Strike 3 Abit, You're Out!

W

whrswoldo

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 6, 2002
Messages
3,138
I am never buying another stupid abit product again! Yesterday when I opened up my alt. computer to adjust the fan speed I noticed my northbridge heatsink LAYING ON MY VIDEO CARD. My original northbridge fan stopped working a few months ago (it would either not spin or make awfull noises, I think this problem was common with IS7's like my board) and so I replaced it with a fanless zalman heatsink. Well one of the clips that the heatsink was attatched to had ripped off of the motherboard and so the heatsink dropped on my vidcard. I reattatched the heatsink the other two corner clips and luckily the computer booted back up fine, I was quite surprised my vid card wasn't shorted.

My previous experience with abit was with one of their first max series boards with an athlon xp2000+. For reasons I never figured out, one day the board stopped working and decided to not let my processor work again either. All other components continued working and are still in service today.

I'm sure I've just been unlucky with these boards but still, quite frustrating! Thanks for reading my rant, feel free to post your own sour abit experiences :p .
 
I doubt anyone's had as many negative Abit experiences as I have had. The only board out of the six I've owned that I've liked and had good luck with is the Abit BP6. The BX6 Rev 2.0 I had issues with. I went through 2 of those, 3 KT7-RAID's and 1 KT7A-RAID. I had a problem with a BH6 and a my BP6 wasn't completely problem free either. But I was able to work with that one.
 
Makes me glad I didn't shell for the IS7 or IC7-G. I'll keep this in mind next time I'm mobo-shopping.
 
I've seen that problem with an IS7 also. Luckily it hasnt happened to mine. Mine has been an all around good board.
 
I have an Abit IS7 and I purchased it before the revision for the northbridge fan/heatsink came out. My fan started to make a lot of noise so I just bought a passive cooler and used Arctic Silver's epoxy to hold it there. No problems since.
 
That is so odd, I hear people complain about Abits all the time, although my friends that live by ASUS ALWAYS have issues whenever their new boards come out.

My KT7 worked well as well as my friends KT7A

When I setup my GF's comp with the IS7-E the only issue I had was with the SATA which wouldnt of been so bad but I NEVER worked with SATA before that. When I got my IS7-E I had no problems with setup at all.

On the flip side my dad and brother chose to be cheap and get ECS mobos.... worst POS's EVER!

I guess it is all in the situation, my friends dont like ABIT, I love them, I dont like ASUS, they love them.

~Kris
 
I have an AN7, aside from bad BIOS updating frequency I can't complain.

This board has a SiI 3112, and their BIOS still has the 4.5.27 sata bios which corrupts my RAID. Luckily there are some fairly hardcore fans that have made a 3rd party bios with the most recent 4.5.50 sata card drivers :)
 
ABIT is in the middle of a class action lawsuit for using bad caps on the older Bx6 board etc...I had to recap my company provided workstation that is running a BE6-ii...

MD
 
StratocasterMaster said:
That is so odd, I hear people complain about Abits all the time, although my friends that live by ASUS ALWAYS have issues whenever their new boards come out.

My KT7 worked well as well as my friends KT7A

When I setup my GF's comp with the IS7-E the only issue I had was with the SATA which wouldnt of been so bad but I NEVER worked with SATA before that. When I got my IS7-E I had no problems with setup at all.

On the flip side my dad and brother chose to be cheap and get ECS mobos.... worst POS's EVER!

I guess it is all in the situation, my friends dont like ABIT, I love them, I dont like ASUS, they love them.

~Kris
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I'm the opposite. I've never had a bad Asus experience. All their boards have been rock solid and I've never needed so much as a BIOS update to fix the problem.

I've never even had problems with early versions of boards. I got a P4C800-Deluxe when the i875P chipset first came out. Later it was replaced with the P4C800-E Deluxe. I never upgraded to the newer one, but I was able to use a Prescott on my P4C800 Deluxe with only a BIOS update. After being made over a year before Prescott came out that was pretty damned impressive.
 
The problem with the northbridge fans isnt abits fault. Its intels. They changed their specification to include those retard loops.
 
whrswoldo said:
I am never buying another stupid abit product again! Yesterday when I opened up my alt. computer to adjust the fan speed I noticed my northbridge heatsink LAYING ON MY VIDEO CARD. My original northbridge fan stopped working a few months ago (it would either not spin or make awfull noises, I think this problem was common with IS7's like my board) and so I replaced it with a fanless zalman heatsink. Well one of the clips that the heatsink was attatched to had ripped off of the motherboard and so the heatsink dropped on my vidcard. I reattatched the heatsink the other two corner clips and luckily the computer booted back up fine, I was quite surprised my vid card wasn't shorted.

My previous experience with abit was with one of their first max series boards with an athlon xp2000+. For reasons I never figured out, one day the board stopped working and decided to not let my processor work again either. All other components continued working and are still in service today.

I'm sure I've just been unlucky with these boards but still, quite frustrating! Thanks for reading my rant, feel free to post your own sour abit experiences :p .
Click to expand...


I haven't been overly impressed with Abit's choice of northbridge fans for a while now personally but then again I've never seen any fan of that size last long. Glad to hear nothing died inside!
 
How about this, I have an old abit board and all the capacitors are bulging and leaking. And apparently its a defect in several models from that time period!
 
MD_Willington said:
ABIT is in the middle of a class action lawsuit for using bad caps on the older Bx6 board etc...I had to recap my company provided workstation that is running a BE6-ii...

MD
Click to expand...

its been long settled and even to this day if you sent it to them and that was the problem they would do it for you and have for years. This was discussed on the main site a few weeks back even.


As for the hsf im not going to deny that the fans they use suck, but it also sounds like you are complaing about something you installed on your own (the zalman fanless) but didnt do corrrectly causing it to eventually fall off. Im not trying to defend them but a large part of the problems people have with them are the users fault the majority of the time. I used to like them but I think they have fallen off as of late but they are still decent boards. my current favorit is either Asus or Gigabyte.
 
corrosive23 said:
The problem with the northbridge fans isnt abits fault. Its intels. They changed their specification to include those retard loops.
Click to expand...

Intel's chipset specifications call for passive cooling. That's not Intel's fault. It's the fault of the manufacturer of such small electronic fans. And Abit's choice of which fan to use. Many mobo makers use cheap ass fans for the northbridge.

It is in NO way Intel's fault.
 
Makes me glad I bought my Asus board now :). I was torn between this and the NF7-S a long time ago but decided on this one. This board has been awesome for well over a year.
 
I suppose ABIT has issues with some of its boards. My experience with ABIT has been nothing but positive, but I could just be one of the lucky ones.

I'm posting from an ABIT VP6 right now. It's been running 24/7 for about 3 years. I have to reboot about once a month because MS security updates require it, but other than that, it's a rare day I have any problems from the mobo.

All that said, my NEXT mobo is going to be an ASUS. I'm not impressed with the fatal1ty board, and the P5AD2-E has it all over that board and for less money. ABIT seems to be stuck on the leading edge of trailing technology. Maybe that will change in the future. And THAT said, I'll probably chug along on this old VP6 until the new chip set comes out that supports the dual core Intel chips. I'm FIRMLY stuck on the trailing edge of ancient tech, at least for the time being....

My *other* computer is also an ABIT. IC7-MAX3. Other than the NB fan going south, I'm well-pleased with it.
 
I have had a mixed bag of experiences with Abit products. I have a BP6 that actually caught on fire, but it actually still runs, and the IT7 that I am on now runs fine, except that if I unplug it then it whipes the CMOS. I have gone though countless CMOS batteries trying to fix this problem to no avail. I also have a TH7-RAID with the same problem and a dead KX7-333.
 
I have a BP6 and it's gone to the recycle bin in the sky...processors and heatsinks are on ebay right now...

MD
 
I have had 2 Abit products: an Abit Siluro GeForce4 Ti4200 videocard (had for about 20 months) and an Abit NF7 motherboard (had for about 10 months.) My experiences with both have been great except for one thing: THE STUPID ONBOARD FANS! When I was building my new system with the NF7 (transplanting the Ti4200 from an older system to be replaced), I spun the fan and noticed it had much resistance, and obviously noticed it was dead; who knows how long it ran without a fan! But I kept it without a fan for a couple of months and it ran fine (sometimes under heavy gaming conditions) until I decided to call Abit. They sent me a new HSF for the card free. I was somewhat nervous to replace it but it worked out fine. But I decided to go buy a Zalman passive heatsink for my NF7 when its fan started dying. I was nervous then as well but it ended up working out fine. So I have a hard time recommending Abit products now unless they lack a fan (or if you are willing to do the fan replacement yourself when the time comes around.)
 
My IC-7G did exactly the same as whrswaldo's. My NB fan is held on by tie wraps until I can be bothered to strip the thing down. I'll probably have to epoxy it on.
I would RMA the thing but it means having no main rig for as long as it takes to replace it. Anybody know what the warranty is on Abit boards?
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Intel's chipset specifications call for passive cooling. That's not Intel's fault. It's the fault of the manufacturer of such small electronic fans. And Abit's choice of which fan to use. Many mobo makers use cheap ass fans for the northbridge.

It is in NO way Intel's fault.
Click to expand...

Learn to read. The retention system for the NB HSF is Intel's specs, not Abit's. Granted the NB fan that Abit put on there is a POS it doesn't really matter, there is no onboard video, so running the stock NB HSF with the fan off is still more than enough cooling.
 
I have had nothing but great luck with Abit boards. I have built Max3s, Fatal1ty, IC7s, NF7-S, IS7s, ect. I mean out of 50+ boards I had 1 bad fan. I bet it is more like 100+.
 
I'm very happy with my IC7-G, only problem is the temp sensor, but I knew about that before I bought the board.
 
Gillette said:
Learn to read. The retention system for the NB HSF is Intel's specs, not Abit's. Granted the NB fan that Abit put on there is a POS it doesn't really matter, there is no onboard video, so running the stock NB HSF with the fan off is still more than enough cooling.
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Intel's specs have certain retention specs, but active cooling, isn't a requirement of the specification.
 
intel also doesnt ask them to do a shabby job of installing those clips :)

bp6 was the only board i owned that didnt die from abit, 7 other did and ive never went back
 
I'm surprised my memory of it isn't repressed yet, but not so long ago I had a max3. All 4 of them (the original and the 3 RMA boards I had) were the absolute worst motherboard I've ever owned. And that's really saying something since I consider a non-branded hand-me-down 286 motherboard that would randomly reboot due to a ram parity error (even though I tried other memory in it) to have been a better experience.

Of course, buying from any manufacturer your going to end up with duds every now and then, and that's when the manufacturers ability to fix the problem comes into play. 3 RMA's from Abit and all of them had problems. Perhaps, when you RMA something, Abit should try sending you a new product instead of someone else's busted return. That's why I'll never buy anything Abit ever again.
 
kellog said:
I'm surprised my memory of it isn't repressed yet, but not so long ago I had a max3. All 4 of them (the original and the 3 RMA boards I had) were the absolute worst motherboard I've ever owned. And that's really saying something since I consider a non-branded hand-me-down 286 motherboard that would randomly reboot due to a ram parity error (even though I tried other memory in it) to have been a better experience.

Of course, buying from any manufacturer your going to end up with duds every now and then, and that's when the manufacturers ability to fix the problem comes into play. 3 RMA's from Abit and all of them had problems. Perhaps, when you RMA something, Abit should try sending you a new product instead of someone else's busted return. That's why I'll never buy anything Abit ever again.
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Well I got mine through my work and got the replacement plan on it. Not only was it cheap for me, but if it breaks I get a new one of my choice for free basically.

So that's why I took the chance. I like their current designs and feature set, but honestly I would have bought the P5AD2-E Premium except the damn thing is just rediculously priced and some of it's extra features are useless to me. I don't need wireless lan built in, I don't need the second NIC although it's not a minus or anything and I don't need 8 SATA ports either.

So the Abit was the more sensible and cost effective choice. I had very bad experiences years ago with Abit and because of the circumstances listed above and from what I've been hearing Abit has done alot to improve thier quality over the last couple years. So I took a shot at it and so far the boards been rock solid and has overclocked right out of the box like a champ. I have no complaints about it so far.
 
I have been using the IS-7 since July '03. It so rocked with my 2.4c.

But off course I just *had* to upgrade the bios and get a prescott, it works but stability problems ever since. I don't blame the board though I blame me, why couldn't I have just been happy with it and left it alone... sigh.

Socket 478 just isn't meant for prescott, and this board was designed before prescott was out.
 
toddw said:
I have been using the IS-7 since July '03. It so rocked with my 2.4c.

But off course I just *had* to upgrade the bios and get a prescott, it works but stability problems ever since. I don't blame the board though I blame me, why couldn't I have just been happy with it and left it alone... sigh.

Socket 478 just isn't meant for prescott, and this board was designed before prescott was out.
Click to expand...

Well I had the early P4C800-Deluxe. Which was the predecessor to the P4C800-E Deluxe. So I had one of the earliest i875P boards made, when I got my Prescott I upgraded my BIOS and it worked perfectly. So had the motherboard been built better it would have worked.

The key is that Asus had designed the board with most of the specifications for the upcomming power requirements for Prescott.

As I understand it later versions of the Abit boards were fixed, however Asus is the only manufacturer to be able to claim Prescott compatibility across their entire i865/i875 P4 board line.
 
Never had a problem with any ABIT boards, been with them ever since I got into building my own systems.

I even got the infamous "IC7-MAX3" board for my latest computer, which I built a little under a year ago, and it's never given me any problems. The northbridge heatsink and fan have stayed on just fine.

Not denying there's a trail of problems with ABIT recently, but I'm one of the lucky ones that have, for now, managed to doge them.
 
Gillette said:
I'm very happy with my IC7-G, only problem is the temp sensor, but I knew about that before I bought the board.
Click to expand...

I think thats still an ongoing problem today with the temp sensors. My AV8 read 55c idle, and 78c loaded. Buggy Bios, I think so, or poor sensor placement.
 
have an original IC-7 for over a year and 1/2 and have no problems what so ever..
 
horrible rma service, nobody awnsers emails, or phones....sent fubared boards twice....and they sent them out by regular mail, because i am in puerto rico....hello puerto rico might not be a state, we are still a us territory....asus has never had a problem sending out boards thru ups....
stupid chipset fans keep failing, or falling, take your pick.
ic7 max3 comes out with the option of 3.2 vdimm, wooohoo, some love for my bh5....and it doesnt work, and they never fix it, knowing that if they do, they will have to exchange a lot of boards, so there are no revisions....horrible temps, compared to other boards, which is ok since its just a matematical calculation, but its not cool, because then its hard to compare with friends that have other brands, and with your previous system.... what could have been the best board ever, never does.


never will i buy a product from them again.........
i will keep on using the usual suspects, with dfi on top....

i have no loyalties to any company, i always buy what is on top, from amd to intel, to ati, to nvidia etc......but abit is on my shit list.....
 
I've had my IC7-MAX 3 for some time now and its never given me any problems. Very stable and reliable. :D
 
StratocasterMaster said:
That is so odd, I hear people complain about Abits all the time, although my friends that live by ASUS ALWAYS have issues whenever their new boards come out.

My KT7 worked well as well as my friends KT7A

When I setup my GF's comp with the IS7-E the only issue I had was with the SATA which wouldnt of been so bad but I NEVER worked with SATA before that. When I got my IS7-E I had no problems with setup at all.

On the flip side my dad and brother chose to be cheap and get ECS mobos.... worst POS's EVER!

I guess it is all in the situation, my friends dont like ABIT, I love them, I dont like ASUS, they love them.

~Kris
Click to expand...

I have a hypothesis that everyone has their "bad brand". My dad's is probably Chaintech, with MSI being a bit of a distant second, although he had a tiny bit of bad luck with a Gigabyte Socket 754 AMD 64 board. Me, I've had kind of bad luck with ASUS, great luck with MSI and Abit, and decent with Gigabyte but have only had one Gigabyte board. Oh, decent with DFI also. But anyway, I'd think twice before getting an ASUS for myself...just seems odd, never had a truly good ASUS board. Now putting one in for a friend or to build a PC to sell on eBay (I do that on the side), then yeah they seem decent.

Just my rambling. Guess my point is everyone seems to have one or two brands they don't "get along with". ;)
 
i had the exact same thing happen to an abit bh7, northbridge felloff onto my video card, luckily it caused no damage, then the board i got back from rma did the exact same thing, only that time it took my video card out with it. needless to say, im hesitant to buy abit again
 
2 Abit builds...2 great computers.
1 Asus build...1 great computer.
2 MSI builds...2 great computers.
1 DFI build...a decent computer
2 Chaintech...1 great, 1 RMA
2 Epox...2 great computers
1 Soyo...It still runs

Overall, I've had good luck with most manufacturers (yikes...maybe I'm due). Abit didn't seem any worse than any other manufacturer. The support forum on their website was very helpful.

I agree with Arvig :). Some brands just don't like some people :D .
 
I'm sorry about your problems. I'm on my second Abit board and I've never had a problem.
 
I've had great luck with Abit boards, an IS-7 and a AI-7. My first AS8 went bad after less than a week. My new AS8 has been great though.
 
It just depends.

My Abit's

BX6 Rev 2. Fan headers blew out.
BX6 Rev 2. Worked great
BP6 Great board
KT7-RAID Unstable POS
KT7-RAID More stable, but performance benches had like 20% variance to them and the damn thing was slower overall than the previous one.
KT7A-RAID Unstable pile of crap. Hated my Crucial memory modules
AA8XE So far so good. I've enjoyed OC'ing this thing.
 
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