Josh Saddler - Latest comments on Failing hardware part 4

In response to: Failing hardware part 4

energyman [Visitor] — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:54:52 +0000

I had an Asrock AliveNF5-esata2+ which is a good working horse. nforce 520 chipset. It just works. No problems - and with later kernels NCQ works too. Realtek gb ethernet, couple of usefull slots, usb, firewire.

I now own an Asrock A770Crossfire which does have the SB700 southbridge. No SATA problems at all, but there is something wrong with usb+2.6.27. Have to look into that.

In response to: Failing hardware part 4

Sodki [Visitor] — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:33:46 +0000

I really don't know what I'll do if the motherboard doesn't solve the lockups. Weep quietly in a corner, perhaps. Swear off computers forever, maybe.

You could always buy an old Macintosh and join the PPC team. :-)

In response to: Failing hardware part 4

Josh Saddler [Member] — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:00:25 +0000

@Kevin:

Yeah, RAM ain't the issue. Before the board started locking up after just a bit of use, I was able to run memtest86 a few times, with tests lasting from a few hours to overnight to 24 hours+. No errors ever turned up.

Granted, I have regular DDR2, not the ECC variety, since my board doesn't support that. But still, normally memory errors are one of the first things to show up, either in memtest86 or in software things like segfaults or interesting messages in the logs. Memtest86 went okay, no segfaults are to be found, and my logs are completely devoid of any error messages.

In response to: Failing hardware part 4

Kevin Bowling [Visitor] — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:45:55 +0000

Did you ever check the RAM? I think something like 90% of hardware failures are a combination of RAM and PS failure. You'll have a hell of a time finding it without ECC as well.

In response to: Failing hardware part 4

Christoph Brill [Visitor] — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:33:36 +0000

Yeah. Without any product details my information is not really helpful. But sadly I can't access the box right now and don't remember the model.

But after this "experience" we switched from AMD Phenom X4 to Intel E7xyz for our new systems at work.

In response to: Failing hardware part 4

Josh Saddler [Member] — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:09:59 +0000

@Christoph:

Well, without information on your Asus motherboard's model, there's really nothing I can use.

I notice that the reviews on NewEgg at least for the -EM HDMI model are generally very positive. The -CM (business) variant doesn't seem to do as well; possibly due to inferior components or some such. Maybe this is the one you have?

Since I'm not planning on going back to an nVidia chipset after all the issues this one has given me, AMD's the only thing left. Heh, what I'd really like is an Intel chipset for my existing AMD CPU.

In response to: Failing hardware part 4

Christoph Brill [Visitor] — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:42:06 +0000

I have 2 AMD X2 systems running with gentoo. The one at home is a cheap MSI board with an MCP55. Works really flawless.

At work I have some ASUS with SB700 ... which is a desaster. I can't upgrade my kernel beyond 2.6.25 or the system will just segfault now and then. Took me days to figure that out. With 2.6.25 kernels the board works fine, though it sometimes disables firewire and USB hotplug will never work (I just get a "Disabling IRQ #19"-message a boot). I can't really recommend AMD chipsets.