Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (
More info?)
It's possible that this is a thermal problem and that dusting the
computer "fixed" it, but I'm skeptical. However, one thing I've
wondered about was why Asus added a fan to the CHIPSET on the P4T533,
but never did add a fan to the chipset on the P4T533-C (very similar
board, same chipset !!). The fan was added at the time that the
instability problems (reported, but never confirmed, to be in the Vcore
power supply) were fixed. Some speculated that the fan was added as
Asus way of telling the fixed from the unfixed motherboards (boards that
have come back from the Asus RMA process have been seen to have had the
fans added when their production dates were far prior to October, 2002).
The P4T533-C never had any systemic problems, and not ALL of the early
P4T533's had problems either.
In other words, I can't answer your question with any certainty, but if
it were my board I'd RMA it (problem description: Board is unstable and
locks up / crashes, especially when warm).
Bernie Lofaso wrote:
> I thought I'd post a quick follow-up. This board is a strange puppy.
> Barry ... I was fully intent on following your advice and RMAing the
> board back to Asus. To make a long story short, I decided to spend the
> weekend flogging the board to get the particulars about memory
> locations failing and when they fail. I got my computer room up to
> about 82 F which is warmer than it normally ever gets. After about 8
> hours of memtest and video compression tests, I didn't get a single
> error! One thing though ... I opened the case to get serial numbers,
> revision numbers, etc. that I thought Asus would ask for and noticed a
> bit of dust on one of the front case fans. Got out the compressed air
> can and blew it off and while I was at it dusted off the whole
> machine. It wasn't obviously dusty, but even parts that looked clean
> kicked up a little dust when sprayed. I also noticed that only one of
> my two front case fans had been plugged in. Guess I was worried about
> noise at the time, so I plugged it in. Now, I never had been worried
> much about heat build-up since 53C is about as hot as the CPU gets,
> which is reasonable. But I'm wondering if my little dusting and
> plugging in the 3rd case fan could have had any effect on things.
> Mostly just curiosity at this point. Even though I had a crash as
> recently as a week ago ... I just can't get the thing to fail right
> now. Just wondering what I did right?
🙂
>
> Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message news:<406DA64A.9040309@neo.rr.com>...
>
>>Your problem may not be memory. I love this motherboard, and I have 6
>>of them, but the early production of the P4T533 motherboard definitely
>>had a problem (apparently in the onboard power supply for the CPU
>>Vcore). The problem was fixed, and late production motherboards are
>>solid (in fact, wonderful), but if you have one of the early ones, you
>>may never get it to operate with stability.
>>
>>The dividing line between "early" and "late" was approximately October,
>>2002. The "late" boards also have a small fan on the heatsink for the
>>CHIPSET, which was missing on earlier models (note, however, that the
>>fan itself isn't the issue, but was simply added at about the same time
>>that the fix for the stability problem was made).
>>
>>People who have these problems often do report that "things were fine
>>until I .... {did something that increased the "stress" on the board}".
>> Most commonly, they upgraded to a faster CPU, but adding memory might
>>do it also. It's also commonly reported that the problem is application
>>dependent, that is it will run fine with applications that "lightly"
>>load the CPU, but that increasing the CPU load causes instability.
>>
>>The only solution is to RMA the board to Asus, they will exchange it for
>>a board that has the changes necessary to resolve the stability problems.
>>
>>Of course, it's also possible that the memory module that you added was
>>bad. In any case, you should (MUST) be able to run Memtest with ZERO
>>errors. If you remove the old memory module and test with only a single
>>memory module (but the "new" one), what happens? For that matter, are
>>you able to run memtest with zero errors using only the old memory module?
>>
>>Asus support phone numbers:
>>
>>510-739-3777
>>510-608-4555
>>
>>Their RMA service is fairly good, I had to use it on a P4T533 recently.
>> Total turnaround time was about 3 weeks, including shipping both ways.
>>
>>
>>Bernie Lofaso wrote:
>>
>>>Almost 2 years ago (July 2002) I built a system based on the Asus
>>>P4T533. I used a single Samsung RIMM 4200 (256Mb) and the system ran
>>>great. This past December I ran across an application that was a
>>>memory pig and decided that I needed more RAM, so I bought a second
>>>identical RIMM and now I'm having stability problems. The problems are
>>>very intermittent, but when I stress the system with memtest86 or a
>>>memory intensive application like re-encoding video, then I get
>>>crashes. I've tried all combinations of RIMMs and it doesn't matter
>>>which stick of memory I use, nor does the slot(s) used matter.
>>>Everything is fine until I put both RIMMs in, then I get instability.
>>>Asus (like other MB manufacturers I've dealt with) don't seem to
>>>answer emails concerning problems with thier products ... at least
>>>after a week I haven't heard a peep from them. Is there anyone out
>>>there that can offer suggestions or if you've had similar experience
>>>... how did you solve it. Incidentally, the system is running a 2.4Ghz
>>>P4 and it's NOT being over-clocked.
>>>
>>>Thanks.
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