Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

[PCBONEZ]

I know the bad graphics chips but which mobo chipsets are bad?
.... and why?

Looking mostly for the ones where the chipset itself separates internally but the ones the that separate from the mobo would be good to know too.

Tried researching myself but I just got confused.

Thanks.
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[yyonline]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

I think most of the evidence there has been anecdotal. I don't think it was ever admitted that there was an issue. Then again, it's the same story with the GPUs. Only the G84 and G86 are officially bad, but there are many stories of failures from G7x and G9x GPUs as well.

All I can say is that I've built maybe 10 or so Nforce 430 based systems, and only one of them died. That was bad OST caps. Replacing the caps didn't bring it back to life. I don't know if that suggests anything as far as chipset reliability goes...it's a small sample size too...

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

LOL!
- What manufacturers will admit about their own products doesn't say much.
Asus has NEVER [to this day] admitted there was a capacitor plague of any kind or that HM and HN [which they did use] were bad.
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[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Chipsets with onboard GPUs are known to fail. Especially ones with 6150 series.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Chipsets with onboard GPUs are known to fail. Especially ones with 6150 series.

There in lies another part of my problem.
I'm not familiar with nVidia naming conventions for chipsets.

I'll look on my own too, but does the '6150 series' have other names?
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[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

NV44 refers only to the graphics part of the chipset or the whole chipset?
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[ratdude747]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

i personally doubt that any chipsets have failed like the the graphic chips.

why? heat! a gpu puts out so much heat that ROHS issues come into play. i doubt a properly cooled chipset would do the same.

exception goes to overclocking, but that is a know risk of OC'ing...

[c_hegge]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Yes they do get hot. I have an ASUS P5N73-AM motherboard sitting around somewhere. I put a fan over the heatsink as otherwise, it gets too hot to touch within a couple of minutes after being powered on

[NxB]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Whatever is in the HP DV6000 is what fails. Lots of mainly laptop boards, very few desktop. Many cases of bad caps taking out desktop chipsets and making the board unrevivable.

[acstech]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

An issue I've had with nForce 4 based boards (Nforce 4, or 5xx) is that the SATA controller is unstable. If you take a large file (2 or more GB) and make a copy of it, then run something like md5sum or sha1sum on both the original and the copy, they won't be identical. I don't know if it was that way from the factory or developed later, but I've seen multiple examples of it. On other boards this does not happen.

I sure am glad AMD makes their own chipsets now.

[dobber]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Ya I have 2 DV9000's and a DV2000 to fix this week, due to nvidia 6100 Chipsets. I also find that a lot of the Gateway FX Series Motherboards that have AMD processors and nvidia GPU's go bad. Most of the time they can be reflowed, and then you just have to make sure you keep them cool.

[mockingbird]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Very simple...

nForce chipsets...

Anything over nForce 4 is defective.
For video cards, GeForce "FX" is good, but anything between FX and G84/G86 is not. Now what might be confusing you is that the GeForce 9xxx series of videocards have some models which are based on G8x and some which are reliable that are a later designed chip where the defect was corrected.

ALL nVidia chips, especially those with the defective chip substrate are prone to solder fracture because they produce more heat when they start failing.

ALL videocards which are RoHS are suspect for BGA solder fracture, and that's 100% of everything after Geforce FX for nVidia, and anything Radeon 2xxx and over for ATI.

If you need the videocard for mission critical applications, you should have it reballed with leaded solder. Don't pay more than $75-$150.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Ya I have 2 DV9000's and a DV2000 to fix this week, due to nvidia 6100 Chipsets. I also find that a lot of the Gateway FX Series Motherboards that have AMD processors and nvidia GPU's go bad. Most of the time they can be reflowed, and then you just have to make sure you keep them cool.

And here I thought Gateway had packed their bags and headed back to the Cow patties.
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[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

NV44 refers only to the graphics part of the chipset or the whole chipset?
.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

ALL nVidia chips, especially those with the defective chip substrate are prone to solder fracture because they produce more heat when they start failing.

I guess that's what I'm trying to ask.
-
Do any of the nVidia mobo chipsets have the defective chip substrate?

If you need the videocard for mission critical applications, you should have it reballed with leaded solder. Don't pay more than $75-$150.

I wouldn't pay $75. [Or even $25.]
- I'd just replace the whole thing with an Intel chipset mobo.
Anything 'mission critical' around here is glorified office work or could be done in MS Paint.
- Not video intensive at all.
I just use the on-board from an Intel chipset for those.

The RoHS issue makes sense to me too but I was asking [or trying to] specifically about the substrate problem on desktop mobo chips.

I asked the question help me determine which bad cap nVidia boards in my ever filling 'recap later' box [which is now 4 boxes] are worth doing at all. I've been trying to avoid nVidia chipset boards but there's always a few coming my way when I buy things in mixed lots or take trade-ins.
Boxes are needing emptied.
Time to learn some new tricks so to speak.
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[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

I also find that a lot of the Gateway FX Series Motherboards that have AMD processors and nvidia GPU's go bad. Most of the time they can be reflowed, and then you just have to make sure you keep them cool.

Are these GPU's on-board and if so which specific chipsets?
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[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

An issue I've had with nForce 4 based boards (Nforce 4, or 5xx) is that the SATA controller is unstable. If you take a large file (2 or more GB) and make a copy of it, then run something like md5sum or sha1sum on both the original and the copy, they won't be identical. I don't know if it was that way from the factory or developed later, but I've seen multiple examples of it. On other boards this does not happen.

I sure am glad AMD makes their own chipsets now.

Good to know.
I won't [never did] be keeping any nVidia chipset boards for my own use.
I just never trusted them.
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[mockingbird]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

I asked the question help me determine which bad cap nVidia boards in my ever filling 'recap later' box [which is now 4 boxes] are worth doing at all.

Only nForce 4. None of their videocards besides some Geforce 9xxx and later are worth recapping.

Some have had success reflowing earlier models in the oven, but these cards will ultimately fail from catastrophic IC failure eventually.

Radeons are always worth reflowing because they do not suffer from this problem. In fact, I'm going to reflow a 2900XT soon.

An issue I've had with nForce 4 based boards (Nforce 4, or 5xx) is that the SATA controller is unstable. If you take a large file (2 or more GB) and make a copy of it, then run something like md5sum or sha1sum on both the original and the copy, they won't be identical.

That's because you don't have the right drivers. nForce 4 is solid, except for the LAN when you have the hardware-based firewall enabled. This was known to cause crashing.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Only nForce 4.

Only nForce 4 which?.
Keep or toss?

[mockingbird]

Re: Which nVidia mobo chipsets are bad?

Keep. Though I would scavenge parts from the other ones. Scavenge the good caps they come with. Sometimes I desolder the coils when I'm bored and add it to my copper collection.