Heya guys
Just a little caution about something I did that damaged my motherboard. I have an ABIT SA6R mobo with a P3-700 on it. I had been using all 3 fan headers on the motherboard, one for the cpu fan, one for a normal case fan, and one for an rpm monitored fan in the power supply.
My computer abruptly stopped working a few days ago and wouldn't even power up correctly. It was clearly a serious hardware failure and I couldn't even get into BIOS let alone boot the computer completely. It turned out that several capacitors on the mobo are popped/burnt/whatever, and the computer works completely normally if I unplug the power supply fan from the motherboard header.
I only figured it out when I managed to get it to POST and enter the BIOS and saw that the case and PS fan speeds were being reported only intermittantly even though they were turning at normal speed. The lesson here is don't plug any extra fans into your motherboard unless absolutely necessary. I still have the cpu fan plugged in to the mobo so I can monitor it and prevent burning up the cpu, but that's it.
YMMV, but not using a pair of 50 cent plug adaptors nearly cost me a $150 mobo.
