A8N-SLI Deluxe errors

JB123

Hi all
I Built the following system last year.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.2GHz Socket 939,
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
Crucial PC3200 BallistiX DDR 1024MB CL2
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA2
POINT OF VIEW GeForce 7800GT 256MB,
Tagan Easycon 580W
BenQ 19" LCD FP91G+ TCO03 Monitor,
Cooler Master Wave Master Silver
Microsoft Windows XP Home SP2

Im having problems with the main board.I ordered a replacment fan for the Asus as it was making a lot of noise.. But I think the board overheated as my IDE channel for my second hard drive isn’t working. I am also getting intermittent Hard drive errors on the SATA channel now and errors on my USB soundcard.
I have read on the forums that overheating can cause these problems. Any Ideas how to fix this would be great.
Iv been in contact with Asus in the UK and am looking at up 2 6 weeks with no PC.If I RMA it to Komplette maybe longer.

Cheers

8T8

It is certainly a possibility that the south bridge overheated and is damaged if the cooler was not attached properly. You have no other recourse but to replace the board if so.

Though there is also the less probable {if you have had no prior issues} that it is merely the bugs manifesting them selves. The A8N-SLI Deluxe was a very buggy board with all sorts of problems to do with it's IDE and SATA controllers.

In particular Maxtor drives like the one you have, had compatibility problems with the boards and you needed a newer firmware on the Maxtor drive. Here is a FAQ on the problem from Maxtors site.

You do have one other line of action if you cannot have your PC out of action, get PCI-e or PCI SATA\USB\IDE controllers to take over from the parts integrated into the motherboard. Of course that is not ideal and will mean re-installing Windows.

As for over heating I'm not sure what have you got on it at the moment for instance the Zalman chipset cooler is sufficient to cool the south bridge on the A8N.

astrofool

Try setting the HT multiplier from 5x to 1x, sorted a similar problem I was having with an A8N-SLI premium.

JB123

I’ve set the Hyper Transport multiplier from auto to 5x. My PC is now seeing both drives , no errors since thank u astro.
Will this setting change slow down my PC?
I Don't know what 2 do with this board as 8t8 says it's very buggy. If I get more errors I will try updating the firm ware on my maxtor drives. I was planning an OC after the warranty is up. If I get the zalman will the OC work with the HT multiplier set to 5x?
Thanks for the replies guys.

astrofool

You may want to drop the HT multiplier to 4x or 3x if overclocking (you'll have to work out the exact figure yourself to stay in spec ), but 5x is the maximum anyway, so you're not losing anything, in fact, even setting it to 1x as I had to do, doesn't really affect performance in the slightest.

Auto must have been running everything out of spec slightly, causing the errors.