MoBo/Power Supply Failure

[imported_Moriturus]

I had an odd failure of my mobo, or power supply, or perhaps both, recently. My system is an ECS K7S5A mobo with a 2000+ Athlon XP, an NVidia ti4200 video card, a Soundblaster PC 128 soundcard, a D-Link 503TX+ LAN card, and a standard CD-ROM, 80-gig HD, and floppy drive. The computer started just going into what appeared to be some kind of state of suspension at random thimes; it would switch to a blank screen, bu the fan on the CPU would keep running. I swapped memory and video, and when I got into the case to pull the CPU I found that, when I pulled the ATX conector off the mobo, about five of the connectors had various degrees of charredness. In particular, the top left lead connector was almost completely burned, and in fact most of it stayed in the motherboard as black crud when I pulled the connector. Whwn I cracked the PS case, though, I saw nothing amiss. At this point, the connector on coth the mobo and the PS are possibly too damaged to repair. More to the point, until I figure out whether the PS or the mobo is the problem, I don't want to use either. Has anyone else had this problem and if so, found a repair or solution?

 

[o1die]

It's possible your power supply contributed to the problem. Don't try to rma the board to ecs. They will at best charge you $30 or so in handling fees. Check newegg for a refurb board, or even pricewatch for an nforce2 board. The shuttle nforce2 is about $55. For the power supply, I would suggest a sparkle 300w, starting at $20. Get the regular version with sparkle on the label. They also sell an off brand version, which may be inferior. I use a 12cm version ($28 at newegg), and it is able to overclock my p4 by 30% while still maintaining rock steady voltages. If you are using sdram, now's a good time to upgrade to ddram. Prices are reasonable. I just bought some pc3200 at Fry's yesterday for $35 less $15 rebate.

 

[stevennoland]

Sorry to hear about your melt-down. I would highly suggest you stay away from ECS mobo's. I have had first hand experience with these POS's and would aviod them @ all cost. As for your psu, you don't state what brand or model it is. What ever it is, I wouldn't use it again (it might as well have been the culprit of cooking your mobo).

 

[imported_Moriturus]

Originally posted by: o1die
It's possible your power supply contributed to the problem. Don't try to rma the board to ecs. They will at best charge you $30 or so in handling fees. Check newegg for a refurb board, or even pricewatch for an nforce2 board. The shuttle nforce2 is about $55. For the power supply, I would suggest a sparkle 300w, starting at $20. Get the regular version with sparkle on the label. They also sell an off brand version, which may be inferior. I use a 12cm version ($28 at newegg), and it is able to overclock my p4 by 30% while still maintaining rock steady voltages. If you are using sdram, now's a good time to upgrade to ddram. Prices are reasonable. I just bought some pc3200 at Fry's yesterday for $35 less $15 rebate.

Thanks! I'm not getting another K7S5A; I've had enough problems with it. (There's a reason that I'm using add-on LAN and sound when they're both onboard as well.) The nForce2 board is a good idea; I'll probably order one today, after I go get some memory and a PS from Fry's. Does Sparkle make a 400W power supply? I'm starting to think that some more headroom might not be such a bad idea, especially when I'm installing video cards with separate power supply connections nowadays.

BTW, you say that "it's possible your power supply contributed to the problem." Can you tell me what the problem was, and how I might avoid it in the future? The PS is an Antec 300W SmartPower and, while Antecs have declined in quality recently, it still should have had enough power to run this board.

 

[Insidious]

An overvolting PSU could lead to excessive current, but I think it's doubtful that caused this.

I know there are some motherboards that you have to be VERY careful of the current draw from any fan using the motherboard power connectors.

I suspect that either a faulty component created a path for excessive current or your fans were plugged into the motherboard 3-pin connectors rather than powered directly from your PSU (4-pin connector)

Does your video card have a 4-pin power jack on it.... were you using it? If not, that could route excessive power through your motherboard

-Sid

PS: If you fried the contacts in that ATX connector, your motherboard traces probably got cooked as well.. might be hard to see damage (layered PCB) Replacement sounds like a good idea.

 

[imported_Moriturus]

Originally posted by: Insidious
An overvolting PSU could lead to excessive current, but I think it's doubtful that caused this.

I know there are some motherboards that you have to be VERY careful of the current draw from any fan using the motherboard power connectors.

I suspect that either a faulty component created a path for excessive current or your fans were plugged into the motherboard 3-pin connectors rather than powered directly from your PSU (4-pin connector)

Does your video card have a 4-pin power jack on it.... were you using it? If not, that could route excessive power through your motherboard

-Sid

PS: If you fried the contacts in that ATX connector, your motherboard traces probably got cooked as well.. might be hard to see damage (layered PCB) Replacement sounds like a good idea.

BINGO! Yeah, I had a case fan plugged into the mobo; I think I did it recently. I've plugged it into other mobos directly before, but they were better-quality mobos, whereas I've found my ECS mobos (I unfortunately still have two, maybe three) to be pretty mediocre. (A telling discovery: I was stripping both my power supply and my mobo of useable parts before tossing them. I popped off the heatsink ECS put on the Northbridge chip, and it looks like they glued it on with some kind of rubber cement compund; it certainly did not appear to have any heat-conducting qualitites. No wonder the heatsink never got hot . . . ) There was no 4-pin power jack for the video card I was using, so that wasn't the problem. I'm going to get an 4-pin adapter for that case fan before I put it into another case, though.

I noticed that, when I first posted on the forum, an ad for an ECS video card appeared on the left side of the page, probably generated by some text-search engine. Now, how many people reading this thread are going to want to rush out and buy another ECS product? I know I'm never touching anything from ECS ever again; this was just the latest in a series of problems I've had with their motherboards.

 

[o1die]

Sparkle makes a 400w ps which goes for about $55-60. Or, you can get a 14cm coolmax 450 watt for $46 shipped from newegg that will provide additional cooling for your cpu, and has an adjustable fan for quiet running.