nforce2 driving me nuts
 

Okay, since my 4th nforce2 motherboard (a chaintech) died suddenly without warning last week, i had to buy a new one. The dude who wrote this review recommends an nf7-s, so i bought me one of those.

I've put a fairly virgin (as in barely ever overclocked/overvolted) XP1700+ juihb together with 2*Mushkin BH-5 and a R9700Pro in it, and it refuses to boot.

Mmm'kay, maybe it's a compatability issue, so I replaced the radeon with a GF2. No boot either. Hmmm.... maybe just one stick ram would help? No boot either. I retry to boot and halelulia it boots fine. I checked the settings in the bios, save&exit and... it refuses to boot. Aah!

30 attempts to boot later, i figured it might be the BH-5 sticks, so I replaced it with twinmoss 60B. No luck either.

WTF is wrong? I've got two motherboards, an untampered, intact XP1700+, 3 sticks of ram, 2 PSU's and 2 videocard, and no combination wants to work!

5 Nvidia Nforce2 motherboards and not a single one working. :bash: Next time I buy a Dell with a Intel Celeron. :ws:

Any tips, except smashing it with a sledgehammer?

RMA ...

Which piece? : )

like poitke said on other forum: cpu is most likely the pain in the ***, as it is the only part that remained unchanged.

I would RMA the mobo though, if the CPU works in another system but not in the NF7.

I can't check which part doesn't work, as no possible combination works with the parts I have.

I'll try to get a second cpu somewhere. If the cpu died after two months without upping vcore...

I had an nforce 2 epox refuising to boot, giving a led error of OC this weekend.
Searched the manual, no explanation.
got a new asus a7n8x-x (only 70 euro) and replaced it all : no boot.
got the 2600+ out which was in it and replaced it with a 1800+ I still had : perfectly ok.

this is the 2nd 2600+ dying on me, none of them was very overclocked (this one did 2200 mhz 11*200 on standard voltage, so that's hardly extreme overclocking as it was cooled with a slk900...). CRAP
these things are unreliable.

Yeah, I'm getting disappointed to about the reliability of the NF2+XP combo. : /

Never the less, A64 is still too expensive and XP's are dirt cheap, so i ordered a Duron appaloosa and a XP Thorton to work with in the meanwhile. :)

€200 for a A64 3000+ and €150 for a motherboard.
that's like... NF7-S + your old XP + the appaloosa and the thorton :)

0wned :grin:

Not if i need to buy 3 A64's and 5 KT800 mobos to get one working system. : )

then why would you even move away from your unreliable XP rigs? :)

hmm, please dont judge nf2 on chaintechs, first, they have sudden nforce death sydrome... manly because k7 chaintechs are usually crap

my soltek has been pretty beast and reliable, even when i have mistreated it alot, and usually when it screws up, i just unplug the power, clear cmos, smoke a cigarette, come back, set jumper back to default, and boot

Sudden nforce death syndrome?i don't like the sound of that. : )

Two Athlon XP's arrived today, one appaloosa and one Thorton.

Now I've got:
2 motherboards
3 Athlon XP's
2 videocards
2 PSU's
3 ramsticks

They all worked 2 weeks ago. Now, no possible combination works! WTF?

The gods must be crazy.

does the power outlet you use deliver power?

Fans spin, moherboard powers up, just no post.

I'll try a different outlet.

Nope, makes no difference.

Either i've got unlucky with my motherboards (one dead from bioschange, another DOA?) or both my videocards are dead (r9700 from the grafic card cooler roundup, gf2 from age?).

What do you guys think?

I think mainboard. I haven'd killed a graka so far by normal use. Mainboards 2 pieces.

Karma.
We have a guy working in the store with just the same problem. Everything he touches breaks down. (sometimes touching isn't even needed)

And, "normal use"... Who are you talking to eh?

I know I overclock, but none of the thre processors were ever overvolted, and the chaintech always ran at a measily 166fsb.

Hardware normally doesn't break just by me touching it.

Finally some good news. I tempered a bit with the Chaintech and got it back to work. Seems like one of the bios pins were bent.

The NF7-S must be DOA. Hope i'll get my money back.

I hope that too!

good news though on the Chaintech, how did you discover the bend pins?

I noticed it when I took it out to replace it with the NF7-S bios. : )