Peter Humphrey writes:


On Tuesday 28 August 2012 21:57:43 Alex Schuster wrote:

I wrote:

Well, all I can do now is to get a new board and see if things will
be okay then.

[...]
So I had to wait. And when it became available, I wondered if it
might be the processor instead that has the problem, so I let the PC
shop diagnose CPU and board. This took until today, and they
confirmed it was the board indeed, not the CPU.


Let me get this straight. The shop ran tests and concluded that the
motherboard was faulty, not the CPU?


Yes.


Fine, I bought the board


...it having been tested and found faulty!


Well, obviously not the defective board I already owned, but a new one
of the same type. Yes. Defects happen, and because one specific board
suddenly has a problem after working fine for half a year, I do not
assume that all of these boards will likely fail. And it seems to be the
only board having the features I want, at least in the price range of
about 100€. Most have two memory banks only, so I would either have to
use only 8GB out of 16 GB, or buy new RAM. And I want on-board graphics,
I do not want to buy an extra graphics adapter that needs power or has a
noisy fan. There were NVidia boards I think, but I prefer Radeon, that
finally seems to work just fine, after having lots of trouble in the
past with both NVidia and an older Radeon system.


Wonko

Dale writes:


Alan McKinnon wrote:

Rule #1 in dealing with odd weird strange computer faults is ALWAYS
test with another PSU of at least twice the capacity you think you need.


+1 I always start with the P/S. Well, unless I see something else
unrelated letting the smoke out. Even then tho, a bad P/S can cause the
smoke to get out of something else too. It's good advice all the way
around.

Why not let the computer shop test the P/S? If it blows up something of
theirs, it's bad. ;-)


I would have preferred to give them the whole PC, but I cannot carry
that around easily when going to work by bus and tram, so I could drop
it of the store when I leave work in the evening. It was easier to just
carry mainboard and CPU in a small bag.


Well, not really true, I gave them the hardware on Friday, and on
Saturday I could have used the car to transport the PC, but I was
somewhat busy that day, and just didn't think about the PSU frying the
board. And I had hoped that they would test the board right when I was
there on Friday, so I could leave with the new one. Or with the new CPU,
if that had turned out to be defective.


Wonko

Volker Armin Hemmann writes:


Am Dienstag, 28. August 2012, 22:57:43 schrieb Alex Schuster:



This sucks. Is it a faulty board again? Is something (the PSU?) killing
the board once I turn the thing on? What will happen when I have the
next board and try again? Argh.


so - instead of changing the PSU, the obvious culprit, you got a new board AND
USED THE SAME PSU?


YEAH Thinking about this now, yes, it would have made sense to test
with another PSU first. But it wasn't so obvious to me, I simply thought
I had bad luck with a bad board, that died. Happens.



I am just saying - one faulty PSU fried three of my boards. Enermax... will
never buy again.


So - instead of changing the PSU, the obvious culprit, you let it fry
another board, and then... yet another one? Just saying


I once had the opposite problem, a mainboard seemed to kill PSUs. That
was weird.



The fans spin, so not all hope is lost. Keyboard, ps/2? usb?


It's a PS/2 keyboard.


But before you do anything else, change the PSU.


I tried another one this morning, same problems. I guess the board is
fried. So I'll order another one, and this time use another PSU.


Wow, they say it will take 2-3 weeks. So I'll see if there's another
board that will fulfill my needs... and there is. Radeon 3000 instead of
4250, and I remember having big trouble with my last Radeon 3250
system... and no eSATA which I probably wouldn't miss anyway, but it
also has no PATA at all. I can (and have to) live with this it seems,
but it's somewhat inconvenient.


Wonko