AM2+ mobo
that they want to share would be great. Also, any comments on the above;
RAM? CPU?
The clowns that threw this machine together were, IMO, getting rid of
troublesome or slow-moving stock. The PSU was a lemon, the mobo won't work
with LAN drivers off the supplied CD, nobody's buying the 9x00 Phenoms now
the 9x50 ones are around... These guys are that incompetent that they didn't
remove the jumper from the Seagate 500Gb 7200.11 HDD that limits it to SATA
I speed.
Anyway, I digress. Suggestions appreciated. Oh, I'm in New Zealand so mobo
availablility could be limited.
TIA.
--
Shaun.
DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it.
If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to
me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-)
I bought the Asus M3N32-SLI Premium Vista Edition Mobo (AM2) nearly a year ago and ran through four mobos before getting one to POST. But since I did all that, it works fine.
Asus did not like the 500W PSU. As I recall, they wanted more than 30A per rail. Fortunately, the 500W died and they sent me a 650W to replace it. Somehow I had to replace it with an 850W, which had a low 5V rail, so they replaced it--with a 1000W! It was during this time when I was replacing mobos; I don't think the PSUs had anything at all to do with my mobo problems.
The main culprit was the BIOS. Fortunately, they pop in and out easily, however I had to pay shipping ($5US), no big deal. After two suspicious BIOSs, I got it to POST, so further BIOS upgrades were flashable. For some reason, the Asus utility for the BIOS doesn't like to look for it on NTFS disks. The USB disk wasn't working, so fortunately I had an old FAT32 that it could reside on, so all that was another issue.
I had to continually upgrade through the end of the year. nVidia had several goofy things that weren't right. Of course, guessing what was causing problems led me to BIOS, OS, nVidia, Asus, until I finally got it working good.
The only problem right now are BSOD crashes, new since I added a 500GB backup disk. Reformatting didn't help. I'm checking now to see if Asus' PC Probe software is the culprit. I'll take it off and see. I also recently found on the Error log that it was due to a "Driver Power State Failure," which said to run sigverif.exe and it found errors with nVidia components. I am up to date with nVidia, so that isn't going to be an easy one.
The rest of my system is: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6hz 2X 1MB L2 Cache; 4 1GB sticks of Kingston DDR2 DIMMs; and an EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB SLI video card.
John
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Suggestions for a good AM2+ mobo?
- From: ~misfit~
- Re: Suggestions for a good AM2+ mobo?
- References:
- Suggestions for a good AM2+ mobo?
- From: ~misfit~
- Suggestions for a good AM2+ mobo?
- Prev by Date: Re: Is there a trick to installing Intel heatsink/fan assemblies?
- Next by Date: Re: For once, a pleasant download surprise...
- Previous by thread: Re: Suggestions for a good AM2+ mobo?
- Next by thread: Re: Suggestions for a good AM2+ mobo?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
