Please help me with my 8rda+ problem!

[chrisfrog]

ok, i've posted this on a few boards, gotta figure this out....

ok, start out.....

got an 8rda+, 2400+, and 512mb corsair pc3200 xms for christmas. I could not get this sucker to boot at all. so i ended up rma'ing it back. they said it was fine and sent it back. i had to pay shipping both ways.

i get it back, still would not boot. i was using an enermax 350w psu. the whole time it was gone, i was using that psu on my old system (1.1 tbird). so i finally get it back from them. and i'm sitting at this for a few hours and nothing will happen. i snag an old psu (250w) out of another system and plug it into the motherboard and heatsink fan. it boots....

so i'm thinking wtf. so i go and buy an antec 350w and it boots up just fine. (even though my old psu worked fine on my old system). i had it running for about 1.5 weeks perfectly stable at 195 x 10.5 . i had a alpha 8045 on my old system but in the switch over i lost a few of the plastic pieces to bolt it down so i threw in my old ocz gladiator.

a few days ago, i decided to purchase a thermalright slk800. it arrived today and decided to install it. i had to pull the mobo out to get it in though. so i do that and get it back in and try to boot up...... NOTHING.

after screwing with it, it booted for about 5 seconds and shut off. i smelled a slight burning so i'm freaking out, but it turns out the chip is fine. no problems with that. so i take the hsf off, its making contact just fine and nothing seems to be wrong and i stick it back together.

so i'm trying different things and it finally boots, but shuts off after a few seconds, i pull the jumper off the power pins and it turns back and shuts off (no burning now). i grab my old 350w psu and my other 250. and those will not boot it. yet all those power supplys will turn on when the green and ground wires are shorted. this just blows my mind cause i have had sooo much trouble with this....

i've tried everything that i can think off.... clearing the cmos, removing the battery..... nothing works.

what pisses me off the most, i've built probably about 20-25 computers for people and have never had a problem, yet whenever i do stuff for myself, i have soo many problems.

any suggestings?

specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 2.0ghz @ 2.05 (195 x 10.5) w/ ocz gladiator
Epox 8rda+ nforce2 motherboard

512mb pc3200 corsair xms ram

BFG (old visiontek) Geforce 4 ti4200

Adaptec AHA-2940U2W SCSI Controller

Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum w/ live drive

Creative 6x DVD-rom

Lite-on 48x CD Burner (flashed the firmware to 48x from 40x)

Seagate Baracuda 9gig 7200rpm u2w SCSI ST39175LW

Seagate 18.2gig 7200rpm u2w SCSI 80pin ST118273LC

Western Digital 40gig 7200rpm ata100 (WD400BB)

Western Digital 120gig 7200 SE w/ 8mb Cache (WD1200JB)



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and then:


i was sitting thinking what i could about my mobo, and i go to do the cmos jumper, and i notice heat coming from the mobo.

the only thing that is connected is the psu connector to the mobo and the hsf fan. so i'm feeling around and finally notice my southbridge is burning hot. i mean hot

the computer hasn't been on since last night but the psu has been plugged into it.

i could only keep my finger on there for a second before it started to hurt

ok, so i pulled the psu connector off of the mobo and the southbridge got pretty cold. so i plugged it back in and it got within 5 seconds and i jumpered the power pins and it turned on but as soon as i pulled the jumper off it shut off and won't turn back on again....

i found a digital thermometer at my house, it maxes out at like 108F, but i snapped a pic when it was at 107.2...

keep in mind, this is when the motherboard is off but there is power supply is on.

edit: not when psu is on, but when power is running through it

Pic of the thermometer on the southbridge

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, are you positive that you've got your SLK-800 on in the correct direction? Although its construction isn't like a typical AMD heatsink, it does share a couple of properties in common:

• One end of it has a step cut into the fins to provide the necessary clearance over the solid end of the CPU socket (see Figure 7, 13 and 14 here for the general principle)
• Its clip is asymmetrical, and if the sink and clip are on backwards, the clip's pressure point is not over the CPU core.

On my Thermalright SK-7, I also had the situation depicted in Figure 14 there. The heatsink was on in the correct direction but was too close to the solid-plastic end of the CPU socket. I powered up and it immediately powered down because the CPU core was not in contact with the heatsink and was overheating. I pushed the heatsink away from that end of the CPU socket and it was fine.

Good luck, hope this helps!

 

[chrisfrog]

hmm, thanx for the info, but i don't think that was my problem cause the AS left a nice imprint on the slk800 that is was contacting and the 2400+ will boot on my other motherboard

 

[mechBgon]

I'm re-reading your post again and wondering about the part where you said

so i'm trying different things and it finally boots, but shuts off after a few seconds, i pull the jumper off the power pins and it turns back and shuts off

How's that again? What power pins and why did you have a jumper on them? If you mean the power-switch pins that you'd plug the case's power switch into, then AHA! you are seeing normal behavior. They're not supposed to be connected continously. The case's power button is a momentary-contact switch. If you capped the pins with the jumper, that does the same thing as if you hold the power button down when starting a computer... after 4 to 6 seconds, it takes the hint and turns off again.

The fact that it worked outside the case makes me think something got to touching things where they shouldn't be when you put it into the case. Maybe a stray screw or standoff on the motherboard tray...?

 

[LastRide]

Its also weird that you say the southbridge gets real hot or do you mean the Northbridge?.

 

[chrisfrog]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I'm re-reading your post again and wondering about the part where you said

so i'm trying different things and it finally boots, but shuts off after a few seconds, i pull the jumper off the power pins and it turns back and shuts off

How's that again? What power pins and why did you have a jumper on them? If you mean the power-switch pins that you'd plug the case's power switch into, then AHA! you are seeing normal behavior. They're not supposed to be connected continously. The case's power button is a momentary-contact switch. If you capped the pins with the jumper, that does the same thing as if you hold the power button down when starting a computer... after 4 to 6 seconds, it takes the hint and turns off again.

The fact that it worked outside the case makes me think something got to touching things where they shouldn't be when you put it into the case. Maybe a stray screw or standoff on the motherboard tray...?

i've started this and other boards many times this way, same as the switch works, touch the pins together for a second and it turns on....

what i meant to say was that when i took it off after a second it turned off. haven't been able to get it to boot since....

at the time that i did this the board was sitting on a non conductive surface outside of the case.


@lastride: yeah its the southbridge... the one without the heatsink on the lower half of the board, if you click on the link you can see in the pic which one it is

 

[mechBgon]

The symptoms where the board insists on powering itself off is screaming "THERMAL EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN!" at me. Can you look again at your heatsink, confirm that the end with the screwdriver-tip receptacle in the clip is at the top end of the mobo that would face the power supply, and make sure that the heatsink is slid as far DOWN the clip as possible, away from the end that has the screwdriver-tip receptacle, so it can't hang up on the CPU socket bar?

 

[chrisfrog]

yeah, i've tried a few hsf's, all were seated right

gonna call epox in the morning

 

[mechBgon]

The board has had some issues where it gets boggled by low-rpm or variable-rpm fans, but I don't recall anyone having it shut down on them as a result (unplug them from the mobo's headers if you think this could be contributing to the problem). There are only two things I can think of that will make it shut down that way: a continuous connection on the power-switch pins (button held down or stuck internally) or thermal emergency signal from the CPU's core diode. Since you said there was a slight burning smell I thought of the latter. But you say the CPU still works?

If the board were to start and then just stall, then the onboard LED readout might have some clues to give, but it sounds like that's not the case? Anyway, sorry to hear about the aggravations I'm getting an 8RDA+ for my office system this week, we'll see how it goes.

 

[Viper96720]

Hope you aren't hooking all that stuffup and trying to boot it up.

 

[chrisfrog]

blah, i forgot to mention in the original post that i only had the mobo and heatsink fan plugged into the power supply

i think i'm just gonna buy another motherboard, got enough room on my credit card and sell whatever i end up with on ebay

 

[Viper96720]

Yeah some people are having problems with the 8rda+ while others aren't. You would expect it to work plugging in a video card, memory, and hard drive, cpuand power supply. If those components worked in another system. I say sell it or rma it