Abit bd7II Raid

[waynewrk]

I have been using this board for years, and started having very erratic problems in the past weeks. It seems to mostly have to do with video, though I'm not absolutely sure about that. I started getting "blue screens of death" referencing a video driver file a week or so ago. When I took my case panel off to investigate I was met with the product of a small space heater. The power supply was barely touchable. It was a cheap stock power supply so I immediately replaced it as the obvious culprit. That seemed to work for a day or two, and then the blue screens came back. I take the case panel off and the new power supply is extremely hot as well(I don't have a reading, but trust me way hotter than it should be).

So I investigate the video card further and notice that the fan is barely spinning. I ran a few 3dmarks to see if I was losing video performance, and the fan finally failed entirely. I replaced the card with a backup lying around, and problems continue. I noticed when I was replacing the video card that there are two caps above the agp slot, and one to the right of the memory slots that are swollen(all other caps on the board look fine). The swollen caps aren't popped, or leaking, but they do seem very swollen.

So I guess my question/s are:
1. Do any of these issues sound like bad cap related problems?

2. Can bad caps cause components to overheat? I assume since they regulate voltages this is possible?

3. Based on my vague description of their location any idea what the swollen caps on my board regulate?

Note: The replacement video card's fan was revving up and down when I installed it, and I believe I have replaced another video card in this system a year ago for a failed fan...Could one of the swollen caps regulate fan voltage, or do the caps on the board do that?

[Rainbow]

Re: Abit bd7II Raid

That bad caps are likely causing your problems.
Small fans are very unreliable. I've once replaced 3 CPU fans in my machine in a month (50mm ones - for Celeron).

[Chris1992]

Re: Abit bd7II Raid

I have a Socket 7 K6-2 sys with a 60mm fan in place of the 50mm that was on the CPU heatsink, just to avoid reliability problems.

[tiresias]

Re: Abit bd7II Raid

Small fans are very unreliable. I've once replaced 3 CPU fans in my machine in a month (50mm ones - for Celeron).

The small, sometimes brandless fans which one finds on older graphics cards/northbridges are extremely unreliable, I've seen those rattle when new, and fail within a week. On the other hand, there are small diameter fans, such as those 40x25mm Delta/Sunon devices one finds in 1U machines, which can be as reliable as any of their larger "cousins"...

[tiresias]

Re: Abit bd7II Raid

... met with the product of a small space heater.

Apologies if this sounds obvious, but have you verified whether your chassis exhaust fan(s) is working as it should?

I've always that "oven after baking a pizza" effect when you open a PC chassis to be associated with lacking exhaust. Such as when one of my kids didn't fasten his fan cable properly, causing said cable to be 'sucked into' his subsequently jammed rear 92mm fan.

PS. Took him a few days to realise... the outside of the case was almost as hot as a radiator.

[waynewrk]

Re: Abit bd7II Raid

Apologies if this sounds obvious, but have you verified whether your chassis exhaust fan(s) is working as it should?

I've always that "oven after baking a pizza" effect when you open a PC chassis to be associated with lacking exhaust. Such as when one of my kids didn't fasten his fan cable properly, causing said cable to be 'sucked into' his subsequently jammed rear 92mm fan.

PS. Took him a few days to realise... the outside of the case was almost as hot as a radiator.

Yes, I'm using new anatec 3 speed fans for both intake, and exhaust(both are switched on to high speed).

Funny thing, my last two lockup scenarios last night had to do with the mouse. So I pulled the usb mouse I was using, and installed a ps2 version. The system has been running stable since. I will need to do some more testing to verify this as a fix, but so far it is looking good.

I'm hoping the video card fans I've been burning through are just low quality fans as some of you have suggested.

Thanks for all the insites!

[waynewrk]

Re: Abit bd7II Raid

This board is born again, HARD! Thanks Top for quick turnaround, and great service! Running beautifully!

[Topcat]

Re: Abit bd7II Raid

This board is born again, HARD! Thanks Top for quick turnaround, and great service! Running beautifully!

Glad to be of service, and thank you for your business!!