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About to RMA asrock 939 dual vsta....

A

aelfwyne

Member
My 939 dual vsta has been nothing but trouble. I have reinstalled Windows, both XP and Vista numerous times and neither is stable. Some problems seem to be outside of windows as well...

It takes a long time to recycle when doing a reboot, sometimes never coming back up unless I powercycle the PSU... The PS/2 ports don't work (not a problem as I normally only use USB devices). It has twice now "lost" hard drives and CD, and won't see them again even after a CMOS reset, unless I switch positions on the cables (seems to need to see a change before it will redetect)... I thought I finally had Vista, at least, running stable... However, the LAN driver has to enter "sleep" mode before it works (this is reported on MSDN forums by others) in Vista... Then Vista started crashing today, so I stuck back in the XP cd to try to get a stable XP running... It took five restarts before the XP installer even started to load, it kept hanging either during BIOS hard drive detection, or before the "press any key to boot from CD" prompt, or right after it...

I'm getting sick of this board.... does everybody else just put up with this kind of stuff, or did I get a bad egg from NewEgg? I really don't want to RMA it as it will leave me without my desktop for god knows how long, since my old motherboard is 90 miles away already.

All of the hardware I'm using now was stable and reliable on the old board (ASUS A8V), which I only got rid of since one of the memory retaining clips was broke, rendering the 2nd set of DIMMs useless. I have an Antec TRUE 430 PSU, so power is not a concern. Note that's a TruePower PSU, not the cheaper SmartPower.

Has anybody here ever had to deal with newegg on an RMA part? How long do they take to do a return - and is their any chance of a cross-ship, where I don't have to wait till they receive the old part for them to send the new?
 
I sent in a board to newegg once, and it took about 9 days turnaround by fedex ground. I would call newegg for options. I've never had a problem speaking with one of their reps. If you're still using an agp card, the pickings are slim for boards. Newegg still sells 2 epox boards (nforce3 and kt800 pro), but they get mixed reviews. They also sell a biostar Nf4st-a9 that uses either agp or pci-e, and it's on sale for $56 shipped.
 
That Biostar board has pseudo-AGP on the PCI bus, which only works with AGP cards that still do 2x mode. 4x/8x cards aren't electrically compatible to that nonsense.

One just can't do proper AGP alongside PCIE unless it's
(a) a P4 board with VIA KT880pro chipset
(b) any K8 PCIE chipset with an AMD8151 AGP tunnel bolted onto the HyperTransport.
(c) any K8 AGP chipset with an ULi 1695 PCIE tunnel bolted onto the HT.

The ASRock board is of category (c).
 
Originally posted by: aelfwyne
My 939 dual vsta has been nothing but trouble. I have reinstalled Windows, both XP and Vista numerous times and neither is stable. Some problems seem to be outside of windows as well...

It takes a long time to recycle when doing a reboot, sometimes never coming back up unless I powercycle the PSU... The PS/2 ports don't work (not a problem as I normally only use USB devices). It has twice now "lost" hard drives and CD, and won't see them again even after a CMOS reset, unless I switch positions on the cables (seems to need to see a change before it will redetect)... I thought I finally had Vista, at least, running stable... However, the LAN driver has to enter "sleep" mode before it works (this is reported on MSDN forums by others) in Vista... Then Vista started crashing today, so I stuck back in the XP cd to try to get a stable XP running... It took five restarts before the XP installer even started to load, it kept hanging either during BIOS hard drive detection, or before the "press any key to boot from CD" prompt, or right after it...

I'm getting sick of this board.... does everybody else just put up with this kind of stuff, or did I get a bad egg from NewEgg? I really don't want to RMA it as it will leave me without my desktop for god knows how long, since my old motherboard is 90 miles away already.

All of the hardware I'm using now was stable and reliable on the old board (ASUS A8V), which I only got rid of since one of the memory retaining clips was broke, rendering the 2nd set of DIMMs useless. I have an Antec TRUE 430 PSU, so power is not a concern. Note that's a TruePower PSU, not the cheaper SmartPower.

Has anybody here ever had to deal with newegg on an RMA part? How long do they take to do a return - and is their any chance of a cross-ship, where I don't have to wait till they receive the old part for them to send the new?
Click to expand...


Looks like memory problem to me...
 
Nope, not a memory problem. Note where I said all of this was stable in the previous motherboard. If it is a memory problem, it would be due to this motherboard not providing enough voltage. I have it on high, since 2.8v is suggested for my current memory.
 
you have ofcourse flashed to the new 2.2 bios right ???

i have 2 of these, both open box deals for $27.00 each from newegg, and they both had the 1.7 bios , and had the kind of problems you had, but once i flashed all the problems went away.

the only problem i have now is a set of mushkim pc4200 ddr2 2 x 512mb ram will not work in this board, but several sets of pc3200 and pc5300 ddr2 all worked perfectly.

it could be it does not like your ram, what ram are you useing???
 
Actually, the dual-VSTA has different bios than the dual-SATA2.... the latest is 1.3, which is only a very minor update from the 1.2 the board came with. I still flashed it, just in case.

I've noticed that the biggest stability boost comes from turning off Cool'N'Quiet, which I'm rather miffed doesn't work on this board, since I used it all the time on my old board... This board can't handle it though, even at stock speeds... In fact, simply changing the multiplier from within windows manually sends it into fits.... I'm wondering if that is normal for this board?
 
Oh, and I'm using Patriot PC4000 ram.... Not the highest quality, but it has received good reviews from around the tech sites that I've looked on.
 
my bust i saw dual-vsta and instantly thought conroe.

did not even register the 939 part.

ohwell can't really help ya with that board.
 
RMA'd.... waiting on a cross-ship before I send this one back. After reading the reviews on NewEgg, I honestly don't hold out much hope for a replacement board either. I'm wondering if I should have them replace it with a different board instead - but then I'd either be stuck forever on AGP, or have to swap my x800 for something not nearly as good.
 
I cancelled the replacement order, since they're refunding the 939DualVSTA to begin with, and placed an order for a DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra D... a bit more cash... and I was required to buy a new video card, but I found a good deal on an x850xt, and ebayed my x800GTO... which has already sold for $85 buyitnow, apparently I set the price too low!!!
 
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