Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Animal on September 23, 2001, 06:14:00 PM
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Ok, this has been a bad month for me and my gadgets.
I ordered a CD reciever for a car, arrived dead. Waiting for RMA.
My IBM 60GXP hard disk died. Waiting for RMA.
And now.. my ASUS A7V motherboard died; no RMA possible, since some parts fell off.
This is what I'm planning to buy:
Abit KG7 (Non RAID version)
Athlon 266 1333Mhz
256 PC-2100 DDR RAM
A good heatsink.
Keeping the price under $300.
I'm keeping my Geforce 2 GTS. I know its gonna be a bottleneck, but I have no cash to get a geforce 3 for now.
All pieces I will buy from Bunta.com (http://www.bunta.com) they seem to have good prices, and ship to PPR without eating your left ball.
Any suggestions; etc, are welcome.
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If you can ... wait for the new NVidia boards to start showing up.
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Good choices, unless you can get a new VIA kt266a based board. (Asus A7v266 exists already, but it may take some time for the a revision kt266 to be on the boards in stock at retailers.)
You might want to look at www.tomshardware.com (http://www.tomshardware.com) and www.anandtech.com (http://www.anandtech.com) too.
I'd be investing in a good surge surpressor. (How did you kill your MB anyway?)
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One of the black cubic things with two metal legs connected to the board, that thing, fell off for no reason.
Reading a few reviews; though I doubt Ill choose an nVidia motherboard, they have to prove themselves.
bloom25,
gonna check reviews now. if there isnt a big price difference, I'll follow your suggestion.
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BTW, I dont think I'll use an ASUS board again. I know its an excellent brand, but I just dont like parts falling off my PC for no apparent reason.
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I've seen several different places stating different things about this KG7 motherboard. SEVERAL places stated that the board could run 1.4 ghz cpu's. Is the true or false.
RWY
[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: Robert ]
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Animal
Check out www.pricewatch.com (http://www.pricewatch.com)
these are the prices for what you ordered:
KG7 no-RAID Retail Boxed 4dimm $131.00
AMD CPU 1.4ghz 266mhz $110.00
Cooler Master $ 23.00
CRUCIAL 256MB DDR PC2100 $ 35.99
Total $300.00 Includes shipping
RWY
PS you have to go to www.crucial.com (http://www.crucial.com) to get the ram but it is free 2 day shipping.
[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: Robert ]
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I'm buying from www.bunta.com, (http://www.bunta.com,) they have excellent prices, and they sell DDR ram with Micron chips (same as Crucial?)
I found them on pricewatch. I prefer to buy everything from the same vendor, that way I wont have to pay more for shipping
Ive been breaking my head looking for a good heatsink/fan combo that cools well, reasonable noise, and reasonable price.
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I'm using Thermaltake's Volcano 6Cu with shimm-plate and silverpaste, Its quite cheap but keeps my 1,4->1,51Ghz Athlon temps in 47C/117F when running several PiFasts or 3D-Mark 2001.
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Animal, I wonder,...was your system adequately cooled? A friend of mine had a similar situation, different motherboard though.
He had intake and exhaust fans, but they were unbalanced. His intake fan was pulling less air in than his exhaust fan was pushing out.
This caused some dead air spots in the case. The black box with 2 legs you describe sounds like a power resistor. These get pretty hot. How hot? Well, in his case (no pun intended), it got hot enough to melt the solder and release itself from the motherboard. I soldered it back in for him, changed his cooling configuration and he has been a happy camper since.
FYI: Fans are better at pushing air than pulling air, much like a propeller on an airplane.
Just a thought.
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He had intake and exhaust fans, but they were unbalanced. His intake fan was pulling less air in than his exhaust fan was pushing out.
LOL! That's not really possible. Worse case, one fan is working too hard and will have a shorter lifespan. However, air in will match air out or you form a vacuum <or preasurize the box> of some kind. Its not really likely with a cpu case.
This caused some dead air spots in the case.
Those are going to happen no matter how well you have the fans "balanced" <snicker>. Any situation with vertical and horrizontal planes will have dead spots provided there is only one intake and one vent. The only way to avoid it would be to have the front and back totally open with a fan blowing air across it... maybe one from the top too.
In all honesty, this should never be a consideration for why a motherboard blew up.
FYI: Fans are better at pushing air than pulling air, much like a propeller on an airplane.
That depends on the semetry of the blade. All fixed fans both pull and push air. And I thought the main reason propellers were more efficient up front was because they are operating with cleaner airflow.
This justification for why computer components are getting so hot that they melt the solder is getting rediculous. If a resistor gets that hot, there was most likely a problem with the solder weld in the first place. Simply re-soldering it most likely solved the problem. I've seen too many resistors cause a nice brown scorch on the motherboard and leave the solder fully in tact to think that was the problem.
Plane and simple: You do not need HVAC certification to put a computer together. Find a decent fan, use heat transfer goo between it and the CPU and you should be good to go. Of course, more ventilation is good, BUT IT SHOULD NOT BE NECESSARY. It amazes me that this has become acceptable or even the norm.
AKDejaVu
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Yeap, Ive always tried to cool my system ad well as I can, it has been pretty hot lately. My case is always open though.
I tried to solder it but it doesnt work. The motherboard is dead. For curiosity, I tried to pull out one of the power resistors, and it was not easy at all. I had to move the thing side to side to weaken the leg and then break it off.
I believe the thing wasnt soldered right from the factory.
I'll just buy the new things and a full tower case a friend of mine is selling. I'll try to make blowholes to put fans on the side (I want to close my case) and put another blowhole on the top of the case, sucking the hit air that rises out of the case.
This should work fine.
As for the CPU, I think I wont overclock it. 1.4GHz is fast enough, and my videocard is a bottleneck anyways.
As for the heatsink, I think I'll buy one of those Dragon Orbs, wich seem to be a good price/performance compromise (and they look cool :cool: )
[ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: Animal ]
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