My BD7II nightmare

[Ragnarok]

Recently I bought a BD7II from a friend in Japan. The board has been working flawlessly until recently. Any OC above stock speed it will just randomly BSOD. Initially I thought it was just my Samsung CTL @ 210-2.5-6-3-3 no longer able to handle the FSB, after buying a new stick of XMS3200C2 yesterday, the problem remained...

Then I noticed something interesting, the NB temps have been crazy lately. It would be normal one minute (around 40 degrees) and then suddenly jump to 85 degrees! Yet this doesnt happen all the time, temps underload would still be normal and acceptable (under 50). And it seems to BSOD the most when the temps go way off scale..

I've checked my CPU (tried with pin mod on and off), tried different ram, and checked NB heatsink a million times. (it's making proper contact) and it's still happening...and I know at least another person with the same problems..

Any suggestions? (If I cant manage to RMA it locally then I am kinda screwed, as RMA costs back to Japan is not worth it)

btw NB is being actively cool by a zalman fan bracket and a 120mm enermax fan

[MudWhistle]

That's an interesting problem, I recently built a BD7II (non raid) for my boss and his motherboard temps (I assume the thermister is on or around the N/B) were rediculous, like under load hitting 75 celcius while his cpu never exceeded 55 celcius, It did not really matter if i was at default speed/voltage or overclocked, the northbridge temperature was either totally wrong (which im assuming, cause I built the board 2 months ago and it's still going strong) or there is some influx of voltage at random times, either way, it confused me so I made sure the heatsink was making good contact, infact I took the n/b heatsink off and lapped the northbridge with 1500 grit wet/dry then put some AS2 on it. The temps only dropped a few degrees under load, like still (with the case lid off and ample air flow) around 65 to 70 under prime 95.

What's different from your machine is that his was completely stable at 2400mhz (it was a 1.8 overclocked) with 1.6 volts. I'll ask him if he is having any stability problems, he did mention (my boss) that he was having some random reboots when accessing anything "internet" related which i guess when his nic is in use he get's random reboots every soo often. Other then that it's completely stable like encoding movies for hours on end or running p95.

[eva2000]

hey there .. guess that was BD7-II from chainy ?

i read a few reports of BD7-IIs just kicking the bucket :(

my BD7-II seems fine for now but the misreported temps and undervolting is a pain... i can't wait until Asus P4PE comes out since they apparently fixed the 2 x stick issues that 845E chipsets have

[Ragnarok]

yeah it's from chainy, I've managed to find a friend who will RMA it for me (Jason from Maitec)

Just wanna know exactly why it's ööööing up... AFAIK Mothug's is having same problems...

Might send the board off to RMA, and then hold off and get the i845PE Abit board when it comes out

[Hognert]

I had pretty much the same problem with my BD7II. Only in my case I dont think the temperatures had anything to do with it. Nb temp was crazy high from the start. Got better with a fan and some as3 though. I used the card with a 1,8A and it could do like ~2,8G watercooled the first couple of days.
Then suddenly one day I got a BSOD and the machine rebooted... and it could not boot at 2,8GHz anymore. Actually I could not even run it at 2,4. Below 2,3 seemed ok tho. The funny part is that the card actually returned to its previous state and once again ran fine at 2,8. This happend like 5 times before it finally decided to never OC any good again. I messed around with the card for like a week... and really tried everything.. nothing helped . HW monitor reported the same voltages/temperatures as before. I think the problem got something to do with powering the cpu. Cant see it with the monitor but I still think thats the problem.
As you can understand I wasnt to happy with my BD7II :/... finally sold it and bought an IT7 instead.

[GreenBeret]

the misreported temps and undervolting is a pain...

undervolting.......yes

misreported temp ? What's that ? :confused:

[Ragnarok]

NB temps goes all wack!...that's prob what he means by misreported temps

meh i am gonna send it back for RMA and get an IT7 :(

actually thinking bout it, hognert pretty much summed up most of my problems..

[eva2000]

very nice of Jason to do that :)

i just placed a 120x38mm panaflo 103cfm fan on a zalman fan bracket over the BD7-II northbridge and ram .. at load i'm 2 - 4C cooler on the northbridge than my old 92mm fan

[Ragnarok]

well someone is a copy cat :) sifnt it was my idea :)

[Creative]

Your all copycats :D

[eva2000]

hehe :D

[Ragnarok]

I've read from somewhere that the system temp is acutally measured from a sensor near the mosfets. Today I put some additional cooling near the mosfets and amazingly all the problems are gone. (upon touching the mosfets my fingers acutally got burnt! it was damn hot! not surprised if it was acutally 85!) But as soon as i take the cooling off the problems come back :(

wonder wat to do now.... RMA or no RMA... Am i entitled to a RMA?

could one of the mosfets be dead? will some ghetto ramsinks help?

[Hognert]

My board ran fine without any case cooling at first. When the problems started I installed heatsinks on the hot mosfets and I also put AS3 on the north bridge. Then I had a sunon 120cfm @ 7V cooling everything down. Open case also. This did not help at all Im affraid :/. Sure the temps whent down but I gained no stability. I also checked all the caps and mosfet transistors without finding anything strange about them. Voltages seemed fine. Nothing crazy hot either. Everything seemed ok.. but in reality it was pretty damn far from ok.
Then of course my board might be unique... Im sure extra cooling can help on other boards. I did not run at that high FSB either.. of course the north bridge requires better cooling at higher FSB.

[Ragnarok]

well I thought it would give me stability...
it did for a while but then still BSOD'ed
the mosfets even with a fan still gets way too hot...

already filled out the RMA form for this board... just hope abit's RMA policy aint too tight... coz i took off the TIM on the NB and applied AS2 instead

[Creative]

If you go thru that BD7 thread on OCAU rag, I commented about how I thought that was where the temp was being read after reading it on forums and from testing when I had my BD7 also. Everyone disagreed with me but noooooooo I was right :banana:

hehehehehe