Weird Abit i-45C motherboard

[lbwlow]

Hi all...
I have this Abit I-45C motherboard that do weird things... well, just like old car, if it wasn't warm up, it doesn't runs right. On cold boot, it won't give any display until I turn off the board and turn it back on. Now everything runs like normal, including passing memtest. After that, when I was attempting to install windows 7 on it, after windows finish loading the files, it would freeze at the windows 7 logo animation (before the logo even start appearing). After few attempt, it still freeze at the same place. Then I decided to boot with Ubuntu, amazingly everything runs fine. Then I reattempt to install windows 7 again, and now it is able to went pass windows boot animation and the installation was completed successfully. I had done prime95 for 1 hr+ and it doesn't shows any error. After resting the board for few hour, same thing happened again when I attempt to start it, freeze again before windows loading animation would appear. After running into safe mode and a restart it was able to boot into windows just fine.

What could be the problem ? is it the cap or some BGA things (the 945 chipset does run quite hot).

In the picture :
- Mark in red, Sanyo WG
- Mark in yellow, Rubycon MBZ
- Mark in blue, Rubycon YXG
-On the processor secondary section there seems to be some mix between "fake" and real solid caps.

Thanks everyone

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Weird Abit i-45C motherboard

try blasting a high speed 40-60mm fan at the northbridge to see if it makes the problem worse.

i can only point out one other issue. the thermal paste isnt covering the cpu completely. i suggest u reapply the thermal paste so it covers the whole cpu. what cpu is that? if its a prescott-2m or pentium d, the cpu wont like running so hot with so little thermal paste.

[lbwlow]

Re: Weird Abit i-45C motherboard

^
I am using Core 2 duo e4600 on this board, idle at ~39C and full load at ~60C.
I don't think that the case, because this board runs very weird before it was warm up, like say maybe 20-30min, after that it runs mostly no problem.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Weird Abit i-45C motherboard

could be bad caps for the vdimm line. i had an asus a8v with similar problems to yours. only i had to run several hours of memtest. after that, it boots windows and linux ubuntu fine and all that. no errors in memtest and prime95 despite being unable to boot. the culprit was found to be a capxon psu outputting too much ripple and killing the caps on the board.

since there are only a handful of mbz rubies around the buck regulators near the dimm slots, try to recap those and see if it fixes or changes the "pattern" of the problem. make sure u are using a known good working branded psu to rule out psu problems or a bad psu killing the caps on the board.

if the problem persists, then we might have to look at the 680 4j fake solid caps at the cpu vrm output and/or the sanyo wg at the cpu vrm input.