Motherboard repair question

D

daragon

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 17, 2005
Messages
224
I know the answer to this question, but I thought I'd ask just so I can say I exausted all possibilities.

I have an old Asus motherboard, an A8V-E Deluxe. It stopped posting completely at random a few weeks ago. I replaced it with another 939 board I borrowed, just to make sure it was the problem, and it was. Everything started up fine with the new board.

I looked around and couldn't find another A8V-E, or much of any 939 boards, for a decent price. So I ordered one off eBay that was listed as new. It worked! I let it run for about 6 hours before I started stress testing it with Prime95. It lasted about an hour of stress testing and crashed.

Now it posts, but locks up during startup. Rarely does it get past counting the memory. It hasn't gotten past detecting IDE drives, and if I unplug the IDE drives it will lock up when it should be looking for them.

I tried switching the BIOS chip from the old board to the new one, same behavior. I now have 2 non functioning A8V-E motherboards.

Is there any way to isolate the problem on either board and get one of them working?
When all this started I wanted to replace the board with the same one. I've since given up on that. So a second question. Does anyone know where to get a good, new, 939 motherboard?
 
do the capacitors look ok on both of them? look and see if they are bulging (the tops should be slightly concave)
 
Like the person above said, look at the caps on the board and see if any of them are bulging or leaking. I had a board with the same problem your having, replacing about 10 caps fixed it.

As for finding a new 939 board, not likely going to happen. Socket 939 was phased out over 4 years ago. Depending on what CPU and RAM your have, it may be cheaper to sell what you have and buy some AM2+ parts.
 
I hadn't considered selling my parts to raise funds, seems like a stupid oversight now though.

I didn't notice any obviously scorched parts when I inspected either board. I wasn't looking for buldging capacitors though. I'll give that a look when I get home.
 
Nope, no buldging capacitors. Look like I'm selling my stuff. Anyone want it?
 
Have you any other RAM to test with? Maybe the CPU isn't so hot? Maybe you can borrow another 939 board. I have an old A8N32 SLI-Deluxe sitting around with no issues...used to OC a 3700+ San Diego to 3.4 Ghz I think. Those were the days :p
 
Measure the Vcore, Vdimm, and Vagp voltages with a meter. I'd also check the MOSFETs, including the ones under that narrow heatsink, with an ohm meter, because bad caps can make MOSFETs run a lot hotter than normal.
 
I am continually amazed at what you can find on Newegg, don't get me wrong. But Newegg isn't selling any 939 motherboards at the moment. I don't hold that against them, there have been 1 or 2 advances in processors, RAM and motherboards since I built this computer in 2005.

I tested all the MOSFETs, they all operate normally. I've tested it with all possible combinations of 6 sticks of RAM and swapped the processor out for a known good 3000+ with the same results.

Maybe you can borrow another 939 board. I have an old A8N32 SLI-Deluxe sitting around with no issues
Click to expand...

Are you willing to part with it?
 
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