Poor choice of words. What I want is preferably mATX so at some point in the future I can more easily slap this (then old) computer into a small case and turn it into my Myth box.
I’m not at all interested in upgrading my entire machine guts again. I would, however, like a motherboard that works. If it’s a significant portion of upgrading to an entirely new platform, I’ll re-assess, but I’m not thrilled with the idea of changing chipsets and ending up having to replace processor, MB, and memory all at the same time, thanks.
I know what you mean, but eventually everyone has to do it. Socket 939 happens to be a dead-end, along with DDR1 and eventually DDR2. AM2 will be sticking around for a while; apparently future AM2+/AM3 chips will work, but at a lower Hyper-Transport rate in regular AM2 sockets, and obviously without DDR3 support. I’m not going to upgrade again for at least an entire year or so; I don’t want to buy anything next time around unless it has a billion cores and a gigabyte of L2 cache. ;)
Replaced the mobo (which I think had fried). Replaced the CPU (I mangled the pins in the course of puttering with the old mobo).
Now it boots to Windows XP, but there’s one main problem:
The CMOS settings (BIOS stuff) are forgotten whenever I do a hard power down (i.e. pull the power cord or toggle the power switch). I do a lot of hard reboots of Windows, so this is a problem. Everytime I do a hard reboot, I have to set up the BIOS the right way again…
I tried changing the battery on the mobo, to the one that had been in my old, dead mobo. Didn’t work…
Note, the ‘new’ mobo was actually open box, as that’s all that NewEgg had left in stock of the type in question. So it’s possible there was a residual problem with it.
Two main possibilities seem likely to me:
Something fundamentally wrong with the new mobo, only affecting the battery. Perhaps swapping the battery is more difficult than simply popping out the old and popping in the new - maybe there’s a trick to it somehow?
or, the more likely answer
I’ve hooked something up wrong. Perhaps one of the many connectors on the mobo, or something of the sort. There are a few spare dangling cables inside my case that I didn’t think needed to be hooked up - perhaps I got it wrong?
Or perhaps it is something else…
So, is there reason that you can think of for a system that in general works correctly, but where the CMOS settings don’t save correctly?
It is possible the BIOS is doing that on purpose because it thinks the hard reboots are occuring because of a BIOS setting problem. The bios on my ASUS motherboard will reset to factory defaults if I turn the system on but turn it off again (with a hard off switch) too quickly. It only occurs with my motherboard if I hard-off within a few seconds of powering up, but perhaps your motherboard is doing something similar without figuring the system timing into it.
In my case, I was usually letting the system power all the way up to Windows (~60 seconds), then Windows Shutdown, then pull the plug for the full hard power off. I may have sometimes done quick power downs, but if so, they were the exception, not the norm.
OK, so that mobo was definitely DOA, as far as the battery goes (works fine except for the need to reconfigure the BIOS every time I do a hard power down, which is quite annoying), and I can’t find any more ASUS A8N-E mobos except at outrageous prices ($200+ for an old-ish design).
which LOOKS like it will do the trick. It’s 939, which is what I need. My concerns:
The page says it will support 184 pin DDR 400 Mhz memory. I’ve got 2 1 GB DIMMs that are labeled as 1GB DDR PC 3200. Will they work with the mobo shown? Will there be a serious performance hit?
Also, I had my hard drives set up as striped RAID (0 or 1, I can’t remember). They were SATA 120 GB drives. It looks like the linked mobo should support RAID, but it doesn’t mention which flavors/levels. Is there likely to be a problem?
They’re the same thing, just expressed different ways. PC-3200 == 400MHz
Also, I had my hard drives set up as striped RAID (0 or 1, I can’t remember). They were SATA 120 GB drives. It looks like the linked mobo should support RAID, but it doesn’t mention which flavors/levels. Is there likely to be a problem?
It…might be. Different RAID chipsets store their metadata in different ways, so they’re unlikely to recognize each others’ arrays, especially when you’re jumping between completely different vendors (nForce to SiS in this case).
If it’s RAID-1 (mirrored) then you might be able to use a single drive standalone in order to boot it or get data off it. If it’s RAID-0 (striped), you’re probably out of luck, and will have to copy the data off while still using the old motherboard first. Either way, if you want to continue using RAID, you’ll probably have to rebuild a new array from scratch. (Unless the new board has an option to ‘adopt’ an existing drive into a RAID-1 set, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an option.)
If it’s the same revision of nForce, it should work. If it’s a different one, uh, you’d probably have to do some searching around and see if anyone else has successfully made that transition. (This guy claims to have done it.)
OK, here’s another similar mobo, the Asus A8N-SLI Premium, that I can get for $99, which SEEMS similar to what I had, (Asus A8N-E), except perhaps that the description does not say anything about supporting dual-core procs. Perhaps this is assumed? I think my CPU is dual-core (AMD A64 3800+ 2.0Ghz 939)
OK, so my last mobo was identical to my broken one (Asus A8N-E) and worked, EXCEPT that it lost all BIOS settings anytime I did a hard power down (by removing the power cable, for instance…) Trying different batteries and other twiddling did not resolve it.
I decided to try for a fully working system, but could not find that same Mobo new anywhere, and given the concern with my striped RAID drives, I went with something similar - an Asus A8N32-SLI. AFAIK, this new board is a bit more ‘hard-core’ - there’s lots more fiddly bits in the BIOS and so on. Notably the mobo also uses passive cooling for its chipsets and such.
So I put it in and plug everything together. Boot up, go into the BIOS and try not to touch much, but I do have to enable RAID and tweak a couple of other things.
Now the system boots and generally goes to the Windows loading screen (showing the Windows logo), then either reboots (back through post) or shuts down. I haven’t yet gotten to the Windows desktop successfully with the new mobo.
So, this sounds a bit like a cooling issue to me (random shutdowns/reboots shortly after power up). Notably, this never happens while I am fiddling in the BIOS setup utility - only after that.
The BIOS tells me the CPU is around 72 or 77 degrees Celcius, IIRC, and the mobo temp. is in the 50s (Celcius). Is that too high?
As far as cooling goes - I added my retail AMD CPU, with its stock fan. I had to remove the old thermal sticky pad (did so with rubbing alcohol), and reseated it with some cheap thermal paste I had laying around (I think it was extra from a previous CPU purchase - its labeled as ‘Stars’ brand I think).
The CPU fan is working. My case is open. The AMD Cool 'n Quiet option is disabled.
The CPU temp is pretty damned high. At load most CPUs don’t go over 60. Sounds like that thermal paste is not good or you need to reapply it. Grab some artic silver and follow the directions on their website to apply it.
Idle temp should be at least 30 degrees lower if it’s an AMD64 of some sort.
Mobo temp should be nearly as much lower. Also, the case should allow air to
circulate properly if you close it, making it a tad cooler.
Bought some Arctic Silver (at Radio Shack). Reseated the CPU heatsink using the new stuff and CPU temp now starts in the 40s, and after several minutes of being powered up (at BIOS screen), its around 58 degrees Celcius. Perhaps a little hot, but not nearly so bad.
But, my problems persist. At some point while loading Windows, the system reboots itself. This happens even when the machine is powered up from a cold start, with CPU temperatures even lower (40s and low 50s).
Does that happen if you boot in Safe Mode, too? That might also let you see if it’s always rebooting at the same point, as it lists out the drivers it’s loading.
It also couldn’t hurt to do a repair install, since you did change motherboards, even if they’re fairly similar.
