Frustrated with Asus A8V Deluxe

P

pioneer77

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Mar 20, 2000
Messages
4,602
I just bought an A8V Deluxe with an Athlon64 3500+ (130nm newcastle) and 1GB of
mushkin pc3200 DDR ram.

All of the above plus a floppy drive and nothing else wouldn't run with my Enhance 300W
power supply. Okay, I get that..

So I bought a 350W Antec SmartBlue PSU from Circuit City (impatient)....

Only after resetting the CMOS will it boot to the BIOS and/or a floppy disk once every 20
or so times... most of the time it just says "System Test CPU Failed" just like it did with
the 300W.

So I order a Thermaltake 420W PSU from newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=17-153-006&DEPA=1

Works a little better. Every time I reset the CMOS it will boot, go into the BIOS, doesn't
lock up, and I even booted from a floppy and flashed the BIOS to v1008. But whenever
you restart, hard power off or soft restart, the "System Test CPU Failed" returns.

I doubt it's the CPU since it'll sit in the BIOS on the hardware monitor just fine and even
boot to a floppy without locking up using the latest 420W PSU.

I'm tempted to just throw a huge PSU at it to see what happens since it's gotten
marginally better with each step up.

But on the other hand, shouldn't the 420W Thermaltake run AT LEAST the board/chip/ram
and a floppy reliably? Or is that still underpowered?

Anyone running a 3500+ on an A8V? What kind of PSU do you have?
 
Yeah, as is the Forton 530W and the Zippy something or another.

At this point, if I have to spend that much on a PSU, fine... that's what I'll do.

But my concern is that something's wrong with the board... can't see why a 420W
Thermaltake with 18A on the +12v rail can't run only the MB/chip/ram/floppy.

Hate to keep buying power supplies... I now have a grand total of 8 PSUs in my house
(not all related to this problem) :)
 
I got a 400W thermaltake PSU, came with my tsunami dream case. Has no problem with my 3500+ and A8V rev 2. I run a raptor HD, a 6800GT, 2 slots of crucial ballistix at 2.8V, nec dvdr, floppy, water cooling setup, and the processor at 2.73ghz at 1.5V. Seems something else is wrong with your setup.
 
That's what I was starting to think... yeah, I don't have the best PSU in the world with the
Thermaltake 420W, but it seemed ridiculous that it couldn't run just the necessary stuff.

I'll see about exchanging the board and/or chip with newegg. Hope they're as good about
returns as I've heard. Sucks that I have to pay return shipping.
 
Sounds like a board problem to me, bummer man :(

Mine's given me absolutely no problem whatsoever. I run a 420W Vantec Stealth PSU.
 
that SAME CRAP is happening to me too... this is the 1st thread i have seen to indicate it, so i figured it was an isolated case. i was just gunna RMA it back to zipzoomfly and get the msi. i'm running an ocz powerstream 470, so the psu shouldn't be a prob. this is indeed frustrating... :confused: did the same thing with the 1007 BIOS before i updated it. think we should flash to 1009?
 
I built a system with a 3500+ A8V X800 XT PE running on a Antec 350 Watt with no problems. The WIFI card was crap and causes crashes/lockups.

Sounds like a bad mobo. I would buy a Abit AV8. I built a system on that board and it is awsome.
 
I had the abit av8 and had nothing but problems with it.

I put in an asus a8v and it runs perfect.

Same CPU
Same Board
Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLLP 2-2-2-5 ram
Geforce 6800 Ultra OC Edition
WD IDE SE 8meg cache SE HD
Plextor CDRW
Floppy
OCZ 520w powerstream

and the system is fine.

sounds to me like the board is bad, this has nothing to do with your power supply.
also, just because something "shows up" fine and will sit in the bios with out crashing, doesnt mean I would rule it out of your troubleshooting. But from what you have said, to me sounds like the board itself is bad like I said, any other random issues like PS2 ports going out randomly?
 
bluefire7 said:
does it warrant a return/exchange?
Click to expand...

Well I would say it's either the mobo or CPU. I would try the mobo first though. Definetely warrants an RMA either way.
 
It has nothing to do with power supply -- just a bad board. You RMA it and get another. It's not that ASUS A8V Deluxe is a bad board -- there will always be problem boards that get through quality control with any manufacturer.
 
I had to return my first one, I think the earlier ones were shit(pre-rev 2.0), and you might have a shit one too from the sounds of it.
 
Okay just so i understand this you keep getting a " System Test CPU Failed" but you don't think its the cpu .. hmmm :rolleyes:
 
Different Asus board, but similar to the problem I had with my P5AD2. The first one almost worked right when I dropped in an Enermax EG701 600W after trying several other good power supplies. I RMA's that one and the next one would boot to BIOS but would not load the OS. Asus revised those boards, but the first generation (which were widely touted by the media) were buggy as an anthill. Make sure you get a current rev board. I'm going to be careful about buying an early production version of anything from Asus in the future.

oc
 
I dunno, pretty sure my bro has a rev 1 with his 3500 newcastle I built him, no problems
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top