This week has been pretty good for my Asus collection of motherboard – I found 3 rare boards, in varying condition.
Board 1
Congrats, it’s an Asus! Asus P4C800 Deluxe! Pretty much best of the best when it comes to socket 478.
Unfortunately both NB and SB get hot quickly, but they aren’t shorted. Still, since it powers on, but is stuck on CPU initialization upper bridge is dead. It also can cause SB to get hot, if data lines are pulled up to too high voltage. Very likely both ICs need to be changed.
It doesn’t happen too often for me, but I don’t have a tissue for its issue. My Chinese supplier doesn’t have ICH5 in stock.
For now, at least.
Board 2
It’s an Asus. P4C800.
“I think I have a déjà vu.“
Not “Deluxe”.
“Oh, ok, nevermind.”
But, one such board has already been here.
“…”
This board was moderatly violently stolen straight from a scrappers pile. It has even lost its heatsink.
Let’s see if it posts.
Déjà vu feeling intensifies… I think I have seen A4 post code somewhere before…
Yeah, right, its incompatible RAM. 1:1 same as on the previous P4C800, the one broken by thermal paste.
Surely enough with different RAM stick it boots just fine.
As a precaution I decided to reflow the original NB heatsink mounts and steal the radiator of off the previous Deluxe board.
I haven’t found any more problems with it, so into the drawer it goes.
Board 3
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe. With original packaging. Unpopular opinion, but I believe it’s the second best 939 board, the best for me is the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2.
Box is almost overflowing with goodies – SATA cables, PATA cables, some other RGB cables…
…
…and that’s pretty much it. Nice.
Mmmm. Nasty.
The board itself is…
Disappointing?
I mean it’s absolutely packed with features, but compared to the DFI board it seems to be lacking some “WAH POW, I’m the BEST!“.
Anyway, let’s see if it works.
It works!
Hold up, no, no, it doesn’t.
WHY?
How about new BIOS?
Nope, still 00.
Wait a minute, I just realized something.
Why does it have a north bridge? I thought that on 939 CPU acts as a semi-NB, while SB runs everything else.
It turns out that it’s the case on majority of boards, but there are some exceptions. A8N32-SLI Deluxe is one of them.
Let’s see what’s under the coolers then.
Oh.
You can immediately spot the problem.
It’s Nvidia SPP. From the end of 2005. Widely known to be problematic.
Oh.
Anyway, SB also seems to have a weird… mark? It doesn’t go to any traces, but still. There’s no water damage as far as I can see, but I made a mental mark.
This board is likely fixable, I can see some 6100 SPP ICs that are from 2009 or even 2010. There for sure will be a follow-up on this motherboard.
Thanks for reading!