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ASRock motherboards OK?



 
 
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  #21  
Old February 17th 17, 06:55 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Bill[_36_]
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Posts: 167
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

Flasherly wrote:

AMDs can afford now to be almost an indulgence, also the first time
I've kept two computers running simultaneously, both a same-rated AMD
and Intel, similarly placed and manufactured same branded Gigabyte
MBs, both having been run round the clock and never turned off
approaching a decade. Icing for the pound cake, as it were.



Yes, for the number of hours we run these things, the cost of the
hardware is not that significant (overall, I pay alot more to my ISP!).
So I splurge a little. I rather have a fast computer than a fast car
anyway! ; )
  #22  
Old February 17th 17, 11:47 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
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Posts: 2,407
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

On Fri, 17 Feb 2017 00:55:41 -0500, Bill
wrote:

Yes, for the number of hours we run these things, the cost of the
hardware is not that significant (overall, I pay alot more to my ISP!).
So I splurge a little. I rather have a fast computer than a fast car
anyway! ; )


A personal choice also better, that it should offer with the right
selection longer durability over the years -- better products from
more rugged components. Combined with the move to handhelds, cloud
and remote computing, computers as an industry has changed. More of
limited crowd, I'd think, with an interest to learn to build, harness
and explore a "source-assembled" computer, when it's easier a given
convenience from the remote-device interface of a service-[out]sourced
computer. Not a small feat to have obtained the means to say you can
run a source-assembled well, over a wider range of programs,
autonomously more a focus of individual specialty. Certain segments
of the presently industry pointedly call that "your father's computer"
-- of course they'd like the profits by turning that into "one size
fits all" subscription programs, standardized and centralized off a
remote server.
  #23  
Old February 17th 17, 10:47 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Bill[_36_]
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Posts: 167
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

Flasherly wrote:
Certain segments
of the presently industry pointedly call that "your father's computer"
-- of course they'd like the profits by turning that into "one size
fits all" subscription programs, standardized and centralized off a
remote server.



Nope, I don't have an IPhone (and I hate ITunes!) : )

  #24  
Old February 18th 17, 05:17 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
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Posts: 2,407
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

On Fri, 17 Feb 2017 16:47:15 -0500, Bill
wrote:

Nope, I don't have an IPhone (and I hate ITunes!) : )


Oh...I periodically check a what-if I wanted to root a cheap handheld
along or possibly a Raspberry Pi. . .think just occasionally about it
at the national WiFi distribution centres, such as McDonalds, when
watching McDonald's staff time someone -- obviously with budgetry
concerns and a backback with a limited computer setup -- to 15 minute
of congeniality at seat-time. Or so says a sign with writing on the
wall.

Nowhere near the clarity or precision, of course, on that AMD FX-8350
Black Ed Vishera 8-Core 4.0 GHz, I evidently mistook to mentioned.
Now, I can't believe I actually reduced that to the lowest-draw,
95-watt available Vishera, still with a retail heatsink, a suitable
model Gigabyte mother to populate with 2G.

All for a disturbing price shy of $175. Even mentioning it now has my
finger itching to pull the charge-it button. Thanks a lot guys.
  #25  
Old February 18th 17, 10:09 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
RayLopez99
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Posts: 897
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 2:34:12 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:


Anybody here have experience with ASRock? Good, bad or indifferent?

Larc


I only have one of their motherboards. Generally the
hardware is decent. The BIOS on mine was a bit lacking,
but at the time, there were some legal issues (lawyers)
which were causing the company to not fix the BIOS properly.
A guy in Germany fixed the BIOS, and I flashed that in and
was happy after that. (Working EIST...)

Asrock usually has a different mix of connectors than an
Asus board, so that's one of the things you might spot
when buying one. I think mine had two PS/2 connectors at
the time, which is what I was looking for.



One of my pet peeves today would be "is the Vcore heatsink
big enough" ? I see a lot of fairly tiny heatsinks
out there. And my last purchased motherboard, that's
about the only thing holding it back from being
a great motherboard. Is a ****ty Vcore heatsink choice.
I never gave it a thought before I bought it, but once
it overheated, I could immediately see what a dope
I had been. For not reviewing that before purchase.
If I'd noticed that, I probably would have rejected
that one, and spent another $100 on a better motherboard.

Paul


Well Paul saved me the effort of a separate thread. I logged in today to 'complain' about this old 2007 vintage ASRock mobo:

//
asrock conroe1333-d667 Winbond W83627EHF
Brand- American megatrends Inc
Version- P1.80
Date- 12/10/2007

The Board is Asrock Conroe1333-D667
Chipset- Intel i945G/GZ Rev. A2
Southbridge-Intel 82801GB(ICH7/R)
LPCIO Winbond- W83627EHF

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Conro...p?cat=Download
//

My complain is somewhat trivial --high temperatures reported for the mobo--but may relate to what Paul is saying about the heatsink (I'm not sure, but I noticed somebody else complaining about this ten year old mobo in that it had high temperatures on Tom's Hardware site, about 9 years ago):

when I run the Open Hardware Monitor 0.8.0 beta version (freeware, works good) it has as a reported temperature as follows (note the --!!!!!! temp) :


/////////////////////
Operating System: Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.14393.0
Process Type: 32-Bit

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sensors

|
+- ConRoe1333-D667 (/mainboard)
| |
| +- Winbond W83627EHF (/lpc/w83627ehf)
)
| | +- Voltage #10 : 1.6 1.584 1.608 (/lpc/w83627ehf/voltage/9)
| | +- CPU : 32 30.5 35.5 (/lpc/w83627ehf/temperature/0)
| | +- Auxiliary : 44.5 42 96 --!!!!!!

/lpc/w83627ehf/temperature/1)
| | +- System : 33 30 35 (/lpc/w83627ehf/temperature/2)
| | +- CPU Fan : 2136.08 2136.08 2163.46

////////////////////////

Apparently this is 'normal" (from replies to a guy on Tom's Hardware), but it confused me since I was having problems, the system was acting funny on the screen, flickering, going black, then back to normal, and over and over, until after a few days I started getting BSOD, more and more (and annoyingly Windows 10 was asking if I wanted to reset the PC, which is bad advice IMO if you have a hardware problem). Of course I had backed up on an external drive my data and mirror imaged my drives. It turns out it was a old bad graphics card from 2007, a counterfeit "Nvidia", which I'll post separately on.

But what confused me was the high temps on this mobo.

Question for Paul: what would high temps do on a mobo? Give an unstable system? This "Thai" cheap core 2 duo tower always had quirks in it, and I blame the cheap mobo (and cheap components, which over the years I have replaced, not just the cheap mechanical HDD with SSDs, but also several power supplies, but so far no 'blown capacitors' as far as I can visually inspect)..

RL
  #26  
Old February 18th 17, 11:39 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul[_28_]
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Posts: 1,467
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

RayLopez99 wrote:
On Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 2:34:12 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:

Anybody here have experience with ASRock? Good, bad or indifferent?

Larc

I only have one of their motherboards. Generally the
hardware is decent. The BIOS on mine was a bit lacking,
but at the time, there were some legal issues (lawyers)
which were causing the company to not fix the BIOS properly.
A guy in Germany fixed the BIOS, and I flashed that in and
was happy after that. (Working EIST...)

Asrock usually has a different mix of connectors than an
Asus board, so that's one of the things you might spot
when buying one. I think mine had two PS/2 connectors at
the time, which is what I was looking for.


One of my pet peeves today would be "is the Vcore heatsink
big enough" ? I see a lot of fairly tiny heatsinks
out there. And my last purchased motherboard, that's
about the only thing holding it back from being
a great motherboard. Is a ****ty Vcore heatsink choice.
I never gave it a thought before I bought it, but once
it overheated, I could immediately see what a dope
I had been. For not reviewing that before purchase.
If I'd noticed that, I probably would have rejected
that one, and spent another $100 on a better motherboard.

Paul


Well Paul saved me the effort of a separate thread. I logged in today to 'complain' about this old 2007 vintage ASRock mobo:

//
asrock conroe1333-d667 Winbond W83627EHF
Brand- American megatrends Inc
Version- P1.80
Date- 12/10/2007

The Board is Asrock Conroe1333-D667
Chipset- Intel i945G/GZ Rev. A2
Southbridge-Intel 82801GB(ICH7/R)
LPCIO Winbond- W83627EHF

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Conro...p?cat=Download
//

My complain is somewhat trivial --high temperatures reported for the mobo--but may relate to what Paul is saying about the heatsink (I'm not sure, but I noticed somebody else complaining about this ten year old mobo in that it had high temperatures on Tom's Hardware site, about 9 years ago):

when I run the Open Hardware Monitor 0.8.0 beta version (freeware, works good) it has as a reported temperature as follows (note the --!!!!!! temp) :


/////////////////////
Operating System: Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.14393.0
Process Type: 32-Bit

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sensors

|
+- ConRoe1333-D667 (/mainboard)
| |
| +- Winbond W83627EHF (/lpc/w83627ehf)
)
| | +- Voltage #10 : 1.6 1.584 1.608 (/lpc/w83627ehf/voltage/9)
| | +- CPU : 32 30.5 35.5 (/lpc/w83627ehf/temperature/0)
| | +- Auxiliary : 44.5 42 96 --!!!!!!

/lpc/w83627ehf/temperature/1)
| | +- System : 33 30 35 (/lpc/w83627ehf/temperature/2)
| | +- CPU Fan : 2136.08 2136.08 2163.46

////////////////////////

Apparently this is 'normal" (from replies to a guy on Tom's Hardware), but it confused me since I was having problems, the system was acting funny on the screen, flickering, going black, then back to normal, and over and over, until after a few days I started getting BSOD, more and more (and annoyingly Windows 10 was asking if I wanted to reset the PC, which is bad advice IMO if you have a hardware problem). Of course I had backed up on an external drive my data and mirror imaged my drives. It turns out it was a old bad graphics card from 2007, a counterfeit "Nvidia", which I'll post separately on.

But what confused me was the high temps on this mobo.

Question for Paul: what would high temps do on a mobo? Give an unstable system? This "Thai" cheap core 2 duo tower always had quirks in it, and I blame the cheap mobo (and cheap components, which over the years I have replaced, not just the cheap mechanical HDD with SSDs, but also several power supplies, but so far no 'blown capacitors' as far as I can visually inspect).

RL


It could be programmed or recognized improperly.

The hardware monitor can support thermistors or diode sensors.
The conversion table is different for the two cases. If you
set it wrong, you get ridiculous temperatures.

The same happens, if a channel simply isn't connected to
something. You can get 128C or 256C or 255C and so on.
And the temperature doesn't move as you use the product.
Basically, the sensor channel "rails" because no sensor
is connected.

*******

The flickering and going to black, would be "VPU Recover". That
might be printed on some error message. It usually means a
GPU did not respond to a command within a fixed time interval,
and the CPU determines the GPU is hung up. And there is code
in Windows to restart the video subsystem to try to recover
it. If there really is a serious problem, then the problem
will occur over and over again. Until, perhaps, the CPU hangs
up and no longer responds.

*******

If you have high temperatures involved with MOSFETs, they can
go into thermal runaway. As they get warmer, the channel resistance
rises. The I^2R loss goes up as well.

On modern regulator designs, now the CPU is tied into the
control loop. And the Intel CPUs actually keep track of
power, and they can limit activity based on the measured
power. But on the older stuff, which is "more lightly protected",
you want to make sure the heatsink didn't fall off the components
in the Vcore section.

A company won't necessarily use thermal paste, because the mechanical
tolerances aren't tight enough. For sloppy fitting components,
thermal tape is used. If it is even more sloppy than that,
silicon rubber with boron nitride (a thermal conductor) is
used to fill the space. This can be especially true, if
one heatsink has to touch three ICs. The manufacturer
cannot be sure how tall the ICs are (tolerance is poor),
so the heatsink is lifted up so it clears the chips, and
the thermal rubbery goo is placed between the sink and the chips.

So not all heatsinks get the benefit of nice thermal paste.
Sometimes, other materials are used, and they don't conduct
as well.

*******

To answer your question, you're going to have to Google
the motherboard model number, and see if someone has figured
out where the sensor is, and what the sensor is made of.
In some cases, it's a thermistor (with a certain popular
value of A,B parameters), and it's located somewhere
near the Southbridge. It's easy when someone else figures
it out, hard if you have to do it yourself :-) I've never
had any success at that "sport".

Motherboard picture (Rev.1)

http://www.asrock.com/mb/photo/ConRo...20R1.0(L1).jpg

Sample of SuperIO with hardware monitor. (Diamond Flower and Itox
merged as far as I know, a couple of motherboard companies.)

http://www.dfi-itox.com/pages/suppor..._EHG_EF_EG.pdf

But even with that info, I can't really be sure where the
upper left pin on the Winbond, what that is soldered to. The
chip does have three channels, and there is an AUXIN.

Paul
  #27  
Old February 19th 17, 09:42 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
RayLopez99
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Posts: 897
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

On Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 5:39:04 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:


To answer your question, you're going to have to Google
the motherboard model number, and see if someone has figured
out where the sensor is, and what the sensor is made of.
In some cases, it's a thermistor (with a certain popular
value of A,B parameters), and it's located somewhere
near the Southbridge. It's easy when someone else figures
it out, hard if you have to do it yourself :-) I've never
had any success at that "sport".

Motherboard picture (Rev.1)

http://www.asrock.com/mb/photo/ConRo...20R1.0(L1).jpg

Sample of SuperIO with hardware monitor. (Diamond Flower and Itox
merged as far as I know, a couple of motherboard companies.)

http://www.dfi-itox.com/pages/suppor..._EHG_EF_EG.pdf

But even with that info, I can't really be sure where the
upper left pin on the Winbond, what that is soldered to. The
chip does have three channels, and there is an AUXIN.

Paul


OK thanks Paul. From the picture, I did not realize the South Bridge and North Bridge controllers needed such big and fancy passive heat sinks, that's interesting. The South Bridge controller is a different design from the North Bridge, maybe one does more work than the other and gets hotter (the North seems to do more work, but without Googling I don't know).

And I see some 'inductors' (the gold 'rings' in the upper right of the mobo), which I understand in electrical engineering should be avoided (integrate, don't differentiate, if you know your calculus and differential equations), since L's are bulkier than C's.

RL
  #28  
Old February 19th 17, 10:25 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Bill[_36_]
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Posts: 167
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

Flasherly wrote:

Nowhere near the clarity or precision, of course, on that AMD FX-8350
Black Ed Vishera 8-Core 4.0 GHz, I evidently mistook to mentioned.
Now, I can't believe I actually reduced that to the lowest-draw,
95-watt available Vishera, still with a retail heatsink, a suitable
model Gigabyte mother to populate with 2G.

All for a disturbing price shy of $175. Even mentioning it now has my
finger itching to pull the charge-it button. Thanks a lot guys.


I noticed that Best Buy advertised an Intel "7th Generation" i7-CPU's
today, 4.2/4.5 GHz, for about $335. Probably not as good a value as
the one you mention above. My gut feeling is that Intel is capable of
providing better support if it is needed,but this is probably a non issue.

To change the topic slightly, what's the word on those MP2 hard drives
(my Gigabyte mainboard could hold one)?

Other question: Who's more of a "hardware junkie", the millenials or
the people running "your father's computer"? ; )

Cheers,
Bill
  #29  
Old February 19th 17, 11:40 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
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Posts: 2,407
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 16:25:52 -0500, Bill
wrote:

I noticed that Best Buy advertised an Intel "7th Generation" i7-CPU's
today, 4.2/4.5 GHz, for about $335. Probably not as good a value as
the one you mention above. My gut feeling is that Intel is capable of
providing better support if it is needed,but this is probably a non issue.

To change the topic slightly, what's the word on those MP2 hard drives
(my Gigabyte mainboard could hold one)?

Other question: Who's more of a "hardware junkie", the millenials or
the people running "your father's computer"? ; )

Cheers,
Bill


The FX series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...icroprocessors

I'd caught a sale on a 125W 8-core Vishera but, looking them over,
liked a lower-wattage 95W version. They're 4-yr-old technology,
lagging Intel significantly;- there's also a cache issue and "paired
cores," not well received -- some so far to claim false advertising,
on AMD's part, for a faux 8-core that's essentially a quad.

Ratings and benchmarks, however, place the cost of the (8-core) AMD
Vishera well up and alongside Intel I-series chips to those Dollar
Cost Averaging for flipflops.

MP2 drives and new standards. Saw a few slotted $15 PCI-E conversion
boards for driving MP2, so it'll likely go back farther aways to older
boards than yours.

Hardware, rolling, building and running your own, is definitely niche.
Always has been. Back in the day, what they had to say about both the
soft and hardware, is that it's obfuscating. So Bill Gates came along
to fix it. Don't let 'em fool you, though: Computers annoy people --
maybe they just don't say it as much as before. Standards have become
smoother and focused -- and the WEB as remote applications from
handheld devices is much more a reality. One big social media,
evidently, from Trump on down.

Dunno, my experience has been here and some of the earliest
1200/2400baud BBS relay systems (FIDO/RIME/Bonnie Anthony/&etc --
transatlantic Britain to USA, mostly). Never owned a handheld device
too.
  #30  
Old February 19th 17, 11:48 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Bill[_36_]
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Posts: 167
Default ASRock motherboards OK?

Flasherly wrote:
Standards have become smoother and focused -- and the WEB as remote
applications from
handheld devices is much more a reality. One big social media,
evidently, from Trump on down.


If it weren't for the "ad-blockers", I'd probably steer clear of the
darn thing!

 




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