Two bad 8RDA mobos in a row. Should have bought ASUS.

[Grminalac]

Well,

I recieved my first 8RDA motherboard about a week and a half ago. It did not work. C1 errors regardless of what type of memory I used. Tried everything after several emails to EPOX and no fixes. They advised RMA to newegg. I held back complaints because mistakes do happen.

Yesterday I get my replacement motherboard. Plug in memory CPU, and video card. No C1 error, everything looks good.
So I'm installing windows, everything seems ok, until I do a couple restarts. Now about 50% of the time no video, just a blinking monitor. The system seems to boot correctly you hear hard drive ect. and it appears to load. Just no video. I have to shut the system off/on 3-4 times until click the monitor turns on at POST.

A few oddites. Sometimes I have noticed that although I get no display about 30-40 seconds after power on. 'CLICK' the monitor comes on showing the windows XP login. Thats wierd....


I have tried everything imagineable...

I am running a XP1800, 1 gig of kingston value ram (infineon chips) 2X512 sticks. A Abit siluro GForce4,4400ti.
Everything is configured correctly, I updated the BIOS. Nothing is overclocked at all, in fact I even upped the core voltage a bit to the CPU, MEMORY, AGP bus... dropped the memory to the slowest timing settings, even tried running the FSB at 100 mhz... Nothing seems to work, I still get no video 50% of the time...


The geforce and monitor are perfect, they work just great with my other system...

Looks like this board is going to return to newegg... No RMA, just a return I am going to get an ASUS nforce board. This is going to be the last time I buy a less reliable board to save money. With the 2 returns plus 15% restock fee I could have paid for the ASUS nforce deluxe.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Grminalac
Well,

I recieved my first 8RDA motherboard about a week and a half ago. It did not work. C1 errors regardless of what type of memory I used. Tried everything after several emails to EPOX and no fixes. They advised RMA to newegg. I held back complaints because mistakes do happen.

Yesterday I get my replacement motherboard. Plug in memory CPU, and video card. No C1 error, everything looks good.
So I'm installing windows, everything seems ok, until I do a couple restarts. Now about 50% of the time no video, just a blinking monitor. The system seems to boot correctly you hear hard drive ect. and it appears to load. Just no video. I have to shut the system off/on 3-4 times until click the monitor turns on at POST.

A few oddites. Sometimes I have noticed that although I get no display about 30-40 seconds after power on. 'CLICK' the monitor comes on showing the windows XP login. Thats wierd....


I have tried everything imagineable...

I am running a XP1800, 1 gig of kingston value ram (infineon chips) 2X512 sticks. A Abit siluro GForce4,4400ti.
Everything is configured correctly, I updated the BIOS. Nothing is overclocked at all, in fact I even upped the core voltage a bit to the CPU, MEMORY, AGP bus... dropped the memory to the slowest timing settings, even tried running the FSB at 100 mhz... Nothing seems to work, I still get no video 50% of the time...


The geforce and monitor are perfect, they work just great with my other system...

Looks like this board is going to return to newegg... No RMA, just a return I am going to get an ASUS nforce board. This is going to be the last time I buy a less reliable board to save money. With the 2 returns plus 15% restock fee I could have paid for the ASUS nforce deluxe.

That makes little sense. The board could be bad. 2 boards in a row being bad doen't mean Epox is less reliable or a crappy manufacturer. It means like I said before: bad boards are made in batches, so getting more than one is common.

Try a different supplier. Asus is no more reliable the Epox. Asus has bad batches of boards too.

I also see no mention of your PSU. Maybe it is having a problem? What PSU do you have?

 

[mechBgon]

Did you try a different video card in the EPoX, though? Power supply is a quality-name unit with 300W or higher? Did you plug in any front-USB wiring or low-rpm fans on the EPoX? I guess it's too late to try to help you troubleshoot, but if you have problems with the Asus as well, let us know.

 

[mechBgon]

One other thing I've seen cause problems, incidentally, is people mis-jumpering their WD hard drive. If it's solo on a cable, it needs to be set as Single Drive.

 

[Grminalac]

Well, I have a Antec 350 watt power supply unit that is relatively new and worked well with my K7S5A, which is a 6 layer design and required a good amount of power. All compnents save for motherboard and ram were taken off the ECS motherboard.

As for the video card I have swapped in a Voodoo5, but the board would not even boot.

As for any modifications, to make sure the board isn't grounding out. I have my mobo out of the case on the static shield, as advised by epox. Only fans plugged in the unit are the HSF. I have all unneccesary options disabled, sound, game port ect... and have only recently plugged in a 3com NIC to download some updates.

I would return the unit and get another epox board from another vendor, but I have wasted enough time/postage/money with this manufacturer.


EDIT: Actually i think the k7S5A is a 7 layer design..

 

[Grminalac]

Oh yes I neglected to mention, i do have 2 WD1000JB drives, but they are plugged into a promise fastrack1000tx raid card.

But i removed the card and still had no video on boot several times, unfortunetly I cannot load windows without that card installed for further testing.

 

[Iron Woode]

I sure hope that Voodoo5 isn't a 3.3 volt card.

If it is, you may have just toasted your board.

 

[mechBgon]

Just out of curiosity, was the HSF a low-rpm or variable-RPM unit? The Antec SL350 rules out inadequate power, good choice there. Good luck with the new board, anyway.

 

[Grminalac]

Not sure, The CPU is AMD retail as is the HSF. I'm not overly concerned about overclocking, just reliability.


I actually liked the epox, the digital readout, the layout of the board, save for the ram clips was nice. But I don't feel like waiting another week to get my comp working again, only to maybe have another RMA.

Hopefully the ASUS will work well.

 

[Grminalac]

BTW, i have not sent in the RMA yet or ordered the asus. No point doing that till monday anyway. So if anyone has any ideas on how this can be fixed please feel free to provide them

 

[mechBgon]

For starters, if you plugged in any front-USB case wiring on the USB3 header, pull that off.

The stock thermal pad on the heatsink is intended to be a one-use-only thing, so hopefully you cleaned off the remains of the used pad at this point, and are using a quality thermal grease in its place. The board does have thermal shut-down circuitry which will activate within less than 1 second of power-on if the CPU is not getting good thermal transfer to the heatsink. This right here could be the problem, along with the possibility of reversing the heatsink (the end of the clip with the screwdriver receptacle should be at the top of the board facing the PSU, as inconvenient as that may be).

Beyond that, I'd try just one stick of RAM at a time, with zero drives plugged in, and see what happens there.

 

[Grminalac]

Will try a memory stick at a time, although. I hate doing that with this board as I have to remove the video card every time.

I am using arctic silver 2 HSP.

The board boots up sometimes even though it does not show video as you see HDD run, it checks floppies ect.. and the output displays FF.

Actually i'm using the board right now to post this.. Its only about 50% of the time I get no video, I have to power off/on a few times until the monitor clicks.

I have a good monitor that is relatively new and works on other machines, so i ruled that out.

 

[mechBgon]

Maybe try laying the mobo on cardboard, too. I've seen at least one person remark that his board was not liking being on the antistatic bag (maybe it creates current leaks or something). I don't know if you have any other boards to test the CPU in, but that might be worth a shot too.

 

[Grminalac]

I just switched the ram around actually I have the board lying on the foam insert and then on top of the antistatic bag. It has not screwed up but I have only reset it about 4 times. i have my fingers crossed. Maybe I will get lucky.

Yes the cpu works fine in my ecs motherboard.