Motherboard replacement dilemma - get another skt 939 or switch to AM2?

Backstory:

I've been having huge problems with my 1 and a half year old PC since May, triggered initially by my Asus A8N-E's chipset fan failing. After getting two different replacement chipset fans, it worked fine for a while, but then the PC developed a new problem. It boots up to windows, invisibly, passes POST, etc (I can tell, because it responds to keyboard commands as if it has booted to windows) but there is no vga signal. It is not the monitor, graphics card, cable or the vga port, as I have tried alternatives. It must be the motherboard in some way.

So, I am sick of being without my PC and I want a new motherboard. Been searching for another socket 939 motherboard all week, but my choices are constrained by the fact I'm avoiding all Asus/Asrock boards due to their terrible customer support, and I am also avoiding foxconn because of some bad stuff I heard about them. Yesterday I gave in and ordered an Abit KN8 SLI skt 939 motherboard from custom PC warehouse for the high price of £75 including postage.

But, having gotten round to being willing to pay that much for it, I now feel maybe I should cancel my order and switch over to socket AM2, because I can get a cheap motherboard, 1gb DDR2 PC6400 ram, and a new dual core x2 AMD 64 4000+ for £106, not including postage. So for £28 or something more than I'm paying for the Abit motherboard, I could get what amounts to a new system.

My question is - is it worth it? The main advantage is obviously the more upgradable motherboard with the newer socket - I was considering the mysterious Abit AN52. Although there is more room for expansion, memory wise, it is more of a low end motherboard, than the socket 939 Abit KN8 SLI I've ordered. Not sure if that matters.

Would I be likely to experience much of a real world speed increase upgrading from single core AMD 64 3200+ (2.1ghz) to dual core AMD 64 4000+ ? I don't use my PC for gaming, the most processor intensive things I do with it image editing and very small scale video stuff.

Also, how difficult would it be to get my existing boot drive to work with an entirely new motherboard and new dual core processor? I take it that I would need to reinstall windows? That is difficult for me because my install disc doesn't have service pack 1 yet alone service pack 2 included, and can't see drives over 120gb, and my boot drive, although partitioned, is 250gb.

It seems a shame to replace still working components that I only bought about a year and a half ago, and which I expected to last me a long time. I suppose they could be used for something else, maybe.

If I didn't got the AM2 route, I could potentially spend the £28 on 1gb of ram, bringing it to a total of 2gb. Would that be a better use of the money than a new processor and motherboard or is it more important to have a newer socket and processor?

I've been looking to get a cheap 939 setup to replace the main socket A PC but it's near enough impossible to get hold of a cheap good motherboard :(

Second hand DDR Ram and single core processors are selling at good prices but motherboards are no where to be found.

I'm thinking of going AM2 route as well.

To be honest now there is no real reason not to go AM2, it costs basically the same if not less now than 939 kit, so...

For an extra £30 you can go the Intel route, using a gigabyte G33 motherboard, Pentium Dual Core E2140 and 1 gig corsair memory, gives you a better upgrade route as well.

The problem with the HDD can be solved in two ways, one if partition the drive to 50GB for the C driver and use the other 200 gig for storage/progams. THat way once you have windows installed on the 50GB you can get all the updates sorted and then parition the rest of the drive. Alternatively you can partition the full amount you can without SP2 and then use a 3rd party program like partition manager to parition the drive once SP2 is installed and I beleive you can merge the 2 partitions or just extend the partition you have on the drive.

If you can afford it, as Madafwo said, a C2D system is the way to go.

Thanks everyone, I decided to try and cancel my socket 939 motherboard order.

As to the intel possibility, the only reason I'm getting a new processor is really that the Socket 939 motherboard I was going to to buy is not that much cheaper than just overhauling the whole thing with an AM2 socket processor and motherboard. Spending £30 more than a socket 939 motherboard for new system guts isn't so bad, but spending £60 over that is too much, considering I felt no burning need for a new processor anyhow. Hopefully, by the time I really feel a need for a new processor after this one, barring more hardware problems, the options for processors and motherboards will be a lot different anyhow.

Hopefully the company will be ok with my order cancellation. Does anyone have any non Asus, non Asrock, non foxconn recommendations for a £35 to £50 socket AM2 motherboard? I don't need onboard graphics (I hope not, anyway, since my motherboard problem is graphics related), but I do need 4 sata II ports and 3 USB headers (for 6 usb ports), 4 memory slots, an nvidia chipset and preferably ATX. I'm surprised at how primitive, spec-wise, some of the new AM2 motherboards are. I saw some that come with 2 SATA 150, rather than SATA 300 ports, for example, and some only support a 2gb of memory with only 2 slots.

I'm considering the Abit AN52, with the nvidia 520 chipset, or an MSI K9N Neo F v3 with nvidia 560 (not sure what the difference is between the chipsets). Unfortunately, reviews of both of these are rare, and there are some people on the internet that have had stability issues with them, especially the MSI. I'm not sure if that's just because the people with problems are the ones that write about these boards, or if there really is some major problems.

Every time i have used an MSI chipset i have had instability issues. They can usually be fixed with a bios update but its just not worth the hassle or the risk, especially seeing as you are avoiding asus & asrock because of their poor customer service.

I would definately say get an AM2 on that budget.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=570815

This looks like the kind of motherboard you are after.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Morgoth

Does anyone have any non Asus, non Asrock, non foxconn recommendations for a £35 to £50 socket AM2 motherboard?

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Biostar TForce loads of performance

Biostar TF520-A2 £39.66

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...0&tid=tf520-a2

Biostar TF560 A2+ £43.11

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...0&tid=tf560a2+


I have owned Biostar TForce 6100/2xBiostar TForce 550/Biostar TForce 560 A2+ great boards

Do you really what to fix your PC or are you looking for a new pc with a bit more power?

You currently have a low spec pc that's broken - £30-£40 M/B should fix it, but I cannot see one that matches your criteria. The 4 memory slots, 4 SATA ports and manufacturer seem to be the issue

Note you will need new memory as well as a CPU if you move to AM2 (or C2D).

Well.. I made my choice. I went for AM2. And for the first time in ages, I'm actually using my PC! Ok, not really my PC now, since only the hard drive and graphics card are the same. I ended up spending more than I meant to out of desperation. I wanted to get the stuff as quickly as possible. But as luck would have it, the telephone line at my house failed! I had to go into my old university to use the internet and make my choice quickly. And nobody had the motherboards I wanted in stock with the AMD 4000+. I went with an AMD x2 4400+ and the biostar t-force AM2+ board from ccl computers, and some 'swissbit' 1gb DDR2 memory..hrm. Ordered it on Tuesday night, arrived today at 10am, so not bad.

I had a horrendous time trying to get the AM2 heatsink on. They seem to require so much force, but I was paranoid about breaking it. Is there any special secret to getting them on or is it just brute force? Also, first time I screwed the motherboard in it ended up squint somehow, despite the case standoffs lining up absolutely perfectly. Didn't help that I hardly have any motherboard screws left.

Anyway once all the stuff was in it powered up first time. I haven't reinstalled windows, but all the drivers are loaded and my PC is sort of back to normal.

I'm happy that so far that it seems like the new processor makes a discernible difference in one regard - I may, depending on finances, be getting a new 10 megapixel DSLR within the near future. I noticed the AMD 64 3200 took a while to open 10 megapixel RAW files that I tested it with. It wasn't unusably slow, just not as good as what I was used to with smaller files. With this new processor, they open much more quickly, which is good.

Great choice on the biostar board, I would do a full reformat, and remember to install the dual core fix, I install both microsofts and amd.

The AM2 heatsinks I found very easy to slip on, I did a am2 x2 4000 just last week, the retention clip looked slightly dif from the ones previous, but it was a breeze to put on

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Max Tractor

Great choice on the biostar board, I would do a full reformat, and remember to install the dual core fix, I install both microsofts and amd.

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If you don't mind could you please post a link as I haven't a clue. Am running a S939 X2 4200.

Thanks.

It is not really wise to use both dual-core timing issue fixes.
Dual-core Optimizer is available on AMD website under dowloads section.
Microsoft fix is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256.

Also I don't understand it when ppl say that getting C2D rig is the only futureproof option. All existing AM2 boards will support 65nm and 45nm K10 processors.

Well, my happy little new PC joy lasted about 5 seconds.

I didn't reinstall windows, but I did try that dual core optimiser from AMD. After installing it, the PC hung for ages 'detecting IDE drives' (which really should be SATA drives). When it finally booted up, it reset itself immediately, then spent a long, long time on the windows XP screen. Then when it got to the desktop.. rebooted itself again.

This is driving me mad, this PC, overall. I am so damned sick of these endless PC problems. I'm so damned sick of not having my own PC to use. Anyone got any suggestions? Can I even reinstall windows when it won't even boot without doing this lovely little repeating dance?!! Did the dual core optimiser possibly cause the problem?

AMD Fix http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/..._13118,00.html

After a format I install Hotfix KB896256 followed by the AMD patch, I followed this thread when I first started on dual core

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=81429

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Morgoth

I didn't reinstall windows, but I did try that dual core optimiser from AMD. After installing it, the PC hung for ages 'detecting IDE drives' (which really should be SATA drives). When it finally booted up, it reset itself immediately, then spent a long, long time on the windows XP screen. Then when it got to the desktop.. rebooted itself again.

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Your old chipset drivers from your prervious setup could be causing all sorts of problems, even uninstall using driver cleaner etc is not something I would recommend. Have you been into the bios?

I had a Asus A8N-E which also need the chipset fan replacing, but i still stick with Asus, they still seem to have the better boards.

It's not necessarily because I think an Asus board would be bad actually, Karl the Gimp, so much as I just don't think they deserve more money from me after how long they took to replace the chipset fan (bought a zalman cooler in the interim, but the board still died, slowly). Three months to replace one tiny part! And though it fixed the problem for a while, the board eventually became useless. Unfortunately I doubt that Asus will fix the board even though it's in warranty, as the graphics card rentention clip has been broken practically since the start and it would be easy for them to say all the problems were accidental damage.

I found that a few other people have had the rebooting problem with the dual core optimiser. After it rebooted itself twice, I turned the PC's power off, and now that it's on again, I've booted up twice without the hanging at the IDE drives bit or the rebooting. Remains to seen whether it will stay that way.

I haven't actually installed the AMD dual core drivers from the AMD site yet because I didn't realise I needed them. I hope they won't screw things up more.

I am most likely going to reinstall windows when I've backed up my stuff.

Remember that when you start getting major Windows problems (ie cant boot up well etc), you can always rescue data with an Ubuntu Live CD (or any other decent Linux live disc, Knoppix also is good) and a USB memory stick. They read NTFS drives fine, but don't often like writing to them too easily (but a USB stick is usually FAT formatted).
This has saved me recently.

PS I just got an ASUS A8N-E board, following my ASRock 939 board failing, but my board cost £26 (second hand from here) so i decided not to change my whole system. It still required an entire Windows re-install though due to a different chipset between the motherboards.

I would try and get your old motherboard replaced, I don't see what you have to lose. If it is in guarantee, then they aught to replace it and then you have most of a machine spare. I know how frustrating these things can be: I know someone who goes nuts with rage if you say "MSI" to him! Stay calm, I'm sure you can fix it.

As for Asus customer service, I know they can be pretty poor but sadly I have yet to find anyone better :( I think all the manufacturers have hacked me off at some point, but at least Asus boards tend to get regular BIOS updates and start off quite well designed, even if they then seem to be poorly assembled & tested. Get a good one and they seem pretty unbreakable (but then I had one recently that would eat a CPU in 15 mins, thankfully Scan dealt with it very well).

Asus normally have 3yr warranty, one reason why I use them too. I had a quirky NF3 board from them but the NF4s I had have been fine (so far, touch wood!). They had awfully noisy chipset fans early on but used to replace them on demand.

Apart from return postage and stuff I agree with Unix, may as well get it repaired/repalced under warranty. Contact them (asus) and explain its condition and see what they say? Alternatively have a word with whoever supplied u the board?

That aside the Biostar TForce are highly rated and a good choice for thier price.
Dual core will benefit you as ur doing encoding work, I didnt see ur thread before else I would have recommended a 2160 on a budget as intels are faster for encoding than AMD.
In any case I am sure the X2 will seem like a dream compared to the old setup.

Argh! I'm having yet more, depressing problems with my new PC. Not reinstalled Windows yet.

It makes noises sometimes when being used like it might be powering down something. It's the same noise it makes when you turn it off, a sort of clicking, downwards noise, although I can still hear a fan noise when it does it. After it was doing that, I left the PC for a while. When I came back, I tried to get to 'programs' on the start menu and it crashed. Mouse pointer frozen, and everything. Switched it off and on again and it couldn't boot, it hung at 'detecting IDE drives'. Did it multiple times. It only worked finally after about 5 tries, once I had tried to get into the BIOS.

My advice to you again is to re-install windows.

1. Connect only 1 hard drive

2. Clear CMOS

3. Clean install

What slots is the Ram in, how many hard drives do you have connected. This clicking, are you using a usb keyboard?

Do you mean a spin-down noise? Thats a drive either with a loose connection or other more serious problem. I see u have WD drives, I have a WD 250GB SATA2 drive that I use a molex power connector on (these drive had both power connectors for people who havent used them), when I had the drive lower in the case, the cable would pull the connector and occasionally cause the drive to do exactly the same click and spin down then back up. I moved it up a bay so the cable isnt pulling and solved the problem. Similar to ur symptoms when it spins down everything freezes but recovers when the drive spins back up.
Probably means my drive is faulty with a poor connection between the molex and drive, or perhaps its just a 'feature' of them. I didnt try with SATA power connector tho.

So check all ur connections and try again. If it persists try isolating each drive in turn and see if u can find the culprit.

Thanks again for the suggestions. I'm holding off on reinstalling windows until I'm sure I've got all the discs and drivers and so on that I need.

I'm hoping that I have found out what the problem is. It's not the power connectors, which seem secure, but I think it might be the SATA data cables. It's strange though, because when it crashes the machine, it definitely sounds like the drive is powering down.

The machine had just down another power down and crash, and when I opened the PC, I noticed that the SATA data cables on two of the drives were *very* loose and the one on the 320gb hard drive seemed to be hanging off. It seems that the Asus cables from my old motherboard are very loose and insecure, both at the motherboard end and the hard drive end, which is strange because I was already using these exact same cables on my old setup and they were secure enough to at least stay in place enough to work.

But now on my new board they just seem to be falling out of place really easily. They don't feel like they're staying put properly, they can still wiggle around, and when I put pressure on them they don't stay where they are once I let go. I'm thinking, and hoping, that these loose cables are what is causing the random crashes. Would a hard drive likely power down if it was not not continually getting data from its cable?

The biostar SATA cable that came with my new motherboard, that is being used for my boot drive seems to be very solid and secure at both ends in comparison. Unfortunately, my new motherboard came with only two of these more secure SATA cables (very mean of them!), and I need three.

Unfortunately maplins (just about the only nearby real life shop selling such things) want £4.99 for a new SATA 1 cable and £7.99 for a new SATA 2 cable with not guarantee that either of them would actually be any more secure.

Do SATA 2 cables all have some sort of latching mechanism to hold the cable in place? If so, does that mean all my cables are SATA 1 rather than SATA 2? Any cheapish cable recommendations?

Yes be sure to get all the drivers and apps you need together ready, makes life so much easier.

I wonder if WD had any issues with the PCB flexing/shorting or connectors in general, whether in full or by batch or we are 2 isolated cases?! I never searched as I fixed what seemed to be my problem at the time. I had 2 of those drives in sperate PCs. For sure the one that had this issue runs a few degrees hotter, even tho they both have the same model 120mm fans blowing over them, plenty of space around etc. I dont have it here with me at the moment else I would look into it more. I changed recently to Seagate 300GB 7200.10 and these are definitely faster (in PC04 & PC05 by approx 25%) and run cooler.

Indeed SATA2 cables have a retaining clip. SATA2 drives will latch them in place. In my experience with mostly older boards they dont always latch onto the mobo end.

However I had huge variation in the cables fitting securely, I will rate these fine cables fom Scan in order of 'tight fit' :D

Scan - Cables - IDE/SATA/Floppy/Fan:

LN17615
45cm Newlink SATAII (SATA300) Cable Blue *UV* (NLRB-304UV) £0.99 £1.16
(this thing is like a limpet on both ends! I cursed it trying to remove it once its so stubborn, ideal if u having connector slippage maybe!)

LN17616
90cm Sata II Cable Blue *UV* Newlink (NLRB-309UV) £0.99 £1.16
(longer limpet!)

LN6782
43cm 3XS Serial ATA Cable SATA150/300 Certified £0.52 £0.61
LN5128
1m 3XS Serial ATA Cable SATA150/300 Certified (RB-410) £0.89 £1.05

(decent cables, no latch but a good tight press fit and great value, the several I have had are with black ends with twin translucent red cabling, much nicer than the generic flat things some mobos come with)

LN11644
45cm Akasa SATA/SATAII (3G) Day Glo Blue UV HDD Cable, 1 x R.angle connector with secure latch £1.95 £2.29
(latched well at HDD end but mobo end was a little looser than the previous cables but nothing bad)

I havent tried pulling the data cable off a running drive with the power still attached so I cant say if it will power the drive down. I might try it one day with a non critical disk!
Using an Icybox sata caddy as well here, so long as the mobo supports hot swap then its possible to unlock the caddy (cuts power) and lock it back up (resumes power) and the drive is re-detected and works fine without harming the environment (its not the boot drive tho).
If i do this on a board not supporting hot swap then Windows (XP-Sp2) will become jerky, locking up, recover a bit, and I end up rebooting.

:o so much for that one being a 'quick reply'!

out of curiosity, do sata 2 cables with the clip have any advantages in data transfer speed over the older sata 1 or is it just the clip?

Apparently not. I did wonder if there was a difference, or maybe with shielding. seems its just the clip. (I could run each cable past the PC05 HDD tests for a definitive answer, but I'm not sure my drive will thank me for that!)
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...ters-sata-sata
http://www.overclock.net/faqs/99397-...ata-sata2.html

Cheers for the links rabbid. I never realized that sata2 was such a gimmick!

Hey, thanks very much for the comprehensive SATA cable review, that's exactly the kind of useful thing that I always want to know, yet don't have any way of finding out. I'm not sure about Western Digital drives being any worse for that than anything else because all my SATA drives are Western Digital. One of them reports an enormously high temperature, but apparently that's a common problem with that particular model - that it misreports the temperature as much higher than it really is. I think it's a WD 2500KS.

I was wondering about the SATA 2 vs SATA 1 cable thing as well. It seems a bit of a scam that there's not much difference between the two standards, or whatever you call them. Probably true that SATA 1 and 2 drives aren't really faster than the equivelent ATA, but at least they don't cost more than ATA drives.

I got an Akasa SATA 2 silver cable with latch from Maplins for £4.99 (grumble). I got it from maplins so I could use it as soon as possible, and yet I haven't actually bothered to open up the PC and put the new cable in, because my PC has been pretty much stable since one of the loose cables has been replaced, and the other has been reconnected. It has been crashing a lot with a certain program, but I think that it's just the program causing the problem, not the PC.

I do have one more problem (sorry to make this my endless PC problem thread, heh) which is that the latest graphics card drivers have some kind of a problem with my card (nvidia Geforce 6600). I still haven't reinstalled windows, but I still plan to, and the latest drivers having a problem with my card would seem not to bode well for reinstalling windows using them. I installed them because of the crashing with the program I mentioned above, which uses 3D graphics. When I open the control panel, it says 'Error, unknown Seeprom device'. It actually works, in the sense that I appear to be able to change things, and I can definitely change the resolution and monitor gamma, and I can use 3D graphics, play games, and so on, but obviously there's something wrong there.

Unfortunately, I spoke too soon, about my 'detecting IDE drives' and HD power down crash woes being due to loose SATA cables, although those loose cables probably didn't help. My PC started crashing and powering down again today and hanging 'detecting IDE drives' on start up.

When I say powering down, I mean, as before, there is this winding down, click and powering off noise, like the noise I get when I turn the PC off, although the CPU and case fans stay on,

Much to my unhappiness, I installed the new secure SATA 2 cable, which was a tight fit, and it worked for about five minutes before one of the drives powered down again and the screen froze completely. On restart.. back to getting stuck detecting IDE drives, again. .. Sigh. I'm beginning to think I'm never actually going to get a PC that works for more than a week at a time.

I was thinking perhaps the new hard drive and motherboard might be too much for my rather crappy PSU (although it supplies more than enough power according the PSU needs calculator, even accounting for it being a crappy brand), so I unplugged my two DVD drives to free up more power, but I think it already did that powering down, crashing thing, even with those unplugged.

Any suggestions?

"Hey, thanks very much for the comprehensive SATA cable review"

You're welcome! I didnt realise I could write so much about some cables... :)

Ah the 2500KS are the same as my WD.
Well SATA drives are cheaper now than the IDE counterparts but it wasnt always this way, as usual with emerging technology and pricing which gets more competitive as the market goes mainstream.

Have you dloaded and run the WD drive testing softwares? I am sure they must have such programs available. This might throw up some clue. Also have you enabled the SMART reporting on ur mobo?

Re your 6600 vga card, which version of nVidia drivers are you using? The drivers get optimised for the latest generations as they are released, you may find its better to purge the latest drivers and iinstall an older edition from a year or two back circa 6600 series hayday as it may well have better matched support.

Cheap PSUs can be temperamental. Saying that (touch wood) I have some cheapie EB 350w supplies that punch above their rating. I do like the Scan EZCool ones with the 120mm fans that help extract hot air from your case (450w/550w versions should be fine for you).
I wonder if you have someone there that can lend you another PSU thats higher rated or better quality so you can compare results and see if the problem persists.

Morg, if I am slow to respond here, feel free to PM me.