Burnt offering : My 8HKA+ obit

[Paolo]

SOB!. Well it lasted about a year running an xp1600+ oc'ed to FSB 150 and 3 sticks of 256meg crucial pc2100 ram @cas2 without a hiccup. Gradually towards the end it gave in to the infamous 5v problem. The 5v line kept dropping into the 4's and I started getting random reboots. I opened my box Friday night to find the atx power plug essentially hot glued together by the melting of the plastic around one of the 5v lines. In fact all the 5v leads looked burned from all the current demands. I had to break the atx plug to get it apart !

The thought of starting the weekend w/o my 'puter was too grim. So I bought the only locally available M/B I could find on Saturday, an Abit KX7-333. Paid premium for it too. Contrary to what I had read on the web, it accepted all 3 sticks of my crucial DDR ram, and I am able to run them at cas2 and at the 150 FSB, though I have to detune the other memory settings somewhat to run Prime95 "torture test" w/o error. Pretty good for unregistered unbuffered ram !

Nice board to have to settle for in a pinch. Runs a bit cooler and w/ better 5v values than the damaged Epox. Since I have the part and it looks doable, I think I will have a go at soldering in a new ATX plug to resurrect the 8KHA+. But probably only for a non or minimally overclocked setup. It was a great board, but the voltage problem was definitely its achilles heel. Shame on Epox for that design flaw! :|

 

[Insane3D]

The only Epox board with voltage problems with certain PSU was the 8K7A series. The 8KHA+ had a much better tri-phase power supply circuitry that was excellent. Did it even dawn on you it might have been your PSU? The 8KHA+ was recently voted one of the most stable AMD boards to date beating out several Asus and Abit ones. It's actually quite normal to have the +5V line be slightly below 5v. I've seen very few Athlon boards that have this figure above 5V...

 

[Paolo]

Insane3D, how could it have been the P/S (in my case an ENERMAX 431v)? The P/S merely supplies (or doesn't) the voltage/current demands of the each line; in this case the 5v lines, which were demanding so much current that all my 5v connectors at the ATX plug became overheated and corroded. Thats why on both the epox 8KHA+ and the 8K7A ( I have both), the 5v voltages tend to run below 5volts.

Hey, and what about some sympathy? This is my motherboard that got fried here !

 

[Killrose]

Hmm...what revision is that 8HKA+, i'll have to check mine. Also, why not get an RMA?

 

[Paolo]

Can't remember and I'm at work now ( Will check it out and report after I get home). I don't know if I can RMA it as it has been over a year, and I o/c'ed it (no apologies about that !) which kind of violates the warranty I think. That is if one wants to be honest about these things ........