ASUS A8N SLI DeLuxe, the old s939

[george]

Anyone have experience with an s939 ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe or Premium?
I came across an abandoned complete unit :
Athlon64 3200+
2x512KVR ddr400 matched kit
MSI HD4350 512MB (HDMI)
160 GB Samsung SATA-I HDD (mfd 02/2005)
Zalman CNPS7000C-ALCU CPU Cooler
chipset cooler replaced with a Zalman passive
new Modecom Premium 400W PSU
LG DVD-RW
Nexus Breeze case

Got it for a couple of bucks.

BIOS chip stated original factory BIOS v1002, 2004/11/26
At some point had been updated to v1006, 2005/03/08

CMOS battery was of course flat, replaced it.
Fired it up today, BIOS was acting very strange, showed CPU @ 3802 MHz!!
Tried clearing CMOS a few times and it took, CPU showed 2000MHz as it should.
POST failures or freezes randomly.
Updated BIOS to v1805, 2007/07/04, latest on ASUS site.

To go further, tried installing W7 32, did not take, HDD started to tick hard. Ah well, guess the
hard disk is no good anymore anyway.

Again severe POSTing problem or it would freeze in BIOS.
Had a few attempts with canned air to clean the motherboard as it had collected some amount of dust around some components.
All caps look good on visual inspection.
Tried the RAM in all combinations, would still freeze randomly or not POST at all.

Took a spare Athlon64 3400+ I had in my collection and put that one in.

Now the POST & freeze problems seemed be gone.
Another HDD in place and the Win7 install took.
Hard to believe the CPU had suffered that much in past that it would show this kind of behavior, but guess it is possible?

[Mr.Scott]

I still have one, though it has not been used in quite a while.
Board is decent but it's no DFI board.

Yes, I would probably re-test that CPU in another board. Hardware failure happens in all types of ways.
I suspect that CPU has just had a tough life.

What board do you actually have? I have modded bios's.

[Bones]

Yes, it's actually a good board but as said it's no DFI.
With the A8N32 SLI Deluxe you won't get uber-high clocks from it but does well as a GPU benching setup if the bench is 939 based for points.

As long as the setup was cheap and works as it should I'd just run it. With mine (A8N32 SLI Deluxe) it too has issues at times with an OS install but once it's working it's OK.

Find yourself a good Opteron dual core, drop it in and let it go.

[george]

What board do you actually have? I have modded bios's.

It is the deluxe model, not A8N32 or A8N SLI Premium.

www.anandtech.com/show/1626/4

Find yourself a good Opteron dual core, drop it in and let it go.

Correct, would like to put any s939 dual core in this one, but they are a bit pricey in ref to performance. It is a system over 10 years of age though.

I have a s939 MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum but it is an nf3 Ultra with AGP & SATA-I, if this A8N behaves nicely I might retire the K8N Neo2.

Bid on a dead K8N Neo4 Platinum long time ago, but it was not willing to resurrect.

Now came to think of it, my son also had an Nforce4 back in the day, a muATX board by Foxconn.

[Mr.Scott]

I have 2 modded bios's for your board.
One is the Premium board conversion. Uses the better modded Premium bios on your Deluxe board.
The other is a Waxman modded Deluxe bios.

I'll link you to my OneDrive if you'd like.

[george]

Yes please, like to try those. The stock BIOS seem a bit limited in options. Guess the Premium will have more.
Re to what I wrote earlier about the weird A64 3200+, in PC health it did not show any values for voltages(disabled etc.) tab menu showed some default value.
Now with A64 3400+ the values are there and actually show some real-time values. I will try the A64 3200+ in another board, but I guess the CPU is toast(1st time I have seen this on s939).
Left the unit running over-night, doing its updates, still running good.

[Mr.Scott]

Messaged you a link.

[cbjaust]

my opteron 170 had an issue similar: warp9-systems.proboards.com/thread/682/opteron-170-momentarily-blew-fuse and I haven't determined if it will still do 3GHz as yet...

I have to check, but I might have an Athlon 64 X2 cpu of some description, also have a couple of Gigabyte PCIe s939 boards spare.

[george]

After some more testing of the board, seem the freezing issue is not over yet. Perhaps the A64 3200+ is OK after all.

It tends to freeze even at stock/default settings while running in the OS. When it freezes, manually power down/up often results in no POST.

OS installs (Win&Linux) succeed without hiccups.

Need to flip power&drain a couple of times, then it comes to life. Will need to gut the system, clean&inspect the board. Chances are it has some failed component or cap. Not sure I will do any recap though, no cap visibly bulged.

Scotty sent me a couple of BIOS, have not tried them yet. Thanks Scotty!

[george]

Well, I think the A8N SLI Deluxe is shot.
I went through everything while doing a cardboard build.
Changed CPU, RAM, PSU, VGA-PCI & PCI-e, HDD, kept on freezing, mostly it made to the OS, then stop.
When it locked up, would not POST again until drained+reset.
Same with Win7 32b & Linux.
Went over the board with a magnifier, could not see any damage.
Perhaps if swapping out some of the caps might get it going but it is a blind shot.

Well, at least got an A64 3200+, 2x1GB DDR400, a HD4350/512M and nearly unused PSU, Zalman cooler+pHSF. The Nexus breeze
case is too bulky for my taste, but has a good case fan. DVD drive, who uses those nowadays?
The Samsung 160GB HDD is trash.