POS Q-TEC!! Blown up TWO motherboards HELP

[mr_rizla]

Okay - learnt my lesson. After hearing people going on about how dodgy q-tec power supplies, and thinking I was just one of the lucky ones... I NOW KNOW!!!

Okay - story.

Moved house, got into new place (first buy! wowzer!) and plugged in PC. No video - although PC sounds like it powers up fine. Swap out ALL components bar the motherboard through helpful friends, still no luck.

After eBay hunting, manage to replace the NF7S v2 with another identical board. It arrives... and hey presto I am up and running again! Leave it alone for half an hour.. no video. PC now doing exact same as before. Only conclusion - QTEC blew up my motherboard!!!

Any ideas on how to fix MB? QTEC PSU is obviously going to be thrown at the nearest cat, but was hoping I could swap ot a capacitor or something to fix the board and limit the damage to my wallet. Any advice people?

[alexander]

RMA it? If its in warranty taht is....

[mr_rizla]

No - off of an ebayer, no RMA. I'm far too honest to try it on with a legitimate human being... (as opposed to a b*stard corporation who makes shoddy power supplies) Ho hum.

[Dougal]

how long ago did you buy the unit?

And can you give the link to the ebay item page?

[SilentDeath]

You could try rma'ing to abit directly?

When PSU's kill mobos, its sometimes temporary, and will work again if you leave the board 24 hours.

[mr_rizla]

Timeline: The QTEC has been in my system for about a year and a half - it died half way through and i got it replaced under warranty. NF7S died two months ago on moving, replaced it about 2 hrs ago and 90mins ago (AFAIK) it went caput. Can't think of any other component in my system that would cause the self destruction of two motherboards.... (How would posting a link to the ebayer help? I don't blame him - it definitely worked when I got it (The replacement NF7)). QTEC was bought from a shop and is now out of warranty I believe (not worried too much, not going to swap it for another!)

Plan of action I am going with, unless I can fix somehow, is to use this an excuse to go for that athlon 64 754 upgrade...

[mr_rizla]

You could try rma'ing to abit directly?

When PSU's kill mobos, its sometimes temporary, and will work again if you leave the board 24 hours.

I like that kind of optimism, and will give it a go when I have replaced the PSU...

[herulach]

Usually if an item is warrantied for a year, then any replacement warranty will be too.

[Nox]

Usually if an item is warrantied for a year, then any replacement warranty will be too.

But only from the purchase date of the original item.

Nox

[herulach]

But only from the purchase date of the original item.

Nox

That may be the case with some places, maybe if its a manufacturer warranty, but a lot of places will extend the year to cover one year from the replacement.

[ifyouknowme]

ive got a 650 watt qtec and ive never had any problems prehaps i was lucky what bit of the psu aint working is one of the rails to high voltage or something

[herulach]

The problems with them are many and varied, we useed to sell a lot when i worked at maplins, and at least 1 in 20 would prob get returned cos they broke, usually just dieing, but a couple of times actually taking equipment with them, luckily that was only on machines wed built though, so the repercussions werent too huge.

[wilsonian]

i was the E-seller for the motherboard.

sorry to hear about the board and i can't beleive it's finally died - did me proud that board!

the PSU i was using was an enermax 350W and i can't fault them. i also use an X-pro PSU - which i'd never heard of before but haven't had any problems with it.

Although i have seen a few Akasa PSU's blow the motherboards

[prehensile]

I thought one of my nf7s died because I'd mixed round which way the CMOS jumper goes. Can you get any beeps out of it? sometimes it can be the case that goes wrong by shorting a contact on the motherboard. Do you troubleshoot your boards on a newspaper/wooden board to find out what it is? Good luck

[Nox]

That may be the case with some places, maybe if its a manufacturer warranty, but a lot of places will extend the year to cover one year from the replacement.

You've had a bit of luck then! I've worked in two IT companies returns departments, neither of them offered that, but only because the manufacturers did not offer that to us to pass on. Saying that, we did fiddle the occassional original order form to get out of warranty replacements for customers when we felt they were being shafted by the manufacturer.

The only problem with the 'extending warranty' is 3 years down the line, after 3 replacements, its still covered, and the person will get a free upgrade as the item is out of circulation - infact someone could still be running on a 1990 receipt for a dx2/66... thats why you're lucky to have found someone that will do that.

Nox

[mr_rizla]

The board is not beyond hope Wilsonian! I've replaced the PSU with an Antec Truepower 330watt and all kind of appears ok... but, if you guys could comment on the following scenario:

- When it has been off, it switches on fine.
- When it has been shutdown, if you boot it back it exhibits the same problems as before. Pulling out the plug and leaving it for 10 secs puts it back into the off state, and it switches on fine again.

I may well actually have two working motherboards... its a little intermittent and I can't understand the real issue here...