Asus

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Asus

Supermicro has used Sanyo and Solid Polymer almost [if not] exclusively for several years.
They also tend to use a lot of them which keeps the stress down on any individual cap.
.
Just as Asus, they can be picky about RAM.
.

[KeriJane]

Re: Asus

Supermicro has used Sanyo and Solid Polymer almost [if not] exclusively for several years.
They also tend to use a lot of them which keeps the stress down on any individual cap.
.
Just as Asus, they can be picky about RAM.
.

That's what this one is doing.... apparent RAM problems while passing any RAM test with no difficulty. Going from Corsair to no-name RAM actually improved things quite a bit but still gets the Windows boot loop at least 2-3 times before a successful startup. With the Corsair, it might've been 20-30 loops before success and then Windows was unstable and slow.... (even more than is normal ) This system exhibited a gradual worsening of symptoms over time so I'm thinking it might be degradation of caps or possibly soldering.

The Corsair memory works perfectly in the Asus replacement, so I'm thinking that it's a question of the board being "fussy". Once I get some spare time it'll be interesting to see if I can isolate the cause and maybe even repair it.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Asus

That's what this one is doing.... apparent RAM problems while passing any RAM test with no difficulty. Going from Corsair to no-name RAM actually improved things quite a bit but still gets the Windows boot loop at least 2-3 times before a successful startup. With the Corsair, it might've been 20-30 loops before success and then Windows was unstable and slow.... (even more than is normal ) This system exhibited a gradual worsening of symptoms over time so I'm thinking it might be degradation of caps or possibly soldering.

The Corsair memory works perfectly in the Asus replacement, so I'm thinking that it's a question of the board being "fussy". Once I get some spare time it'll be interesting to see if I can isolate the cause and maybe even repair it.

Try non mfr specific Kingston Value RAM [KVR_____] it usually works in SM.
Samsung usually does too.
Also SM boards usually do not like RAM with non-standard voltage specs.
.
Toasty had a C2SBA+II with RoHS/BGA issues with the chipset but as far as I know that isn't common.
Supermicro replaced the chipset for him w/no labor charge even though out of warranty.
[That's the kind of business practices that keep my business.]
.
.

[KeriJane]

Re: Asus

yeah, supermicro is supposed to be good. might be a defective chipset or possibly bad soldering.

OT, but Ah-Hah! Gentle pressure on chipset while booting instantly stops boot loops. Apparent cause- poor ROHS soldering on BGA of either Northbridge or Southbridge.

All of those lovely polies are probably just fine. Darn.

[ratdude747]

Re: Asus

OT, but Ah-Hah! Gentle pressure on chipset while booting instantly stops boot loops. Apparent cause- poor ROHS soldering on BGA of either Northbridge or Southbridge.

All of those lovely polies are probably just fine. Darn.

if you lived near(er) to me, I could fix that... my college just acquired 2 new hot air station via a technology grant and yours truly got to play with it on Thursday... its a fun tool.

you could try a heat gun?

[Agent24]

Re: Asus

I think IR is better than hot air for large BGAs?

[Topcat]

Re: Asus

FWIW, related to this thread....I just pulled a mint condition Asus ET2203 EEE-PC out of the garbage in front of someone's house. This is one of those "all-in-wonder" systems, they sell in retail stores for about 700+. I'm typing on it right now. It had the original box, keyboard, recovery disk, packing material and everything that came with it. I thought the mouse was missing, but it turned up at the bottom of the box. The machine is about a year old. C2D CPU and 4gb RAM. The only thing that caught my attention was cords sticking out of the top of the box. Had I not seen that, I'd have kept on driving, thinking they just bought it and threw away the empty box.

Ok...I power it up, it POST'ed, but no boot. No HDD showing up in the bios. take it apart, HDD is dead as a hammer. Yes, these stupid people threw this thing away over a bad hard drive....WOWZA, but I'll take it!! I robbed a 500gb from a dead laptop I have, and loaded it up. It had a win7 32 bit recovery disk and COA....that makes a hell of a lot of sense Asus, with 4gb RAM....so I said the hell with that and put XP x64 on it. the only hard thing was the ATI mobile driver for xp64, apparently they never officially released it, so I had to do some digging to find one that worked....but I got it.

So far, its been a great machine, it replaced my ailing office system that has served me for the last 6+ years.....but yea, I am no fan of Asus either....we'll see how long this one lives.

[Agent24]

Re: Asus

I've seen people sell their PC on Trademe because at boot they got the error:

"Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \ WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM. "


I have an Eee 701 - the only other Asus product aside from this old K8N which seems unkillable. So far it's been just fine, but almost everything else Asus I have is broken.


Nice catch though!

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Asus

TP-II's got glowing reviews when they were brand new.
A single example of a Fuhjyyu/Antec that's still working fine 8 years later isn't representative of the Antec brand.
Neither is a sample of a dozen of the same model of Antec that happen to not have problem caps.
-
-
I see a lot of comments where people are implying or saying flat out that Asus is all they have any real experience with.
-
How could these people know enough to make a legitimate comparison to other brands?
[They can't.]
-
I think the vote should have been restricted to those that have:
- [either/or]
- repaired- [or attempted to]
- used for more than 3 years ..
... at least 10 different models each of at least 5 different brands of boards.
[2x or more of the same model counts as 1 board.]
-
Even 50 mixed brand boards is -barely- enough of a sample size to be making valid brand comparisons.
- Particularly as the time span of the survey covers more than 10 years and a number of brands have changed their build quality dramatically during that time.
For example more recent Intel[Consumer], Gigabyte and Abit boards are dramatically different build quality than their socket 370 era parts.
-
-
I'm certain that if the voting was limited in that way [and people didn't lie about their experience just to get a vote in] the results would be dramatically different.
.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Asus

when I was doing the whole goodwill thing, someone donated a perfectly operating XPS 420 /w a Q6600 & 4GB of ram...because a missing front bezel around the cd drive

and this is also why the boss refused to reload it and sell it

at a later time, he had us gut the CPU, ram, and the 7600GT out of it when a quad compatible 775 board came across me, rebuild it, and 'bought' it for his grandson

[Sparky]

Re: Asus

I've had both excellent experiences with Asus, and crappy. So, I guess that averages out to "meh" over all.

It had a win7 32 bit recovery disk and COA....that makes a hell of a lot of sense Asus, with 4gb RAM....so I said the hell with that and put XP x64 on it. the only hard thing was the ATI mobile driver for xp64, apparently they never officially released it, so I had to do some digging to find one that worked....but I got it.

You know the COA works for both 32 bit and 64 bit windows 7? It is only the version (Home, Pro, Ultimate) that is locked by the COA.

But hey uh, if you don't want that COA, I'll take it to put 7 instead of Vista on my laptop

[pol098]

Re: Asus

Hope this isn't too delayed a resurrection...

While not relevant to capacitors, there's one data-reliability issue which Asus are tops at. If you're as paranoid about data as I am and want ECC (error-correcting) RAM at non-server price, you're pretty much obliged to use an Asus motherboard and AMD processor. Nearly all Asuses, and nearly no others, fully support ECC (RAM websites often says they don't, and I've had a lot of correspondence correcting this, which they agree with and then ignore; the less expensive Intel boards and chipsets don't support ECC). I have brief experience with just one Asus board; it's got polymer capacitors, works fine, and does ECC. (Non-server Windows versions don't report ECC errors, but there is invisible opsys-independent hardware correction.) I won't start a discussion of whether to use ECC or not, just add this information.

Best wishes

[Agent24]

Re: Asus

I thought everything AMD since Socket 754 supports ECC natively because the RAM controller is in the CPU.

[colormebad]

Re: Asus

if you lived near(er) to me, I could fix that... my college just acquired 2 new hot air station via a technology grant and yours truly got to play with it on Thursday... its a fun tool.

you could try a heat gun?

Anybody on here can change a socket ?

[pol098]

Re: Asus

I thought everything AMD since Socket 754 supports ECC natively because the RAM controller is in the CPU.

CPUs do, some or all chipsets do, but most motherboards don't. It's got to be supported by CPU, chipset, motherboard, and BIOS. I looked into it a fair bit recently, there was one Gigabyte motherboard, a whole lot of Asuses, and possibly one or more Biostars that even Biostar doesn't mention on their website. So for me it was Hobson's choice, never mind the capacitors, keep the data safe (I have suffered file corruption from bad memory, though very long ago, much more reliable now). BTW, going even further off-topic briefly, I saw some comments that 4GB DDR3 ECC RAM modules were problematical with some Asus boards, possibly solvable by configuration or in a future BIOS, played safe and used 2GB on official Asus list.

[Agent24]

Re: Asus

Anybody on here can change a socket ?

If you're talking about CPU socket you need more than just a SMD Rework Hot air station.

If you were good with a desoldering gun and had a preheater, you could probably do it, but even if you screw just one pin\via\hole (out of several hundred) you have stuffed the whole thing.

Look on Youtube for people replacing RAM slots, CPU sockets, PCI slots etc.. they almost all use a BIG hot air machine (not the little $100 ones for SMD work) or a selective wave soldering machine\solder fountain


You might get away with one of those cheap eBay solder pots though... but you'll need to buy a lot of solder to fill it first!

[colormebad]

Re: Asus

Asus sent me a new board a week ago where i would have to be down..Still had the same problem' wasnt the m/b, it was a bad stick of corsair memory...They both gave great service on phone and through shipping..corsair also sent me out some new memory b4 i sent the old...Some of the guys at asus dont speak the best of english, but i got the #'s to the ones that do' gave great service...