Stuff ASUS : Enough is enough

Soldato
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What is it with me and Asus boards?

Every single one of them has developed an inability to suddenly decide to not bother working anymore.

Latest in the long line of failures is the P5NE-SLI

I only bought that last week from the OCUK MM

I have plenty of Samsung 512MB Sticks, so I can easily put 4 of those into it to get the board setup...

The board came with a lowly P4 "D" 640 and so I ordered a new C2D CPU to plonk into it instead.

Ran seemingly fine, but on a restart, it decided that it didnt like 4 sticks of RAM, so I ran it on a pair instead, and then I tried a pair of GEIL 2GB 6400's in it and it seemed to like that so I also bought a pair of those two too!

I then came across a pair of 8600GT cards for a fairly cheap price so I thought... Stuff it, have a play with those too, and so I bought them.

So, I put the bugger away to await my new bits.

Fantastically, the Cards, the RAM and the CPU all came today, so, chuffed as a pig in poo I built up the PC but after 10 seconds of silence I get 1 long beep and 3 short ones... RAM ERROR!

Cutting down and already unnecessarily long post, I have now tried all my RAM in all various ways to get this Mobo to start up and all I am getting is either nothing or 1-long + 3-short beeps

Now, looking back at my other dead Socket 775 Mobos, I see a small pattern

Asus P5N32-SLI
Asus P5N32-Plus SLI
Asus P5NE-SLI

And my AMD Boards that are bead

Asus A8R-MVP


I think I have had it with Asus then

Im going back to Gigabyte or Abit... Heck Even my MSI Boards are still all going strong.

But Asus... Nope, thats it.
 
Associate
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The pattern i see = Nvidia chipsets :p

Anyways are you sure its not you doing something wrong? Also is there any of them that was bought brand new?
Strangely, I went from a Gigabyte to Asus mobo and aint turning back, it has much lower vdroop
 
Associate
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I've noticed with every Asus board I have owned (actually on a P5B Deluxe @ the moment, putting the finishing touches to it to give to a friend) that when using all 4 slots I have had to up the voltage on the RAM by 1 notch or 2...but with any other board they've all worked flawlessly without any upage in voltage.

Though I haven't touched this one because I have 2 x pc5300 & 2 x pc6400 running on auto volts.

Try upping the voltage to the RAM a bit m8 see if still pops up with any errors.
 
Man of Honour
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Gigabyte all the way.

I've had a few asus boards and aside from the one in my media PC all of the P5 series boards have had issues or died.

There seems to be 2 problems with the northbridge that causes stability problems and dying, one software the settings asus use seem to have problems with some other hardware causing BSOD especially with nVidia GPUs and OCZ RAM the other hardware the NB chip doesn't make great contact with the motherboard and if you have a heavy CPU heatsink or similiar causing the board to bend a bit it can cause stability issues, boot failure, etc.

Also the DRAM sockets and NIC socket have a bad habit of degrading prematurely.
 
Associate
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It's a shame to hear you've had such a bad history with ASUS boards.

Although somebody already noted, the chipset you've had issues with is an nForce4, which seems to be known for issues across manufacturers.

Flaming ASUS as an entire company's a bit strong though, really.

Have you considered that the board you purchased may not have been in pristine condition and the risks of buying second hand may flag such problems?
 
Soldato
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This. I gotta say it, NVIDIA chipsets suckkkkkk

I have to say despite my old board I have to agree, more annoying was they backed out of Vista drivers and consequently W7 doesn't work on the Nvidia chipset. At least it gives me a good excuse to upgrade (avoiding Nvidia chipsets!).
 
Soldato
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I've always had better reliability with Gigabyte myself, their boards are solid, but as just one user out of millions I don't believe my experiences necessarily follow an overall trend.

Asus always put those extra bits on their boards, particularly at the high end that add something more. Not always necessary, but enthusiast hardware can't just be stable, it needs attractive design and a range of features that push the boundaries of what we've seen before in the sector. I think Asus lead in that respect, not taking anything away from the quality of gigabyte though, it's very hard to beat.

My last board has been an Asus (P5Q Pro) and I'm moving to Asus on AM3 now too, so I'm more than confident that they're good enough. Nothing has put me off yet anyway! Conversely, I had a woeful experience with Gigabyte support this year, so that went down a notch in my books unfortunately. I believe Asus have revamped their motherboard support and RMA in the last year or so, hopefully this will give better service than their reputation in this regard would suggest.
 
Soldato
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On the other hand every single Asus board I have had has worked flawlessly - A8N32 SLI Deluxe, X38 Maximus Formula, X48 Rampage and now my P6T6 WS Revolution and as far as I'm aware are still working for whoever owns them now :)
 
Caporegime
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The only Asus boards i had that failed were a8n sli deluxe (x2), though i still have an a8n32 sli thats been rock solid for years. Currently on a p6t dlx v2 which has been great, as was my previous p5q deluxe, only other boards ive had fail were, an msi k8n diamond plus sli and an evga 680i a1, as for support i found evga to be abysmal, wouldnt take any of their products if they were being given away.
 
Soldato
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The only mboard that has failed on me was an Asus P4P800 E Deluxe, which failed after about 18 months, but trying to get it RMAed to Asus was a nightmare, it had to go half way around the world nearly...well to Holland and cost me about £15 in postage...their support is rubbish! I know they recently "supposedly" remedied this...

None of my Gigabyte mboards have packed in, but if they do I know the Gigabyte Support is better as it is dealt with in the UK...so Gigabyte gets the thumbs up from me!
 
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Soldato
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I have realised that my Opteron SLI system is an Asus... A8N-SLI

I am sort of happy with this board except that the NB cooler was rattling and so I have swapped this for a Vantec Fanless.. This is only just allowing my 2x7800GTX cards to go in but we are definitely talking under 1mm play either side.

I have to say however that pretty much every SLI Mobo I have had myself, the NB cooling is always in the most stupid place for an SLI setup

As for gigabytes, I have always been happy with them. NForce or not.

And as for nforce... I actually like NForce Chipsets. Always have since Abits NF7

Most of my PCs are either NForce or Intel Chipsets... OTTOMH I cannot name any other?
 
Permabanned
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Ive had failures on Asus boards using Nvidia chipsets too.

Its not Asus's fault, its the Nvidia chipsets that were rubbish.
 
Associate
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The only mboard that has failed on me was an Asus P4P800 E Deluxe, which failed after about 18 months, but trying to get it RMAed to Asus was a nightmare, it had to go half way around the world nearly...well to Holland and cost me about £15 in postage...their support is rubbish! I know they recently "supposedly" remedied this...

Wow, that's an old board right there. A lot of things have changed since then, namely that RMAs are dealt with in the UK in most cases. Only cases that are out of warranty or where the place of purchase has gone out of business are dealt with outside the UK.
 
Associate
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The pattern i see = Nvidia chipsets :p

Anyways are you sure its not you doing something wrong? Also is there any of them that was bought brand new?
Strangely, I went from a Gigabyte to Asus mobo and aint turning back, it has much lower vdroop

Agreed, I've had several gigabyte boards go south on me, so for my most recent build I opted for a Asus Crosshair III and I've not looked back. It's certainly the most fully featured and reliable board I've had yet.
 
Associate
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Have to agree with a lot of people here.

I love Asus mobos personally, never had a problem, I have however had problems with two NVIDIA based boards, both from different manufacturers.
 
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