Motherboard Down!

[Reverend Sin]

So my motherboard died and I've got to send it in for RMA (for any of you that have it I get no display and the diagnostic LED's get down to the last red light and then give one long loud beep, tried clearing the CMOS settings like the DFI tech support team told me to via email and nothing happened so they suggested I send it in for RMA)

Anyway, the person that suggested I buy this in the first place around a year ago told me that the DFI boards are naturally finnicky and aren't to be trusted unless you can finetune them and (from what he made it sound like) posess a hardware engineering degree. I'm going to RMA the board one way or the other but should I get a new Mobo that will be more reliable and dependable for me in the long run? Have a lot of people had problems with DFI? I admit I didn't do a huge amount of research on this one in the first place because the person that referred it to me is a very close friend and generally knows what he's talking about.

I am running:

DFI LanpartyUT NF4 Ultra D socket 939
Dual Core Opteron Processor
2GB Dual Channel DDR RAM (XMS Value RAM I think)
eVGA 7800GTX
WD 320gb SATA drive
Antec TruePower 2.0 Truecontrol 2 550w ATX12v PSU
Soundblaster XFI Xtreme Music sound card (Klipsch Promedia 5.1 Ultra )
I do have the Thermalright SI-120 and a Panasonic 80MM fan on top of it. So things are a bit cramped. On the DFI board my video card was right over top the little mobo fan but that died after a month or so anyway so no worries.

So should I RMA the Lanparty and buy a new one and hope nothing goes wrong with it or just wait on the DFI and hope I can get someone to help me fine tune the motherboard so it doesn't crap out on me in 9 months of use. (Was using all stock settings, no overclocking, using built in optimized settings.)

::Edited for Proper Heatsink::

 

[Reverend Sin]

No advice at all?

 

[hx009]

Originally posted by: Reverend Sin
No advice at all?

I feel your pain. I've had a DFI LanParty for about a year and a half and it's the biggest piece of crap I've ever owned in 10+ years of IT. It is EXTREMELY picky about what memory it accepts. Add/change expansion cards? Forget it. I just put a Hauppauge PCI tuner in this thing. The machine locked up. Hard. For some reason if I disconnect everything and leave it plugged in and untouched for a half hour or more, the entire system "resets" itself and lets me back in. I'm surfing tonight looking for a dinosaur Socket 939 board to replace this thing. I'll never buy another DFI motherboard again.

 

[Thor86]

Just because you don't know how to use a motherboard bios settings doesn't mean it's POS. Check out this nice thread on everything you need to know about this board, and once you figure how to work with bios settings, you'll agree, this is one of the best s939 boards out there.

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88699

 

[hx009]

Originally posted by: Thor86
Just because you don't know how to use a motherboard bios settings doesn't mean it's POS. Check out this nice thread on everything you need to know about this board, and once you figure how to work with bios settings, you'll agree, this is one of the best s939 boards out there.

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88699

Sorry, I disagree. I've never had to waste so much time and money on a motherboard as this one. I've used Asus, Abit, Tyan, Supermicro, MSI, and others and NEVER had to worry about "will my system lock up because I added an expansion card or memory"? If you like to waste your time with the minitua BS BIOS settings good for you... I don't.

And from that page, things like this are absolutely retarded:

Tip #3 - Before you change hardware, power down completely. That means the PSU should be turned off too.

Tip #4 - If you can't get the board to boot and the monitor stays blank, try moving the video card to the second PCIe slot. If it boots up from there, update BIOS, then move card back to first slot.

I should know this why? Give me a break. I don't unplug the PSU when installing expansion cards (it has no switch on the back). I know running the latest BIOS is generally a good practice, but moving the card around from slot to slot is just lame and something I wouldn't think of in the course of normal troubleshooting.

 

[Centurin]

Tip #3 - Before you change hardware, power down completely. That means the PSU should be turned off too.

Tip #4 - If you can't get the board to boot and the monitor stays blank, try moving the video card to the second PCIe slot. If it boots up from there, update BIOS, then move card back to first slot.

I don't really see the issue with these tips. I would think #3 would be obvious and #4 is just a typical troubleshooting step. I, myself, am looking forward to the new DFI Lanparty board with the new Nvidia chipset. From what I've heard, DFI makes respectable boards.

 

[Reverend Sin]

Well I've contacted DFI about beginning the RMA process, does anyone have any idea what kind of board I should get in the meantime? I really need to get my computer back up and running as soon as possible. I have access to my roommates dinosaur computer but it's essential that I get to mine ASAP. I don't mind price so much so long as it doesn't break 200$ because if I do end up using the DFI after I get it back I'll probably use one or the other to build a computer for my wife.

Also on a side note, the only other problem I really had with my computer was a constant NV4_DSP.dll Blue Screen. It was completely random from what I could tell and I hadn't found anything substantial on that particular error the last time I looked (and I'll admit its been a while)

Edit: Another friend mentioned trying out the ASRock 939 board? I've never even heard of them but I recall seeing a thread a ways down on the front page so I'll look into that as well.

edit2: I just noticed I accidently said XP-120 when I actually have the larger SI-120