ABIT RMA for dead mainboards

[Socal]

I think jad1097 might've posted this somewhere here.. if so, sorry for the dupe. He alerted me to this but it was too late for me as I had just sold my deak KT7A :(

Thanks, jad. :)

Leaking Capacitors Muck up Motherboards (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/feb03/ncap.html)

"While Taiwanese passives makers are trying to shore up relations with their customers, some of the computer firms affected are doing the same. ABIT says it will replace or fix defective boards its customers send it. IBM says it alerted those customers it believes are most likely to be affected and is handling repairs under warranty. "

[jad1097]

Your welcome socal.:) I wish I found the link sooner. I may have never seen it if Mr.C did not post it on his board.





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

Most motherboard related failures are due to the "On-board" regulated supplies and component failure within those circuits.
Abit and other brands of motherboards have had a failure rate on several models which include but not limited to:

BE6
BE6 II
BE6 1.2
BE6 2.0
BH6
BX6
BX 133
* KA7 *
SA6
SA6R
SE6
SH6
VL6

The most common symptoms on these models are:

Failure to boot .

Must attempt booting several times before machine will start.

Instability , especially when graphics are complex.

Machine boots with a pre-Coppermine Celeron but will not boot with a PIII Coppermine.

Bad odor wafts about the room and this time it wasn't you or the dog.

Bios health alarm (hi-low siren) at boot but PC health screen shows no reason for the alarm.

Fans spin up, power indicator lights up and nothing else happens

[jad1097]

http://forum.abit-usa.com/showthread.php?threadid=3065


ABIT switched capacitors and have had very few problems. We have switched to extremely high quality capacitors for all production runs. These are expensive ones. Other competitors use them for the most important parts only, so we will be heads and tails above the rest as we will use them for all parts.

Note: For any older boards that are RMAed for capacitor problems we replace the capacitors with newer ones.


__________________
Thanks,
ABIT USA

[Mntsnow]

Dang...I tossed out a couple of boards a few weeks ago that would have qualified :(

O-well...Cant cry now

For Gary Headlee, who repairs electronics in Midvale, Utah, the trouble surfaced at the end of 2001, when users of PCs with ABIT motherboards began to complain of leaking capacitors. Headlee's solution was to replace all the low-ESR aluminum electrolytic capacitors of 1000 microfarads or over.

Well it looks like I found a place to get electronics repaired in the future too! So thanks again Jad!

[jad1097]

While moving my KT7A to a new case I noticed some of the caps are a bit swollen and appear to have brown stuff (rust?) on the top of them. I guess it's time to get in touch with Abit soon.:(

[Xaotic]

Definitely, do it soon. That brown stuff is the electroylte residue that has boiled out of the capacitor. I just had a MSI declined despite blown caps due to age.

[jad1097]

It's already over two years old but Abit says they will do it for $25 plus shipping if it's under three years old. Just have to decide if it's really worth it. For a few dollars more I can replace it with an ECS K7S5A PRO ($56 shipped from newegg) which gives me support for an XP CPU and DDR memory. Financially I don't think it makes sense to have the board repaired. I have read they only replace the defective caps. Decisions, decisions, decisions


I checked them when I erased the pencil marks on the L1's back after this thread had started but they were ok then. Dang thing was still under warranty too, I think.

[Xaotic]

Probably not worth it at that cost, though I'd try to stay away from ECS. I just had to RMA one due to losing BIOS settings fairly regularly and I've heard of many other people with problems. Then again, maybe the pro version is better.

[madfish]

Xaotic:
Our server is a ECS - D6VAA rev 1, with onboard IDE raid and dual P-III 850E's. I've had it over a year now and it's running fine. I got it used from fshanda, it was his ECP-109 rig befor he went all AMD.

[Xaotic]

My bad, I was referring to the K7S5A line. The non Pro versions seemed to be very hit or miss as far as quality, with a mixed bag of problems. The Pro version may be better, but I didn't get to find out. Newegg lost the RMA for a week after recieving it. I contacted them and was on hold for about 30 minutes, after the initial conversation. Finally, someone came back on and said that they did have the RMA, but the K7S5A was out of stock and they could ship the Pro version. I agreed, but when it arrived it was the regular version. Stable so far and I hope it remains so.