I've been waiting for over two years to upgrade my computer, and I FINALLY earned enough to pay for all the parts, finally got them, and when I threw everything together yesterday, I discovered that my Shuttle AK31 r2 motherboard was bad, at least I thought so, so I RMA'd it.
Problem #1: it locks up in the PC Health section of the BIOS. I go in there, can look at temps and fan RPMs changing for a second or so, then they all stop updating. I can't get out of that section unless I CTL-ALT-DEL.
Problem #2: Win2K install failed during the *file copy* part. At the very beginning when it's copying files over to start the install my system kept shutting off. I changed the memory timing to 2T (I think that's what it is...I read somewhere that it's the less aggressive method, but mind you, everything was still in spec at this point) and the AGP aperture size to 128 Mb instead of 256, and it continued with the install, where it produced....
Problem #3: system would either lock up, spontaneously reboot, or lock up with all sorts of graphic corruption on the screen during the hardware detection phase.
I pulled all the cards in the system except the video card (a Gainward Geforce2 Pro/450 with a Blorb and TT heatsinks on it) and the SCSI card I running my drives from, and I got the same problem. I bought some DDR-SDRAM from Crucial in May, and that's what I was using, but I tried swapping it out for Crucial RAM bought last week with no change. It's not a heat problem because it's only an un-overclocked Duron 750 with a Thermaltake Super Mini Orb on it. Before locking up, the BIOS said it was idling at 90F, so that's well within tolerance range. There was plenty of Arctic Silver between the chip and the fan, so heat was transferring well, plus it wasn't overheating. I was about ready to switch out my video card to see if that was the problem, but this sucker's locking up in *BIOS*. Gotta be something wrong, right? I flashed it to the latest version, and that didn't even fix it. So I RMA'd it and bought an Epox 8KHA by UPS 2nd Day Air. Yes, I know I should have gone with the 8K7A as that's the motherboard of the hour, but no one has it in stock right now at a decent price, and price is the bottom line in this upgrade. And when it really comes down to it, there's no real difference between those two motherboards, quality-wise, at least. Besides, I don't need any recommendations for a board anymore so let's just stick to my immediate problem.
So was I right to RMA this sucker? I didn't swap the video card, but could that have actually been causing the problem in the BIOS? I mean this thing locked up at a hardware level, so something's wrong somewhere. I trust the rest of my hardware that I've been using (3Com NIC, Adaptec Ultra160 SCSI card, Hauppauge TV tuner), and I removed the non-essential cards, anyways. There was nothing overclocked in the system, so that theory is out. Anything else I should have checked? Or did I do the right thing?
Problem #1: it locks up in the PC Health section of the BIOS. I go in there, can look at temps and fan RPMs changing for a second or so, then they all stop updating. I can't get out of that section unless I CTL-ALT-DEL.
Problem #2: Win2K install failed during the *file copy* part. At the very beginning when it's copying files over to start the install my system kept shutting off. I changed the memory timing to 2T (I think that's what it is...I read somewhere that it's the less aggressive method, but mind you, everything was still in spec at this point) and the AGP aperture size to 128 Mb instead of 256, and it continued with the install, where it produced....
Problem #3: system would either lock up, spontaneously reboot, or lock up with all sorts of graphic corruption on the screen during the hardware detection phase.
I pulled all the cards in the system except the video card (a Gainward Geforce2 Pro/450 with a Blorb and TT heatsinks on it) and the SCSI card I running my drives from, and I got the same problem. I bought some DDR-SDRAM from Crucial in May, and that's what I was using, but I tried swapping it out for Crucial RAM bought last week with no change. It's not a heat problem because it's only an un-overclocked Duron 750 with a Thermaltake Super Mini Orb on it. Before locking up, the BIOS said it was idling at 90F, so that's well within tolerance range. There was plenty of Arctic Silver between the chip and the fan, so heat was transferring well, plus it wasn't overheating. I was about ready to switch out my video card to see if that was the problem, but this sucker's locking up in *BIOS*. Gotta be something wrong, right? I flashed it to the latest version, and that didn't even fix it. So I RMA'd it and bought an Epox 8KHA by UPS 2nd Day Air. Yes, I know I should have gone with the 8K7A as that's the motherboard of the hour, but no one has it in stock right now at a decent price, and price is the bottom line in this upgrade. And when it really comes down to it, there's no real difference between those two motherboards, quality-wise, at least. Besides, I don't need any recommendations for a board anymore so let's just stick to my immediate problem.
So was I right to RMA this sucker? I didn't swap the video card, but could that have actually been causing the problem in the BIOS? I mean this thing locked up at a hardware level, so something's wrong somewhere. I trust the rest of my hardware that I've been using (3Com NIC, Adaptec Ultra160 SCSI card, Hauppauge TV tuner), and I removed the non-essential cards, anyways. There was nothing overclocked in the system, so that theory is out. Anything else I should have checked? Or did I do the right thing?
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