Re: Master or Slave

Yeah your right, 5 million customers and 1 million coming back. I'd say 5% is
pushing it. One in twenty, ok maybe a bit more. Ten percent! No, I think 5%
is right. Ok, enough of this betting or gambing on the % of mobos that aren't
good coming out of the factory. I'd say 50% of the time or more you bring
your PC to a PC tech store the PC employee will say it's the mobo. That's a
for sure. Like I said, how easy. The washing machine man came to see our
machine when it was on the blink and even he said it was the mobo on the
washing machine.
Ok, I just ordered DDR 333 RAM, a 512 stick for the Elitegroup mobo. I
bought this mobo from newegg.com about 45 days ago, and I'm just now getting
it going. I bought it because they gave a free 512 Kingston DDR 400 RAM stick
as a throw-in. Acutally, I bought the RAM stick and the mobo was thrown in,
that's the way I'm looking at it. Also, a heatsink that will fit this mobo.
This motherboard is something of an alien. I took off the heatsink bracket,
it required motherboard removal because of the bottom-plate, and it only has
two holes for installing a heatsink. Usually there are 4 holes, I think? Ok,
so the last thing I purchased, which was wrong, was the ZALMAN VF900-Cu VGA
cooler.
I still want to use the ATI FireGL X2 AGP Pro video card. When I play D2exp
the screen flickers. I never had that problem with the FireGL X2. I went into
BIOS and configured the video to 128mb, it was on 256mb and I think that
elivated some of the flicker. Would that have anything to do with flickering?
The mistake of ordering the cooler, I should've ordered the video card for
the ECS mobo. This video card is from ECS N8400GS2-512DS GeForce 8400 GS
512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card for $42.99 from
newegg.com. I was about to purchase this card, but what do you think about
this card? I've read some reviews about this motherboard from newegg and I
don't want any hang-ups. I figure a card from ECS will be compatible. Also,
this board had an addendum attached saying it doesn't support DDR 400 RAM.
That's a problem, because user manual it says to use DDR 400 RAM.
Do you think it's worth it to even start this mobo? Maybe I should purchase
another mobo. I've only bought DDR 333 512 stick RAM so far, and a heatsink,
I could on any other board. What would you do?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, attilathehun1
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attilathehun1


"Paul" wrote:

attilathehun1 wrote:
Ok, that's what my question was if I had to configure something or just let
the Windows XP Pro operating system recognize the drive during the initial
installation. I was told today that I didn't have to do anything and it would
recognize it during installation by a PC tech at PC Club.
When I was at the last installation of firing up the PC to see if it would
work, a snag happened. The video card is a monster, and it takes up two
slots, well not 2 PCI slots, but 2 slots at the backplate. You have to take
out 2 rear expansion slot covers during installation. Well, the damn card got
stuck between 3 slots, don't ask me how, but it happened. I was so pissed off
by that time, I just opened the trunk and tossed it in and drove to the PC
Club. For $29.95 he unstuck the video card and installed it. I offered $20
bucks in cash and he said ok, but I forgot my ATM card, so I was out of luck
there. I did learn how to do it, he unscrewed the backplate holder, and then
unstuck the card. So for about $30 bucks I learned how to get a card unstuck.
One thing though, the PC didn't fire up. He put a motherboard tester onto P1
of the power supply and it turns out the motherboard was dead.
Now I've said to my friend and family members that if you bring your PC
into a PC store 9 out of 10 times the tech will say you need a mobo. That's
simple, I go to someone's house or business and tell them after a quick
check that they need a motherboard. Great, how easy. Well I was in no
position to argue and now I'm about to call newegg.com and get an RMA number
or some wtf number to return this mobo. The other tech at PC Club said almost
20 % of motherboards coming out of the factory don't work. I figure it's
about 10% maybe and that's pushing it.
Ok, here goes; Gigabyte S-Series model # GA-EP35C-DS3R. This mobo has one
IDE connector and 4 SATA connectors, 3 yellows and 1 purple. Now I realize
what the setting on the jumper on the hard drives when it says master with a
non ATA-compatible slave. Probably it has something to do with SATA and then
a non-SATA. That's just a question that's been bugging me for 2 or 3 years
everytime I see it on a hard drive about the jumper setting.
Ok, lets move on. I'm fixing up my old Dell 8300 again and plugging
everything back into it. I was upgrading my Dell 8300 and now this mobo
problem. I figure it probably is the problem because the PC Club tech plugged
his tester into motherboard power supply connector and took readings. The CPU
chip was stuck onto the heatsink. I had to go out and buy a hair dryer for 10
bucks and use it on high settings hot for 20 seoncds. I first through the
heatsink with attached chip into the freezer, then an hour later took it out
and 20 minutes later used the hair dryer and a straight edge screwdriver and
the chip came right off. Great what a little applied heat will do.
I want to know if I should use arctic silver or thermal paste. l cleaned
off both pieces and now I'm ready to apply the paste. It's a stock 8300 Dell.
I haven't changed the chip or heatsink. In fact, this was the first time I
ever took the heatsink off.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, attilathehun1

Arctic Silver is a brand of thermal paste. What counts is using some kind
of thermal paste, as a thermal paste is a better conductor of heat, than a
thin layer of air would be. The thermal paste is there to displace air and
push the air out of the way, when the heatsink is compressed into it. An
"Oreo cookie" consisting of metal-paste-metal works better than
metal-air-metal.

I'm not familiar with PC Club and just exactly what a motherboard tester
they would be using. With a completely empty motherboard, all you can test
is that pressing the front Power button, causes the power supply to start.
You need the components plugged in (processor, memory, video card and so
on), to do a more thorough test. From your description, it is hard to say
how the technician reached that conclusion.

The defectivity rate of motherboards should not be 20%. Imagine if a company
makes 5 million motherboards per month - they'd have 1 million coming back
every month. Think how many humans it would take to handle that.

Paul

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