Mordecai Walfish
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2011
- Messages
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Hello! I am replacing the motherboard in a secondary computer in the house, its for an AMD Phenom II 555BE Dual Core Processor (C-Stepping)
I previously had ASRock's 870 Extreme 3 motherboard, and it worked fantastic for the longest time, but then it started exhibiting some signs that all was not right, and after taking every part out and testing them individually I could find nothing wrong with any of my components.
Then I pulled the 24 pin power connector to my motherboard out to find that the top right plastic "pin" in the corner of the connector and one next to it showed signs of damage. They appeared to be slightly melted, the first one in the corner much more so than the second one in.
I also saw what looked like blackness in the connecter hole for the same pins on the motherboard. My problem all along had been either power supply (which showed stable voltages) or the motherboard, which is a more likely culprit as I went out on a limb ordering the ASRock board, having never tried one of their products before. In the past I only had a serious problem with one other motherboard, and that was also a cheap one (Biostar I believe).
I would like to find a similar board by a more trusted manufacturer, perhaps a favorite amongst forum users who core unlock AMD Phenom chips.
I've been thinking its unlikely the power supply is the cause of the issue here, it is a Corsair 750 Watt PSU, It's actually still in use on the same MOBO, as the board itself says it only requires a 20 pin connection, so i removed the last 4 from the power supply's plug and the computer still runs fine. I noticed after a few days use that the top-right pin of the now-20 pin connector is starting to show the same signs of damage as the previous damaged pin. I wont take any chances with the burned leads on that motherboard though, and will be keeping it off until I can replace both the mobo and PSU. (ASAP)
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I got the ASRock 870 Extreme 3 because of some features on the board, I would like the new one to have as well:
#1. - Core Unlocker. I bought the 555BE just to pair with this mobo and lucked out with the chip completely, all 4 cores unlock and tested stable to 48 hours of straight stress testing up to 3.8 ghz. I ran the board at 3.6 GHZ and have a very comprehensive cooling solution in the case as well. (air, 7 fans) Temps for the CPU topped out at about 52 degrees under full load and has not ever gone above that under complete load in stress tests. usually hovers around 49-50.
#2. - SLI I was especially interested in this board because it offered 8x8 lanes of PCI-E in SLI configurations. I am using it with older Nvidia graphics cards currently in SLI (and before you say anything, Yes, I am aware this is a "ATI Crossfire Only" board, but I easily was able to SLI Nvidia cards on it through the use of HyperSLI) I also dont mind if it's not 8x8 PCI-e lanes, as I know thats kind of rare, but thats what I would prefer, as I got fantastic SLI performance scaling from this setup with just two 8800GT's.
#3. - Support for DDR3 1600 Memory as I have 4 GB from the old motherboard that are in perfect condition.
#4. - Price point. ~$100 is preferable. Can re-negotiate perhaps a small bit higher depending on the product, of course.
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Thank you tech Power Up! Forum readers for any help you can provide!!
I desperately want to get this PC back in working order quickly.. it was the perfect spec for guests to be able to log into games like League of Legends, Dota 2, TF2 and Diablo 3 and play co-op in the same house together.
P.S - If anyone knows what would cause a motherboard/PSU to have the top right corner on the connector, both in 24 pin and 20 pin configurations, to show signs of darkening/melting/damage, I would really love to know what the source of this was, as I tore my hair out testing every component in the PC to no avail and finally moved to stripping the board completely and inspecting it which is when I found the damage.
EDIT - I saw that the updated Extreme3 boards from ASRock (Both the 990FX and 970) feature digital pulse-width modulation (PWM), as opposed to my 870 Extreme 3 which didnt.. could this be something they added because they knew of power issues with the previous generation of boards?
Thank you again!
-Mordecai
I previously had ASRock's 870 Extreme 3 motherboard, and it worked fantastic for the longest time, but then it started exhibiting some signs that all was not right, and after taking every part out and testing them individually I could find nothing wrong with any of my components.
Then I pulled the 24 pin power connector to my motherboard out to find that the top right plastic "pin" in the corner of the connector and one next to it showed signs of damage. They appeared to be slightly melted, the first one in the corner much more so than the second one in.
I also saw what looked like blackness in the connecter hole for the same pins on the motherboard. My problem all along had been either power supply (which showed stable voltages) or the motherboard, which is a more likely culprit as I went out on a limb ordering the ASRock board, having never tried one of their products before. In the past I only had a serious problem with one other motherboard, and that was also a cheap one (Biostar I believe).
I would like to find a similar board by a more trusted manufacturer, perhaps a favorite amongst forum users who core unlock AMD Phenom chips.
I've been thinking its unlikely the power supply is the cause of the issue here, it is a Corsair 750 Watt PSU, It's actually still in use on the same MOBO, as the board itself says it only requires a 20 pin connection, so i removed the last 4 from the power supply's plug and the computer still runs fine. I noticed after a few days use that the top-right pin of the now-20 pin connector is starting to show the same signs of damage as the previous damaged pin. I wont take any chances with the burned leads on that motherboard though, and will be keeping it off until I can replace both the mobo and PSU. (ASAP)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I got the ASRock 870 Extreme 3 because of some features on the board, I would like the new one to have as well:
#1. - Core Unlocker. I bought the 555BE just to pair with this mobo and lucked out with the chip completely, all 4 cores unlock and tested stable to 48 hours of straight stress testing up to 3.8 ghz. I ran the board at 3.6 GHZ and have a very comprehensive cooling solution in the case as well. (air, 7 fans) Temps for the CPU topped out at about 52 degrees under full load and has not ever gone above that under complete load in stress tests. usually hovers around 49-50.
#2. - SLI I was especially interested in this board because it offered 8x8 lanes of PCI-E in SLI configurations. I am using it with older Nvidia graphics cards currently in SLI (and before you say anything, Yes, I am aware this is a "ATI Crossfire Only" board, but I easily was able to SLI Nvidia cards on it through the use of HyperSLI) I also dont mind if it's not 8x8 PCI-e lanes, as I know thats kind of rare, but thats what I would prefer, as I got fantastic SLI performance scaling from this setup with just two 8800GT's.
#3. - Support for DDR3 1600 Memory as I have 4 GB from the old motherboard that are in perfect condition.
#4. - Price point. ~$100 is preferable. Can re-negotiate perhaps a small bit higher depending on the product, of course.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you tech Power Up! Forum readers for any help you can provide!!
I desperately want to get this PC back in working order quickly.. it was the perfect spec for guests to be able to log into games like League of Legends, Dota 2, TF2 and Diablo 3 and play co-op in the same house together.
P.S - If anyone knows what would cause a motherboard/PSU to have the top right corner on the connector, both in 24 pin and 20 pin configurations, to show signs of darkening/melting/damage, I would really love to know what the source of this was, as I tore my hair out testing every component in the PC to no avail and finally moved to stripping the board completely and inspecting it which is when I found the damage.
EDIT - I saw that the updated Extreme3 boards from ASRock (Both the 990FX and 970) feature digital pulse-width modulation (PWM), as opposed to my 870 Extreme 3 which didnt.. could this be something they added because they knew of power issues with the previous generation of boards?
Thank you again!
-Mordecai
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