Are faulty capacitors the cause of many Asus A7N8X problems?

[RJARRRPCGP]

I'm asking about why do many message boards have posts about Asus A7N8X motherboards having major problems?

The reported symptoms range from POSTing problems to being unable to install the OS.

[Topcat]

Hi and welcome to the boards.

I personally don't have any experience with this particular motherboard. To check your caps, look at the brand first. Asus uses Rubycon caps on most of their motherboards, thus Asus is one of the few that had minimal problems with bad capacitors. I personally have only seen a couple Asus boards with bad caps. Post the brands of your caps and if they're showing any physical faults. That will help for diagnosing.

Also, make sure you have the board flashed with the latest BIOS revision and the most recent stable drivers for your hardware.

TC

[RJARRRPCGP]

Well, I don't have an Asus A7N8X (nForce2) motherboard. I have an Asus A7V8X-X (Via KT400) motherboard.

[Fatal0E]

A7N8X-Deluxe through 1.04 used Nichicon completely, the early revision 2 boards used a Rubycon and Nichicon mix. The newer boards use a Rubycon and OST mix.

I love this board, until the OST caps started appearing. Posting problems can be due to a weak cmos battery (odd but seen it several times). Other posting and stability problems can be due to memory. Always had good luck with good quality sticks using Nanya chips, Windbond, and Infineon. Had issues with Samsung, Siemens, Spectek chips.

[(In)Sanity]

I own an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe board ver 2.0. I love it.

Things I've noticed,

My 2800 Barton (multiplier unlocked) will run perfect @ 166 x 13.5 (2250) however it will not work at all above 170 FSB regardless of the multiplier.

I normally leave it at the stock 166 x 12.5 speed unless I plan on a weekend of playing Desert Combat or such.

Had to switch power supplies on this box a few weeks back, was becoming unstable. Asus Probe (monitor) showed a lot of fluctuation in several of the voltage lines. I went with an Enermax 420 Watt (blue) Noisetaker, system has been rock solid since.

Caps are the Nichicon around the CPU and OST everywhere else.

I love the nVidia chip set and the sound, most excellent.

[willawake]

even in the bios are your voltage lines stable after the enermax? every time i am repairing a comp with an asus i check the voltage lines and they are jumping about. even new boards but stable otherwise.

clever to have your avatar changing all the time.

[(In)Sanity]

even in the bios are your voltage lines stable after the enermax? every time i am repairing a comp with an asus i check the voltage lines and they are jumping about. even new boards but stable otherwise.

clever to have your avatar changing all the time.

Under load, no. Idle yes. The cheap PS was jumping around while idle. The system is FAR more stable then it was before I changed the PS. Actually it's not had a single issue since, even overclocked.

[rugger]

I would be suprised if a significant number of problems on Asus A7N8X boads can be attributed to bad capacitors.

Even the boards with OST capacitors, it is likely that such caps are not the low-ESR ones where they have been blowing up. While it would be nice if all the capacitors were of the highest quality, people don't want to pay the price.