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Requiem For A Motherboard
JimLynch writes "In my last DIY column, I discussed what it was like to build my first system. As time went by, unfortunately, my DIY system wasn't all wine and roses. This column tells the story of how I destroyed my motherboard through a series of ill-planned and stupid actions. It should stand as a shining example of What Not to Do for DIYers everywhere."
There are some tips you should know, like installing the cpu and heatsink before the mobo is in the case. And making sure you screw in the mobo with the correct standoffs.
i've built dozens of computers since 1987 and have cracked the case on thousands of others, literally. I've never toasted a part but for once, and that was an improperly soldered CPU board on a Compaq Proliant 2500 back in 1996. A surface-mount capacitor just fell off the board. Warranty replacement - the system was brand new.
Now, i've seen bad boards, particularly in the lower quality side of the Taiwanese parts market back in the late 80s, when if you ordered 10 motherboards you might expect 2 or 3 to fail. Never got any, though. I hear the same thing is true with some of the cheaper SiS based boards today.
I don't think it's all luck. Quality parts selection and careful handling will take you a long way.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I built a system off of the Sharky Extreme budget PC components back in November. I loaded up the basic stuff and had a few extra components laying around like a Geforce 4ti and a Soundblaster Live card.
I only run Linux on it and never even installed Windows at all, everything is fully supported by Linux.
The only problem I have with it is over heating. I have a nice heatsink/fan sitting on the AMD 2500+ and I'm not overclocking it at all. But still, I have to have the case open and a small table fan pointed right at the motherboard to keep the temperatures down to 44c...otherwise it raises to 55c+ with the side panel on and the two case fans running.
I've seen the temp jump up to 61c-62c which from what I've heard is either fine to it's too hot. I've heard the gamut of people saying it's not a problem and not worry about it.
But here's the rub...I run Gentoo Linux, and since I compile everything, I don't want it overheating while in a compile...as an error could easily be compiled into code and be almost impossible to track down a bug....or so I've heard. This has NEVER happened to me. I guess I'm just extra paranoid about the temp.
Other than my paranoia, everything runs tip-top and is very speedy. First computer I've built from scratch (not to mention the first OS I've built from scratch) and everything is ok. Other than me running the memory as single channel DDR instead of Dual channel for 3 months because I had it in the wrong slots. D'OH!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I was working at ChimpUSA about 7 years ago in the upgrades department. A woman with the 'clueless drone' expression came up and asked for a new cpu and mobo.
"Would you like us to istall it for you?" (Not an attempt at selling over-priced services, just an attempt to prevent the inevitable.)
"No, I'll do it myself"
After the requsite hour she called back and claimed that the mobo didn't work.
"Did you hook up the power supply? Make sure the CPU was properly seated? Checked the RAM? Plugged in the drives? Proper grounding on backplane screws?"
She answered yes to each question as I explained each of them to her. After a good 30 minutes of trouble shooting...
"Oh yeah, when I was putting the motherthingy in, I poped off a brown cylinder with my screwdriver. is that important?"
"Hmmm, yeah, capaciters can be important. They probably didn't put it on the board to look cute."
And that is how I know the guy. I sold a mobo to his mother. "...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
So while gcc is compiling firefox and it "flips a bit", that could compile an error into the firefox code, correct? ,,somehow to easy'') doublecheck and correct!
Firefox wouldnt matter too much - a bug in glibc would be annoying. But most of the time the compile simply fails - if you compiles fail on different source code lines (inreproducable) you can be pretty sure it is a hardware problem (overheating or bad RAM).
Which is why I've heard many times not to be overclocking while your compiling anything.
Thats a good advice. My current system ran at 85C when first assembled (And mainboard, CPU and cooler came as a bundle). Starting a compile locked the system. My brothers system even failed trying to install Windows XP because of lockups. Checking the CPU temperature in the BIOS we saw a temperature of 120C (on my system because of the compile, on my brothers system even when idle.). We decidered there just wasnt enough pressure from the Cooler (Arctic Copper Silent Pro) on the CPU - so we manufactured two thin copper plates of about 0.8 mm width and did put it between the mounting piece and the cooler. We now needed much more force to press the cooler onto the CPU, but both systems now run stable on 50C.
So:
Dont trust manufacturers. Even good ones. If something seems weird (like cooler that could be pressed onto the CPU
A screw sticks, for example, on a side cover assembly. You check the manual to see if there might be any special cause for this screw to come off so hard, but all it says is "Remove side cover plate" in that wonderful terse technical style that never tells you what you want to know. There's no earlier procedure left undone that might cause the cover screws to stick.
If you're experienced you'd probably apply a penetrating liquid and an impact driver at this point. But suppose you're inexperienced and you attach a self-locking plier wrench to the shank of your screwdriver and really twist it hard, a procedure you've had success with in the past, but which this time succeeds only in tearing the slot of the screw.
Your mind was already thinking ahead to what you would do when the cover plate was off, and so it takes a little time to realize that this irritating minor annoyance of a torn screw slot isn't just irritating and minor. You're stuck. Stopped. Terminated. It's absolutely stopped you from fixing the motorcycle.
This isn't a rare scene in science or technology. This is the commonest scene of all. Just plain stuck. In traditional maintenance this is the worst of all moments, so bad that you have avoided even thinking about it before you come to it.
The book's no good to you now. Neither is scientific reason. You don't need any scientific experiments to find out what's wrong. It's obvious what's wrong. What you need is an hypothesis for how you're going to get that slotless screw out of there and scientific method doesn't provide any of these hypotheses. It operates only after they're around.
This is the zero moment of consciousness. Stuck. No answer. Honked. Kaput. It's a miserable experience emotionally. You're losing time. You're incompetent. You don't know what you're doing. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take the machine to a real mechanic who knows how to figure these things out.
From "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. (Chapter 24)
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD