Comp bites the dust. :(

[Electrofreak]

So, last night I was playing EVE, chatting on IRC, AIM etc. Just a normal night. Went to bed around 3 AM and shut down the computer.

This afternoon after getting up, I turned it on, and it won't even POST. The fans spin, the hard drive whirrs, the CD-ROMs spin... but no POST beeps and the monitor remains in standby mode.

Naturally, I was pretty pissed. After throwing a few things, I reset the CMOS, jiggled some wires, and raged a bit. No go. I raged a bit more, and reset the CMOS again. Lo and behold, it boots. As it makes its way to the Windows loading screen, I breathe a sigh of relief and head downstairs to grab a drink to celebrate. I return upstairs to see that it has reset itself, and is once again, not POSTing. I tried resetting the CMOS a few more times, removed and reinstalled a stick of RAM, checked to make sure that the mobo was getting power, that the video card was seated properly, all that great stuff. Nothing. So, my computer lies dead while I write this from a Pentium 200mhz with a 24000 dialup connection.

My guesses:

Sudden Motherboard death. Its been almost exactly a year since I bought the motherboard (A Shuttle AN50R) give or take a week, and I suspect that it just decided to die on me. Strange how it booted the one time but none of the others tho. I gave the mobo a cursory check, and I don't see any popped caps or anything visually wrong with it.

CPU problem... perhaps some Arctic silver 5 crept underneath the die and shorted some pins? Seems unlikely, but I'll have to look later. Or maybe the non-stock ThermalTake PIPE-101 heatsink that I have bolted down onto my AMD 64 3200+ has damaged the core... god I hope not. I haven't had any heat issues recently so I'm fairly certain nothing overheated.

Well I've got to head to work so I don't have any time to give the machine a completely detailed check up, I guess I'll do that later this evening. I'm just posting in the hopes that one of you will catch something I've missed or have an idea what exactly is causing this. Like I said, I suspect my motherboard but I'm really not looking forward to replacing it. All my comp specs are below in the sig, and thanks in advance for any help or suggestions you may provide.

[Rbstr]

its almot exactaly like what happened to me, it was my mobo.

[Electrofreak]

Yep, thats what I feared. Ahh damn. Oh well... I guess I'll have to dip into the X-mas gifts fund and get a new mobo. I really wish I had another socket 754 mobo on hand to check for sure though. Seems pretty likely that its to blame, and I guess I might as well be getting a new one anyhow.

Anyhow, I guess I won't be seeing you fellows in EVE for a few days at least.

[Electrofreak]

Ok, I now pose you all a new question. Since I've really not been up-to-date on new hardware as I used to be, what motherboard should I get?

I heard the nForce 4s are out and I'd probably be wanting to get one of those (though to be honest, I don't know much about their new capabilities). I have a socket 754 CPU (an AMD 64 3200+). I want something that will overclock nicely (preferably with a tweak-friendy BIOS), have onboard SATA support, good onboard sound, a decent brand name (no generic plz), and a pricetag under $150. I'll be buying off of newegg.com almost certainly (fast shipping is a must, and they've always provided) so it SHOULD be something they have in stock.

I'll be looking myself as well of course, and doing my research, but the tech community here is pretty damn smart and I certainly would value any advice you can provide.

[FlamingPotato-J]

Ive had good luck with ASUS motherboards. The only one that died on my was when I dropped the pc coming out of a lan, and the really heavy fan+heatsink took out the holding clips. Other than that, I havent had any problem with ASUS boards.

Im using the P4P-800-SE
Its a scoket 478 so, that would be an issue, but ASUS has AMD boards.

[MattxMosh]

the Nforce4's are technically out, in one form, in one SLI board by asus, not really in full swing yet, and wont be for a month or so.

If you stick with 754, go with the DFI Lanparty UT 250GB. Its amazing when it comes to overclocking, especially with teh hacked bios' floating around, lots, and i mean lots of people have hit 3.0ghz.

Check here for soem detailed info on some overclocking with it.

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...d.php?t=123560

[martyr]

i also support asus strongly. have three of them running in my closet rack right now

edit: just kidding. make that two asus and a supermicro.

[Electrofreak]

well... shit.

I was on the verge of buying a new motherboard from Newegg when I decided to give my motherboard one last shot. I unplugged the IDE cables and put em back in, wiggled my heatsink a bit, poked my video card (all things which I'd done previously to no avail), and fully expecting failure, hit the power switch.

Bingo. It works perfectly again.

Evidently, I've got something in there thats loose. I'll prolly be getting a new motherboard soon anyhow. I did some research on those nForce 4s and they look pretty tight, so I'll prolly replace this old Shuttle in a month or so.

In any case, I'm fairly happy.

[Baneblade]

I like MSI, never had a problem.

[Fragmatic]

Asus mobos rock

Never had any problems with mine at all. Wish I could say the same for my MSI one that blew up in a day.