A7N8x big problems !!!

[Microbman]

Alright, here goes: I purchase a new fresh outta the box A7N8X Deluxe mobo, removed the chip, heatsink and fan, etc. from the mobo that was given me probs. I plugged in the fan on the CPU fan header and.....not a damn thing happened xcept it quivered. By manually rotating the blades the fan would activate slowly and then stop. I unplugged the fan from the CPU header and placed onto the case fan header - nada. I plugged in an extra case fan that I use in the summer and has worked in the past to the case fan header.... nada again. I plugged the original fan (the YS Tech TMD) into a PSU supply line using a Molex adapter and SMOKE !! I immediately shut it all down as smoke was rising from the fan. There is no visable damage to the fan although the red lead in wire is slightly bubbled. The heat sink is was pretty cool to the touch (SLK-700) so hopefully the smoke was not from the new CPU or mobo. This is the second mobo from two different suppliers with the same fan problem. It looks like bad fan headers to me on these mobos. I have not read any threads with this same problem tho on AnanTech or other forums. What gives here?? Any ideas???? There were no signs that the mobo was shorting when I changed them out from my case. It is a very good heavy durable case I have had for several years and just yesterday morning I was running my 1G Tbird on my IWill-266 board just fine until I decided to upgrade to this Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I am letting things cool a while and then will try hooking up another case fan directly to the PSU using the Molex adapter and see what happens. If that works I will leave it on that e source and put it on my SLK-700 and go into BIOS and see whats up there. Any help with this is HUGELY appreciated!!!!!! Oh yeh, I forgot to mention I purchased a 350W Antec PSU and have that installed now. This PSU is in my case when the fan fried.

I copied this from my other posts under PSU problems

 

[chizow]

Hmm hot swapping fans when your power is on? Running a CPU with no fan on the heatsink? There's too much going on in this thread to offer an accurate diagnosis. Could be your PSU, your fans, a short somewhere on the mobo b/c of contact...number of issues. Its obviously not isolated to the mobo fan headers, b/c if I'm reading your post correctly, the fan didn't smoke til after you plugged it into a molex connector.

Also, for fans that require more power, you shouldn't be plugging them into fan headers anyways.

For future reference, never hot swap anything in your case while power is running, and never attempt to boot up without a fan on your heatsink.

Chiz

 

[Microbman]

Chizow - I gave the wrong impression as there was no hot swap. The power was off when I made the mentioned changes. The fan is only rated at 3.8 W. It should have been fine to run it off the PSU lines. This brings me to my update. I dissassembled the HS and chip to look at the chip. There are some minor dark smudges along the face of the chip board between the connectors. I replaced the chip, HS and put my old Sunon fan on the HS connected to a PSU line. Powered up with no probs. Looks like the PSU is OK and chip ok for now without a load on it running at 19C (room about 68 F). The fan headers will not work. I tried a coupla other fans on them and all the fans do is a minor quiver. My son checked Google forums and found posts stating that this mobo is known to have fan header probs and they do not work. Also a known that the Q-fan does not work either. Prob a good thing for that anyway. We also cannot get the reset to work. Even tho this mobo may work as long as I have enough lines from the PSU to attach my fans to and I must reinstall XP, I will still return this board to the supplier for defects. Flat out it does not work according to published features and specs.

I am not sure I want to stay with this board at all but I know that I want the nVidia chip and not VIA. The supply house may have a different view of this tho.

One thing is for sure, that YS Tech fan is fried and I will not have another in my puter. I'll try and get $$ on that too but would rather swallow it than have another piece of crap like that. Any suggests for a new mobo?? MSI, Soyo, Epox, ???

 

[chizow]

Go with the Epox..I would've gone with the 8RDA+ but everyone was sold out other than Newegg and they were charging a ridiculous $133 or so for it. Also, at the time of my purchase, there was no confirmed PCI lock, which has since been confirmed.

Yah this board is in no ways perfect, the problems you described bordered on freakish tho

That makes sense to me, faulty mobo fan headers is not uncommon in this day and age with fans that scream for power and not enough juice powering it. I'm actually using my fan headers right now without any problems though. I'm putting a Thermaltake SmartFan II with Coolmod on tomorrow when my XP 2100+ (hopefully a B) arrives, and I'm definitely putting that on a molex

The biggest thing that bothers me about this Asus board is that the BIOS releases so far just blow. I agree, there are features on this board that are either non-functional, or barely functional, but I'm blaming it on the BIOS and not craftmanship or quality of parts. I had never heard of fan header probs with this board, but probably not an isolated incident. Again, don't discount the fan itself, as faulty fans have been known to cause problems.

Chiz