You aint gonna believe this !!

[Thickbrit]

Hi guys,most of you know of the problems i had with max3's dying under proms,well last night i was half way through my regular friday all nighter on omaha beach,when the screen froze.Tried reset,nothing,tried to power off,no go and prom said no-shutdown,so i pulled the plugs on em.Checked connections, turned off v-mods,cleared cmos,tried again,nothing,no post.Changed bios chip,after flashing to latest(on other rig),cleared cmos,re-setup,tried again,nitto.So with a dark feeling of impending doom descending upon me,i futily start testing components,till all i'm left with is cpu or mobo.Knowing my chip as i do,i thought uh-oh,but to be sure i pulled prom head off,changed chip,and held a h/s and fan on it by hand.Still dead.So then i knew what to expect when i pulled prom backplate and sure enough it was a familiar shade of green.Same old thing,back of socket corroded to hell.Despite my best efforts and precautions i had lost my fifth max3 to a prom.Ffs, i was sick,so feeling the need to whine/whinge/talk/inform and perhaps slash my wrists(humour) i started to type what you are now reading on my other rig, to share my grief with you all.I'd got to about where i am now when F*** me,the screen froze on that rig too,i JUST knew what it was without testing,i couldn't believe it but,yep ,you got it,same sodding damn thing.I now sit here typing to you on a 550mhz P3,128mb sd,mx400 (powered by my new 510dlx),with 2 more dead max's (no rma) before me,feeling totally gutted and wondering if i'll ever fire up a prom or performance pc ever again.I dunno what i'm gonna do now,i cant think straight,in fact i still can't believe it.Sorry for going on and my strong tone and you can laugh if you like(i understand),but right now i'm pretty unhappy.

 

[Wingz]

wow m8, sorry to hear about your 5th lost :/ i ahve never had a problem with my Mach, did you spray the back of the board with PCB lacquer? i also apply some silicone grease on it afterwards just in case.

 

[HARRY]

i feel for ya mate i realy do .stupid question but what did u do to stop the corrosion ie grease ,silicone just wondered mate .

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

damm beat meat me to it

 

[Phil Stanbridge]

Thats really bad luck mate - I've installed over 100 proms now and I've only suffered condensation twice. Both times were never as bad as that.

 

[fatty]

sorry to hear mate what I started to do is put a patch of dc4 on the back o my mobo

 

[Epicurus]

Humm.. 5 mother boards of the same type, all suffering the same fate..

Think that you need to buy a different mobo...

 

[boardy]

I'm reading this thinking to myself, now why oh why did you buy a Max3 Adam????? Am I gonna suffer this same ill fate, or will I be lucky? Only time will tell I spose, seeing as I have no money to get a new board, due to overspending on xmas pressies AGAIN, I'm gonna have to hope I'm lucky!

I have never had any problems with a single board in a Mach unit *touch wood* so I REALLY feel for you mate. After talking to you on MSN about all the precautions you take to condensation aswell, im suprised the're dying!!

Bad luck, and a little message from me to you, - Get a different board next time

Cheers

Boardy

 

[dillingerdan]

Man, you are one un-lucky fella. 5 Abit Max3's is alot of wasted circuitry. Sorry to hear that mate and touch wood it won't happen to me. My ABit NF7-S is pretty well maintained though. It was under the prommie for several months and is more curved than J-Lo and it still works perfectly. Hopefully my luck doesn't go the way of yours. With my comp's anyway, it seems to be the only luck I have.

 

[Thickbrit]

Thanks guys,i knew you'd feel for me,but some of you aren't fully grasping the situation.I lost 2 max's to proms within hours of each other,after months of running,after taking every possible precaution(conformal coating,dc4,hell i even fill my heatspreader with dc4),taking my total to 6 dead mobo's in all and wiping out both my high end pc's.This whole saga has left me fairly skint, but worse than that i dunno where to go from here,478,775,amd,with my current hardware and lack of funds it's quite a dilemma.On top of all that i got the flu real bad and feel pretty lousy anyway.Well thanks for listening,i'm getting over it and i'll be bbl for suggestions for the future.

 

[pobolycwm]

go watercooled chap at least the mobos wont die with that, i can feel for you though, go the amd route next none of the shoddy intel stuff the 3 prommies u got can always make lovely beer chillers what with christmas coming up

 

[anthony eastwood]

Sorry to hear you’re under the weather

Sorry to hear you’re under the weather and at your wits end, I also have a Max / IC7 3

How long did it take before your max died ? because am considering dismantling mine on the strength Just to see if theirs anything untoward going on.

I do have a brand new ic7 max sat in its box unopened just in case its needed.



Hope you feel better soon ( never give up ) if I find a cheep Max on my travels I will let you know.



Ant

 

[Epicurus]

and you have the flu as well... Nothing like being kicked when your down is there.....

have you thought of trying a different MB?? or like pobolycwm said... go water cooled....

 

[Dazboots]

im really sorry to find ur having a bad time with ur mobos.

i can tell u 1 thing its not cos ur a bad overclocker or anything its cos

u must be just on a bad running spree. been there myself.

hope to find u back on track soon and kicking my **** on benchies soon.

ppl just had to look @ the website u had with pics of all the bloody volt mods on stuff u did.

keep it up never let anything like this bring u down to stop something u love doing m8...

its in ur blood now............. hope u get things sorted soon.....

 

[Thickbrit]

Sorry to hear you’re under the weather and at your wits end, I also have a Max / IC7 3

How long did it take before your max died ? because am considering dismantling mine on the strength Just to see if theirs anything untoward going on.

I do have a brand new ic7 max sat in its box unopened just in case its needed.

Hope you feel better soon ( never give up ) if I find a cheep Max on my travels I will let you know.



Ant

Hi, m8,i think the longest any max has lasted under my proms has been about 6 months,shortest lasted a few hours.I still believe the max3 is the best 478 available,but unfortunately incompatable with prometetia in the long term.I'm not willing to part with my GT twins yet,so no more max3's for me.

 

[matisamd]

i feel for you man

just thought i'd add my condolenses i think i remember you posting about yuor first boards a few months back, i too killed a couple of mobo's but i think that was more my fault, the one i am running now letrally ozzed dc4 and seal string and laquer i used nearly a whole can of laquer on just the back of the board and a bottle of nail varnish on the front took me about 6 hours but i havent had a problem, but if bad news of others cheers ya up, i think a voltage regulator went or somthing llike that, as since i installed my prommy the board wont go past 200FSB without going mental and i am not going to touch it until it just stops working because its so much effort.

Am thinking of selling the whole thing, its been great fun but its becoming more then i want to do, might just swap it for an inspiron with a 9800 any one? though with a good mobo i got XP3.8 equiv according to sandra on an xpm2400 that cost £60 thats probably the best bit about the whole experience.

If phill lived next door to me then it'd be different

Weird they both went at the same, maybe its a too near the radiators and moist house or somthing. It is odd would like to hear the outcome and whish you good luck with it.

 

[ibby]

man, touching lots of wood.

My ic7 has been good so far.

Touching wood again,

Kisses the case, and strokes the mach unit

 

[slim]

I've also lost a MAX3.

UL m8.

 

[arnoldma]

damn guys, i was really thinking of going get a mach 2 gt from phil before i read this thread! makes me wanna go water cooling now, i've done water cooling before, so im on familiar grounds there, but with mach 2 in a total n00b...

and i also have a max3 mobo.. which makes my chances on the mach 2 even worse from what ive heard so far! i was also read about how u guys took so much precautions too! with all the dc4, grease, etc.... i dont evne know how to do that at this point in time!

 

[Phil Stanbridge]

I've never lost hardware to the Mach II. I'm now doing my 200th build.

 

[Thickbrit]

Arnold,don't be put off by my bad experiences,the mach units are great,i love em to bits and wouldn't part with em (i have 3).Every p4 chip i've ever tried(except ee's) has achieved a 1ghz o/c or more with prometeia cooling.It's true i can bear personal witness to 7 dead max 3's,2 dead asus p4c800e's and a dead epox thingy,but maybe i'm unluckier than most.Now i just buy cheaper mobo's for my rigs,cos i'm gonna mod the hell out of em anyway.If i were you Arnold,i'd get the mach unit and a nice little ic7 or something to go with it,the max3 is a brilliant mobo and getting rare now,you can box it up while you see how the prom and ic7 go.Theres so many mods for the ic7,it makes me drool.Btw did i mention a hate my asus.Hey Phil,about this max3/prom thing,i really think there was an issue going on,and i don't think it was me.I started out as a newb,fitted by the manual first few times,then progressed through the various stages of additional protection and always the same result,besides there is more than enough evidence from other users (mainly of p4's i might add) that problems really do exist.It is possible some cases were user error but not all i suspect.Please don't think i'm trying to get at you or anything silly like that ,i just got a curious mind and hate it when i can't overcome a problem and have to walk away from it.Maybe an experiment and some investigation could be done,i'd help.One last thing,whats the longest you've known a p4 mobo run under a prom when fitted by the book and used under normal everyday use ?(curious again).