Hey guys,

my desktop pc just died on me. I plugged in my iPod to charge it and the whole system just shut off, no warning or anything. It wont turn back on. I took it out of the desk and disconnected everything on it except the power cord. the green light on the PS was blinking fast, like it was on coke. I went through HP's troubleshooting matrix on there website (HP m470n), and got to the part about disconnecting the power supply from everything. after i plugged the power cord back in with the ps connected to nothing, the green light was steady, which means the ps is probably good. I plugged the MB back in, and got the light on crack again. I started looking at the board and found a row of caps next to the processor that are bubbled on top, so i am at the conclusion that the board is toast.

my question is.....does this seem like sound reasoning, and if so, what cheap motherboard would you recommend replacing it with, or not so cheap. I am mainly looking for suggestions. all my data was put on it after i got it so i could free up some space on my laptop, and i am not worried about getting it back as much as i want my desktop working again.

the existing mb is ASUS P4SD-LA with 512 mb ram and 3.0Ghz Proc (pent 4 HT)

thanks

jamie

 

Unless you can replace the board with one of the same model, you'll more than likely need to format your primary hard drive. Windows generally doesn't like it when you swap out mbs... but you can occassionally get by without a reformat. As for replacement boards, I've always been partial to asus boards. Check out newegg.com and see what fits your needs.

I hope this helps a little... sorry it's not a definitive answer, I haven't been keeping up with all the new products lately.

Tom

 

np, i want to stay with asus, and would love to get a direct drop in so that i can keep all the little things hooked up. have to see what is going on after i get off of the boat det. not too worried about losing the data, i can take the HD out and put it in a case and transfer the stuff i need back to my laptop then reformat, but yeah, would like to stay with the Asus board.

tried to find the caps that i would need to fix it, but cant find them anywhere. who would have thought that 6.3 volt, 1800 micro-farad caps would be so hard to find.

keep the suggestions coming guys. thanks for the help cuda.

jamie

 

yes i agree that asus makes a hell of a mobo ... as for an easy replacement thats not hard to find i mean if its not a power hungry machine your not running much outside of the mobo .... they all run the same formfactor and all asus mobos have plugs for ports on the front of computers so what your looking at here is a graphics card is prob all that you have installed on it and im guessing your mobo runs agp 8x like most do its more than likely not pci xpress so you could basically go find any asus mobo that fits the same pentium processor your running with an agp 8x port and that runs the same ddr ram .... and drop that right in ... while your at it i would recommend getting some artic cool because you will need that between your processor and the heat sync .... you do not wanna reuse that you want to clean the existing off your heatsync and your processor before you install it ... ok so i looked it up ... breifly your running a p4 socket 478 ... 1 8x/4x agp slot ... 3 pci slots ... 184 pin dimm ddr ... and its a micro atx form factor so what i would recommend is to pick up a ASUS P5S800-VM Socket T if your not looking for anything real special it is also a micro atx form and a asus board but being how your board was factroy direct you may have problems finding it but the board i recommend you can pick up <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131521&ATT=13-131-521&CMP=OTC-pr1c3watch">here</a> for about 55 bux including shipping...

 

I don't particularly care for asus, but to each his own I guess...

Is it socket 478 or LGA775?

Is there a labeled heatsink on your chipset? If you know what chipset you're running, this can help us pick a board without you needing to reformat your harddrive.

I assume it's probably AGP since it's from the P4 3.0ghz era.

I went and searched for your board on the egg, the tiger, and zipzoomfly. You're out of luck on that chipset.

Ryan

 

most likely you have Nichicon capacitors, this is a known issue!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

 

I would say dump the PC and get a new one... All the time effort and money to get that back up and running and it will still be a 5 year old machine... You could get a new MB plug it in and fry that one..

For around $700.00 you could order a new Dell E520.. I just got a quote on one for my customer.. It is not low end either.. They do have them cheaper if cost is an issue...

You can also goto Wally World and pickup and complete Emachines for under $400.00.


Then just take the Hard drive from the old one and pop it in as an extra drive..

Just my 2 cents

 

There's one of those exact mobo's on eBay right now. That'd be the easiest fix, if it really is the motherboard.

 

its the board. i am playing email tag with HP service to get if fixed for free since it is a known problem. i am kind of getting the feeling that hp is just going to replace the board and send the bad one to Asus and they wont be out anything other than the time replacing it, although i could do it myself. will let you all know more as i find out more.

thanks for all the suggestions. worse comes to worse, i will scavenge it, and build a computer out of the parts for the garage and get a new computer for the house. that way i can surf fte and work on the truck at the same time, lol.

jamie

 

Asus rocks with an AMD and a couple gig of memory. blew two 450 watt power supplys so just installed a new 680 watt this morning. Shur nice to have her back. build all my on puters and lots for freinds. Got over $1700.00 in just the case and inerds.

 

dell is having big issues with these caps as well especially in the gx 270's and pr670's also the power supplies have these caps but dell isn't doing anything about it!

 

personally I think asus's quality is slipping big time. I would just save up for a completly new system.

 

I hate buying name brand computers. Thats why I build mine about ever three years. A fighter pilot told me once that the thing he is thinking wile buzzing along a twice the speed of sound is that his arcraft was built by the lowest bidder. Same thing with off the shelf computers. IMHO

 

FWIW, Last week, I bought a Gateway (#GT5028) desktop PC for my youngest daughter at CC, as a 'display' unit. It had never been turned on.

My son saw it and called me. He knows a couple of the guys that work there.
(Apparently, they took it out of the box and put it on the shelf. Now considered 'display' model.) ?????
$250.00!!!!!!!!! I gave them my CC# over the phone and my son brought it home!

AMD Athlon 64-X2 3800+ (2.0 ghz), 250 gig hdd, 1 gig DDR, nvidia GeForce 6100 PCI express video card, 16x DVD+/-RW, CDRW, keyboard, mouse and Win XP Media Center OS.

 

Sounds like a nice system with room for upgrade. Ya did well for yourself.