Abit NF7-S, my brand new ambulance (motherboard problem)

[Kassiopeia]

Yeah, there's a fan already installed, and it came already connected. Works like a charm when I power it up.

I have checked what the beeps mean from the Abit USA forums, and this problem is very, very widespread. A Finnish forum I peruse on technical matters has several NF7-S ambulance owners as well. The Silent Breeze II is specified to work on up to AXP 3000+, and some folks are overclocking this processor with it to AXP 3200+ and beyond.

Like I said, I've tried out everything I could find that has been suggested: turning the alarm off, setting the alarm temperatures up, memory placings, reseating the heatsink, and updating the BIOS to the newest version. I'm going to take out the PSU fan monitor next, see if its rpm readings are still messing it up.

The FSB/DRAM ratio is set by the mobo automatically, I thought it was misidentifying my RAM when it showed it as DDR333, when in fact it had independently set it to match my FSB.

One thing I could do is flash in a slightly older BIOS and reflash to the newest, since my problem was explicitly addressed in the BIOS I have now, so maybe it somehow didn't happen properly.

[Kassiopeia]

This is just silly. The BIOS tells me that the processor is running at 19 centigrade after a long night resting in my rather cold room, and just now I ran the Windows monitor on it, and it claimed the processor was 20 C warmer. I started to calculate pi with it and lo and behold, once the monitor hit 52,50, it shut down. The problem is either with the sensor inside the processor or the part of the motherboard that interprets the signal of the processor sensor.

[Urban Ranger]

Your best bet is to find another board to test the CPU. If the CPU works fine on that, well, you know the story.

[Kassiopeia]

I would have tried out different RAM, cpus, another motherboard and stuff, but where the devil am I going to find someone with an nForce2 board in this neck of the woods... I can't really walk up to complete strangers at school and ask them "You wouldn't happen to have an nForce2 motherboard? Even an Abit NF7-S by any chance?" and my schoolfriends have Wintel machines. I'll probably ask the store to take in and check both my CPU and my mobo. This shouldn't be just a compatibility problem, one of them is not working.

(Another boot, this time took off the PSU fan monitor cable, still siren sound after a few minutes of stress.)

I'll probably reseat the heatsink one more time today just to hone my assembling skills.

[Urban Ranger]

You don't need another nForce2 mobo. What you are trying to find out is whether the CPU is good or not, so any working boards for an Athlon XP 2500+ will do.

[Kassiopeia]

Ah, true, a KT333 or whatever for instance.

Anyway, the truth is, I had made a not-so-slight and quite embarrassing fubar when installing the heatisink: I had put it in the wrong way. That way all of the processor wasn't covered and the contact between the die and the heatsink was faulty, causing the processor to zap to over 120 celsius, where the critical temp alarm which can't be turned off (because of first-time assemblers like me?) kicked in. The software and bios sensors which measure the temperature from the outside of the processor couldn't keep up with the rapidly increasing heat, leading to a large disparity in the readings.

I've even OC'ed the CPU now to 11*200 and ran tests on it without problems. The hardware monitor gave me temps of ~56 degrees celsius under duress. Now I've kept it up for almost fifteen hours at regular clockspeeds without a hitch.

Thanks for your help, in any case. The problem's now solved, and I'll never misinstall another socket 462 fan again.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
...causing the processor to zap to over 120 celsius, where the critical temp alarm which can't be turned off (because of first-time assemblers like me?) kicked in.

Ouch.

Lucky you didn't fry the CPU.

Maybe all those people on the BBS with amulances have the same problem?

[Kassiopeia]

I suspect most people are better at reading the friendly motherboard manual, where it said which way to put the fan in. I do think that the cooler's manual said to put it in differently, but really, common sense should have dictated that 1/6 of the processor shouldn't be visible.

And yes, lucky I didn't destroy a 99 euro processor. Gotta love those Abit engineers.