I've had it with ABIT motherboards!

R

Ribby

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 18, 2002
Messages
123
Since I began using computers I've always leant towards ABIT motherboards but after tonight I've had enough.

2 years ago I purchased an ABIT IS7 motherboard (865) and had issues with the fan on the northbridge stopping. The fan burnt out, and my northbridge fried.

I then went out and replaced the board with an ABIT IC7-G (the one with the OTES cooling).

6 months later again, the fan dies, but the motherboard lived. I took the pc to a repair place (I lose patience with fixing my own gear sometimes) and had them replace the northbridge fan with a passive one.

Tonight I came home to my PC having strange visual artifacts on the desktop. I restart and the problem comes and goes until entering a game I notice it immediately garbles the image. I right away recognise this as a heat issue and open the case.

Sure enough, the clips that northbridge fans use to stay fastened to the motherboard had popped out - this is the second time on two motherboards I've had this.

I've tried writing to ABIT in the past about the poor fan and clip system they've used that has resulted in one of their motherboards needing replacing.

Tonight I was lucky, as a metal heatsink and steel clip resting ON a graphics card could have done much, much worse - the lesson I get from this is that I should not trust a motherboard manufacturer who twice burns me with the same weakness in their systems on two separate boards.

As much as like ABIT motherboards I just would not recommend them as an unattended 24/7 machine due to my experience with both poor quality northbridge fans and even poorer clip mechanisms for the northbridge heatsinks.

Any other feedback on similar experiences would be appreciated.
 
Well, technically it was the same weakness, but the IS7 and IC7 were of the same generation. I'm surprised that your northbridge died when the fan went on your IS7. I've heard of people just taking off the fan altogether and running passive with no issues.
 
Northbridge fans have historically been unreliable. This isn't limited to ABIT at all. I've seen it happen with many motherboard models from various manufacturers. In fact, when I get a new motherboard with a northbridge fan, I've started removing them and adding passive units. NB fans are annoying and unreliable in my experience. Fortunately most manufacturers of higher end motherboards are all switching to passive/heatpipe designs.
 
I was aware that northbridge fans (among other board manufacturers) also had issues with quality, what concerns me most is the fact that these boards have retention clips that appear to pop off after 6-12 months of solid use.

My theory is that running the machine 24/7 (which I generally do), heats the socket where the clip attaches, causing the compression/glue bond to weaken in time, causing the clip to come loose from the board.

Just a theory, but I have a few other boards from Abit (IS7) on other machines that don't ever have these problems - and they also aren't run 24/7.
 
ABIT is great. NEVER have problems with them. Few quirks like uGuru or wrong temps but alwasy stable and great ocers.
 
My KT7-RAID went from manufacture to two months ago with the original NB fan.
All NB fans have problems. Sometimes you get lucky. They're cheap little fans. That's just life.
As far as the next set of clips breaking, take that up with the folks who made the passive heatsink. Not Abit. They didn't make it, probably Coolermaster did. That's why I keep a stash of metal ones.
 
i personaly love abit ive never had a problem with any of their board and i recommend them to all my friends

my first abit board was on my 1.1ghz celeron it was a 6A69RA1R and im now using that machine as a fileserver never had a problem with it at all.

i also have a couple of IC7-G's sitting around one of them died but that was my fault (i dropped it :( ) the other is just sitting in its box but still works perfectly.

after my IC7-G's i upgraded to a MaxIII which i bought secondhand from america (i live in australia took forever to arrive but when it diod it was worth it) which i sold about a month ago still in perfect working condition.

Now i am running a Fatal1ty sli board which is just awesomely fast whith my new 4800+ and 7800gt's and always runs without a hitch.

Thanks
Xteriormotive
ABiT FTW
 
You could get a nForce4 motherboard with the northbridge positioned at the end of your PCIe x16 slot so your graphics card is smashing it down like mine is. :p

It's really a bad position for the northbridge on most NF4 boards, but then again there's no way for the heatsink and fan to pop off, although I won't be surprised if I turn mine on one day and the fan is dead since it's not exactly super high quality.

I like the passive heatpipe coolers on some of the newer boards. I bet it would work great with my Zalman 9500.
 
kirbyrj said:
Well, technically it was the same weakness, but the IS7 and IC7 were of the same generation. I'm surprised that your northbridge died when the fan went on your IS7. I've heard of people just taking off the fan altogether and running passive with no issues.
Click to expand...

yeah I too am surprised the northbridge died when the fan died. I've worked with numerous IS7's and IC7's that had their fans die (did any boards have them NOT die?) and in all cases I just removed the fan and let it run passive. The heatsink was plenty large and those little fans don't do shit anyway, besides make noise.

I hate small whiny northbridge fans that move no air...when I buy mobos I specifically look for ones with passive cooling, or ones that would take nicely to aftermarket passive coolers.
 
IM(Very)HO the last good board that abit put out was the IC7-Max3. I still use it for my HTPC and it's nice. I replaced the NB with a waterblock and I was able to get 3.6 out of my 2.4 northwood. The memory controller on the 875s is tight as well...especially with the OCZ i have in there. I am all about DFI now however. I think ASUS will be my next purchase (going back my old ways) when conroe is release on desktop. ASUS makes solid and stable boards....and to be honest...I am tweaking less and less so I just want something simple that works.
 
Mysogonist said:
IM(Very)HO the last good board that abit put out was the IC7-Max3. I still use it for my HTPC and it's nice. I replaced the NB with a waterblock and I was able to get 3.6 out of my 2.4 northwood. The memory controller on the 875s is tight as well...especially with the OCZ i have in there. I am all about DFI now however. I think ASUS will be my next purchase (going back my old ways) when conroe is release on desktop. ASUS makes solid and stable boards....and to be honest...I am tweaking less and less so I just want something simple that works.
Click to expand...

Eh...yeah, I think I'd agree with that. Maybe also include the AV8 and AA8-XE in there, but that's about it. I still support them and I still like their boards...but they're not quite what they used to be. Stability has become a little suspect with them. I currently run one of their IL8's and although it is a nice mobo it has enough weird little bugs with it to be annoying. I like the board, but the Asus P5LD2 is probably better.
 
Mysogonist said:
IM(Very)HO the last good board that abit put out was the IC7-Max3. I still use it for my HTPC and it's nice. I replaced the NB with a waterblock and I was able to get 3.6 out of my 2.4 northwood. The memory controller on the 875s is tight as well...especially with the OCZ i have in there. I am all about DFI now however.
Click to expand...
I've done the DFI's (nF2, 3 &4) but I keep coming back to Abit as I just find them easier to work with plus with all the latest heatpipe cooled chipset boards they are nice & quiet too.
uGuru is miles better than SmartGuardian as well.
I've loved my AN8 Ultra & the AN8 32X looks like it might even eclipse that :)
 
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