Choosing a new motherboard?, Capacitor problems w/ Abit and other MBs Options

[Secret Chief]

If you haven't seen it yet, Slashdot has a link to a story about leaking capacitors killing various motherboards:

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/05/2327...8.shtml?tid=137

(which links to: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resou...feb03/ncap.html )

The only motherboard maker to have admitted to the problem is Abit, and the only manufacturer IBM. It's actually an interesting story about corporate espionage in the computer world if you want to read it.

But I'm posting it because I own an ABIT motherboard (BE6-II) that shows problems characteristic of a leaky capacitor, in my case difficulty loading the operating system while booting. I imagine it might also be the culprit behind my persistent pops and snaps in audio.

So what motherboard/CPU configuration should I get if I really want to make sure my audio sounds great? I've heard of problems with the VIA chipset.

Any recommendations? I really like my ABIT--the SoftBIOS is a dream to use and the onboard HPT370 RAID controller with ATA100 makes my life easier. That's all I want:

1) Ability to play and record audio correctly
2) RAID and ATA100
3) Good BIOS
4) Fast enough to play Doom III when it comes out

[floyd]

But I'm posting it because I own an ABIT motherboard (BE6-II) that shows problems characteristic of a leaky capacitor, in my case difficulty loading the operating system while booting.  I imagine it might also be the culprit behind my persistent pops and snaps in audio.

How do you figure? Have you checked the capacitors on the board?

The article doesn't say much about symptoms of a faulty capacitor, but its hard to believe that longer bootup time would be one of them. More likely you need a OS reinstall.

[Secret Chief]

How do you figure?  Have you checked the capacitors on the board?

The article doesn't say much about symptoms of a faulty capacitor, but its hard to believe that longer bootup time would be one of them.  More likely you need a OS reinstall.

Picked up that possibility from this guy:

http://home.att.net/~garyheadlee/

Yes, I know he's trying to sell something. But two full reinstalls of Win98 and three full reinstalls of Win2000 all yielded the exact same result: clicks and pops in audio and difficulty booting. It's not that it takes too long, it's that 60% of the time the boot fails and freezes in the middle of loading the OS. Resetting, turning the computer off, and running safe mode do nothing to change the likelihood of a successful boot--some times it boots, most times it doesn't.

I haven't looked at the capacitors themselves yet but I will soon.

[RIV@NVX]

Choose Athlon XP (you decide the speed, and then we can talk about steppings:)) with NForce2-based board is the choice (Abit NF7-S, ASUS A7N8X, EPoX EP-8RDA+, Chaintech 7NJS).

[Trelane]

16 (out of 18) capacitors on an Abit SA6R motherboard that my father owned blew after showing odd behavior for about 2 or 3 weeks. We thought we'd try and salvage the board by replacing all 18 capacitors--and to our surprise, it actually worked! The board has been running fine ever since.

[tangent]

If capacitors on your mainboard blows, it's more likely the whole mainboard doesn't work than just getting bad sound
Just about all mainboards now have ATA100, even ATA133. You need to decide on Intel or AMD first, then go to the Abit site, find the mainboard with RAID (don't think there's an NForce2 board with RAID afaik).

[Parak]

Hmm... Off the top of my head, if you want a nforce2 motherboard, ASUS makes one with raid, but it's serial not IDE. MSI and Chaintech nforce2 motherboards have ide raid.