VIA chipset mobo dying under heavy use?

[ugh]

Hi all,

I have a few friends of mine who are complaining that their VIA chipset based mobo are dying on them under heavy use. Heavy use == 24/7 or > 8 hours per day. They are using an ABIT and a MSI mobo respectively. The failure ranges from dead IDE ports to dead RAM sockets.

Anyone has experienced this b4? I'm kinda worried as I'm using a VIA based chipset mobo myself although I'm not a heavy user.

TIA.

 

[TerryMathews]

I've got an Asus A7V133, which is KT133A based. It's been on, 24x7 for over 2 years now.

 

[Peter]

Dead IDE ports and RAM interfaces are usually caused by ESD carelessness during system assembly, and, more rarely, during operation.

 

[Vette73]

I have built many systems using VIA, and the only problem I have had was a user fault.

I would not be worried.

 

[ugh]

Peter: I thought ESD would have an immediate effect on the components?

Marlin1975: Thanks for the info. A few of my friends are laughing at those of us who bought AMD systems {g}

 

[Peter]

Not necessarily, partially zapped stuff can well start to act up later - or do things that don't get noticed until later.

Then of course, 99 percent of "it worked fine yesterday, I didn't do anything, it suddenly stopped working" complaints are user fried, they're just too thick to admit it.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: ugh
Peter: I thought ESD would have an immediate effect on the components?

Marlin1975: Thanks for the info. A few of my friends are laughing at those of us who bought AMD systems {g}

Anybody that laughs at AMD I tell them to check out my Dual Athlon system

 

[ugh]

Darn, that's scary stuff bout ESD...

Heh, that's human nature Didn't touch it, ain't my fault.... Yeah, rite

 

[ugh]

Anybody that laughs at AMD I tell them to check out my Dual Athlon system

I would LOVE to I have this one friend who just sees AMD systems (CPUs really) as "inadequate" compared to Intel as he's doing video editing. Can't argue with him coz he gets more bang for the buck with a 1.6A -> 2.xGhz.

 

[tcsenter]

Not necessarily, partially zapped stuff can well start to act up later - or do things that don't get noticed until later.

Yep. One classic symptom of an ESD event or even a spike/surge as from lightening which does not take a computer out right away is that the system begins to slowly deteriorate. First you get RAM errors or data corruption, then you start getting some video glitches/artifacts, then you start seeing lock-ups. You begin replacing components as they fail one by one until you've replaced several (if not all of them). This typically happens over the period of a week or two after the damaging event.

Also, a miswired electrical circuit can dramatically accelerate failure, using service wiring that is too small, some contractors aren't just cheap, they're unethical, and use wire that doesn't meet code, as can having a non-existant or poor earth ground, as can having another defective appliance somewhere on that circuit (typically a very high-draw device such as a refridgerator).

 

[mechBgon]

I have a buddy who runs www.thegamebox.net. He has some heavily-used, heavily-equipped game servers on dual-P3 VIA boards. We're talking 1024Mb RAM and three PCI IDE cards in some of them, and I recall him saying he had the world's #1 most heavily-used CounterStrike server at one point. I'm sure there are VIA boards that die, but I don't know if heavy use is going to be the primary factor.

Ah yes, here are system stats for one of them: http://gameserv.thegamebox.net/stats/system/

 

[Lord Demios]

I guess I should post. I am said friend.

My master server was using the MSI 694D Pro v1.0 for about 2 years now. The board has not only been rock solid, but quite a nice bit of hardware. Some of the biggest problems with dual CPU machines and plenty of PCI cards is that your I/O bus just gets slammed. This board not only handled the load, but performed greatly.

The stats on the machine are the same as those found here:
http://www.thegamebox.net/stats/system/

What happened to me was some carelessness on my part. I had a heat sink that was a little too large pushing one of the voltage regulation caps. Because of this, it triggered the cap to die which caused failure of the system. The board is in the process of being replaced by MSI's great coverage plan. I have two other MSI boards in my personal game server systems, and one more in a work machine for a military project.

The other board I have had a lot of luck with is the Tyan 200T.

Right now I have 3 Tyan 200T's, 2 MSI, 1 Asus AMD dual CPU, and 1 Asus ServerWorks Mobo. All of the stats can be seen via
http://www.thegamebox.net/stats/net

Some of the graphs are disabled, but the system stats are there.

LD

P.S. The servers I run that are number one in the US, and top 2 in the world would be my UT servers. You can see the stats at http://www.thegamebox.net/stats/ut (These stats are not complete due to a bug in the program, the next couple weeks the processing will be done on the new stats setup).