ASUS P4P800SE/P4C800-E recap (polymod?)

[usernameunknown]

I have two P4P800SEs, a P4C800-E Deluxe and all three boards show the same issue: difficulty POSTing (getting stuck on POST code 0D), or crashing under light load (but bizarrely, the P4C800-E is rock solid running Prime95 with a water cooled 4.3 GHz Pentium 4 3.4)

Should I consider recapping the boards? If so, what caps do I need? Is polymodding these boards worth it?

Do note I have never recapped a board myself, nor do I own good soldering equipment to do so.

[momaka]

What caps are originally installed on these boards?

The erratic POSTing could be caused by many different things.

Is the RAM known good and stable on any other PCs of that era? Passes MEMTEST at rated SPD frequency??

How about the PSU? What brand and model is it? Known to be a model with non-Japanese capacitors? Pictures of the insides and label if it's not a universally known brand would be good to have to determine its solidness (or lack of, possibly.)

As for the motherboards, I don't recommend going for a polymod right away. Some ASUS boards used good quality Japanese caps only, while others mixed Taiwanese brands like OST and Ltec. And among the boards with Japanese caps, there are some ultra-low ESR Japanese caps that were known to have issues (i.e. United Chemicon KZG, Nichicon HM/HN/HZ with date codes between H01xx and H04xx/H05xx) So help us help you by being a bit more specific about what each board has.

Lastly, aside from the water-cooled board, are any of the others using Intel stock coolers or otherwise coolers that are warping the PCB very badly under the CPU socket. Most Intel stock coolers were known to do this and could/would eventually cause CPU socket BGA issues (unless the board uses through-hole socket, which is rare.)

[usernameunknown]

What caps are originally installed on these boards?

The erratic POSTing could be caused by many different things.

Is the RAM known good and stable on any other PCs of that era? Passes MEMTEST at rated SPD frequency??

How about the PSU? What brand and model is it? Known to be a model with non-Japanese capacitors? Pictures of the insides and label if it's not a universally known brand would be good to have to determine its solidness (or lack of, possibly.)

As for the motherboards, I don't recommend going for a polymod right away. Some ASUS boards used good quality Japanese caps only, while others mixed Taiwanese brands like OST and Ltec. And among the boards with Japanese caps, there are some ultra-low ESR Japanese caps that were known to have issues (i.e. United Chemicon KZG, Nichicon HM/HN/HZ with date codes between H01xx and H04xx/H05xx) So help us help you by being a bit more specific about what each board has.

Lastly, aside from the water-cooled board, are any of the others using Intel stock coolers or otherwise coolers that are warping the PCB very badly under the CPU socket. Most Intel stock coolers were known to do this and could/would eventually cause CPU socket BGA issues (unless the board uses through-hole socket, which is rare.)

RAM works just fine in another board. NZXT E500 that's about 3-4 years old and lightly used. P4C800-E has Nichicons, forgot which ones the P4P800SEs had.

All three boards were tested with water cooling and exhibited the same issue.

I also have sent the boards off to be recapped in the hopes that fixes the stability issues.

[usernameunknown]

Board's back. P4P800SEs work just fine, P4C800-E is still dead with POST code 0D.

Which, according to this rom.by page, appears to be because of a dead/shorted ICH5 southbridge. So my board's pretty much toast.