[Rayder]

We've got an Abit NF7S rev2 with a AthlonXP 3200 and 1gig of PC3200 RAM powered by an Antec TruePower 550watt PSU. On cooler days (around 70F or lower ambient), it refuses to power up.....it will, but we must try to turn it on 3 or 4 times before it boots. When we had the 3000 in it, it would do this too, but not as bad as it is now.

Does anyone else have this problem? What can be done about it? Or is it just time to introduce this motherboard to a hammer? Because it's annoying the heck out of us.

Anyone have any ideas?

[dipstick]

I used to have some boot issues with that same PSU not long ago. I would look into that first

[Rayder]

Hmmm.....interesting....

My bro had a feeling that it had something to do with the PSU also.

DARN!!!! I'm running the same PSU too.

[digitalwanderer]

Nope, I've never had that issue with my NF7-S rev 2. I'm using a TT Purepower 420w.

[classic_leon]

I have no problem and my mb works fine.

[Gardinen]

have had it several times. Although, I haven't had the problem for a long time now.

One time while playing Far Cry, the computer just shut down. And it couldn't get restarted. I still don't now what was wrong.

[Rayder]

Sorry it took so long to respond again, work has been dominating my time....

Let me explain the ENTIRE problem.

OK, we have the cold boot-up issue if the ambient temperature is 72F or lower, it will fail to fire up (we get lights on the CDROM drives though) unless we do a COMPLETE power down and back up a few times. We are also getting randomous lock-ups and resets when the system does fire up. This was after a CPU upgrade (from a 3000 to a 3200)

Here's the system's specs:

Abit NF7S rev2 (Latest BIOS)
AthlonXP 3200 (Barton)
BBA Radeon 9800 AIW with 4.9's
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum
1gig Centon DDR 400 (dual channel)
4 - 120gig harddrives (2- IDE, 2 SATA)
Antec 550watt TruPower
No overclocking

The cold boot problem existed when we were using the 3000, but it got worse with the 3200. The stability issue is new.

While solving the cold-boot issue would be nice, stability is what we really want. Are there any "magic" BIOS settings that need to be set for a 3200? (I mean besides the obvious CPU setting) We have relaxed the RAM timings as much a possible, but it will still randomously crash.

My bro is thinking of changing the PSU, but we both think the instability may be coming from the RAM. He was thinking of possibly going with one of the backwards compatible 433 speed ram types to see if that helps, but would like some ideas to solve both issues before he starts spending any more money.

We are using a special set of chipset drivers that Neon hooked us up with. They vastly improved performance when the 3000 was in it.....could these need updating? Are the latest direct from nVidia any good? What about that CD-burning issue, have they finally solved that?

Any constructive help would be appreciated as we are pulling our hair out trying to solve these issues. This is our flag-ship PC and we want it stable before we continue upgrading other systems in the house.

Thanks,

[Fantasma]

I have those boot issues and every time I switch on the computer it gets worse, I think that your problem as mine is that your PSU is dying or something similar, I´m using a generic 400w PSU and I´m waiting for my new LC-Power Super Silent of 550w to replace it, as soon as I replace it, I¨ll post it to you

[Rayder]

Final update on the situation to end this thread.

Well, it turned out that it was NOT the PSU, the RAM or any other piece of hardware in the system. It seems that it was the NF7 motherboard itself that was the problem. We swapped out all the components into an Abit KV7 and ALL the problems melted away.

Heh, we didn't even format.....just swapped everything and fired it up. Other than removing the nVidia drivers and installing the VIA 4in1's and re-activating Windows, we had zero problems. Everything is running smoother than it ever has before. I'm not even seeing any hiccups or stuttering that used to always be in some games. It's running smoother than any PC I've ever seen. Woot!

So.....it seems we got burned by the ONLY nVidia product we've ever bought. We'll be sure and NOT let that happen again. We were leery of buying anything with the nVidia name on it in the first place, we should have stuck with our original feeling about that, it would have saved us alot of time and aggravation.

....so.....anyone want to buy a flaky NF7-S rev2 motherboard?

[WisMerHill]

Originally Posted by Rayder

....so.....anyone want to buy a flaky NF7-S rev2 motherboard?

LOL, no thanx. Glad to hear you solved it tho, but considering the reputation and successtories with the NF7 rev2 i think yours was just an exception to the rule.

[123]

I have the exact same problem. One more thing that happens is that my sound blaster live isn't recognized sometimes, so I must shut down the computer and try again(and then it'll probably not boot up).

But I suspected most of my radeon 9700, since the computer was booting up but not showing anything on screen, and sometimes pushing the vga a little would fix it. Today after taking out the Live I got vga error beeps once, so I suspected the card was not very well in place(but it was), or maybe the floppy power cable had something to do with it, I don't know.

I must say that these problems showed up after a short black-out, I didn't have time to take the power cord off the wall.

Rayder, please confirm that these problems didn't show up anymore, so I can know if it's a mobo or vga problem.

[Rayder]

Once we switched over to the Abit KV7 motherboard, the system has been running fine. No lock-ups, no crashing, no more cold-boot issues (and all this happiness without even reformatting, just swapped the parts and installed/removed the appropriate drivers ). Absolutely ZERO problems have been encountered thus far. It was definitely something to do with the NF7 motherboard for sure. It has to be some kind of buggered component on the NF7 itself. We probably just got a defective one.......which we dealt with for over a year.

Basically, we bestowed the NF7 the distinction of "Treelawn Compatible" and filed it accordingly. No wonder Abit isn't bothering with any more nVidia chipsets (or so I've heard). If a lot of people are having the same problem, it obviously means a whole bunch of these boards went out to the public with defective components.....or components that slipped out of spec after it's been used for awhile.

...and I won't even go into the ridiculous CD-burning issue that the NF7 ALWAYS had....

[Zardon]

Over the course of a year I had five of these NF7s Rev2 motherboards (and an AN7 which was even worse), great overclockers, but so many power and bios related problems (along with the burning issue Rayder mentioned) its not even funny. Im glad I wont have to see them again.

[germanjulian]

no problems here but i did have a similar problem with my grpahics card not starting up due to a weak psu when the system was cold booted.

rma the board...

[Rayder]

I might also add that the PSU's rails seemed low on the NF7, but on the KV7 everything is showing as right on the money. Both mine and my brother's TruePower 550's are about 6 months old. But then again, we are just going by what the motherboard's hardware monitor told us, and we all know how infamously inaccurate they can be on a motherboard-by-motherboard basis.

You know, it's really a shame too. Those NF7's were so feature rich. Before actually getting one, they seemed like the ultimate AMD board.......guess they were too good to be true. Ever since we first set it up, it seemed....wonky. I have a knack for spotting wonkiness during the setup of a rig (really comes in useful....I can spot the warning signs of a bad format very quickly...a real time saver) It's hard to explain HOW I detect it, but the NF7 threw up the most warning signs of any PC i've ever set up.

Our gut-and-swap of the parts to the KV7 was apparently a rousing success. We STILL haven't had any problems with the setup, even though we never refomatted from the NF7's original setup. The difference is like night and day. Everything is running so smooth and snappy.....and we can actually burn a freakin' CD without having to worry about making coasters.

My brother and I are still giggling over that maneuver.

[123]

That's really an issue with NF7-S, it drops the voltages a little, depending on your hardware you must up some voltages a bit(like with some VGA cards).

As for the burning problem, I don't know about it, what I know is that I got a lot of coasters and thought my burner was dead, but then I stopped using the nVidia IDE driver and put the MS one. Everything is fine again with burning.

Yesterday I finished all the tests I could think of and find on the net for my board, and nothing worked. Also I checked every component in my case separately and everything is working fine aside the mobo. As a last resource, I thought of trying my friend's BIOS here to see if mine has been corrupted. I pulled out my BIOS and put it back again(just to do it for the first time and don't mess with my friend's board). Coincidence or not, it fired up instantly!! What I know is that I won't be shutting this baby off for a long while

When it happens, if the problem persists, I will try my friend's BIOS. If even that doesn't solve the problem, I'll just buy another board and forget about it(I cannot RMA here in Brazil and the warranty is way over now).

[aaronbond]

My NF7-S died last week too. I put in my 6800GT and it started to reboot on me during heavy usage like Painkiller, CoD, and other games. I was like wth. I ran Prime95 on Small FFT's for 6 hours and it passed. Ran Blend and failed on first calculation. I'm said holy beheyzues must be RAM. So I used Windows RAM Diag for 3 hours and it passed all 10 times. I then ran Rightmark Mem Analyzer and it passed for 2 hours. Ran Memtestx86 and it passed for 2 hours. 6800GT runs fine in other computer. So, I'm RMAing the POS. Had it less than 6 months!

*edit*

Rails were abit (no pun intended :-)) low, but swapped out 2 other working PSU's and had the same result. Wouldn't POST if I raised voltages.

RMA YEAH YEAH YEAH!

[RVachon]

I guess I got lucky because I've never had any problems with mine. Although, a couple days ago I was transfering the guts into a new case and noticed a burnt spot on the board near the IEEE headers. Looks like something blew up there at one point but I'm not sure what. Everything is working fine and the system is stable.

I attached a pic with a circle/arrow highligting the blown chip. It's that white chip. Mine is about 1/8 of that size now that's blown..LOL Anyone have any idea what it is?

[Vampyromaniac]

I don't know . . . I did a Google image search for a better picture, and a lot of the pictures I found didn't even have a chip there.

[RVachon]

I'm thinking it has to do with the IEEE since it's so close to the headers. I don't have anything that uses those so I can't check it but I do know my USB and everything else works. Oh well. Time will tell if she blows further. lol

[123]

Originally Posted by Vampyromaniac

I don't know . . . I did a Google image search for a better picture, and a lot of the pictures I found didn't even have a chip there.

If it doesn't have the chip there, it's probably the NF7(not the -S one).

[Vampyromaniac]

That makes sense, and that would link it to the FireWire too

[123]

FINALLY!!!
I found the culprit!!! You won't believe it. My PSU's a Zallman 400W, and it came with an adapter to transform a power connector(HDD type) into four fan connectors. When I looked at the fan(behind my HD), I thought it wasn't working. Actually it was, it's just that it's logo doesn't spin with the fan and the ambient light was low. Lucky me, taking out the adapter and plugging the fan directly in the mobo solved the problem. No more post failures!!!

Strangest thing is, I can almost swear that I did try taking this thing out. Probably it's just that I tried so many things that I thought I tried this...
I'm going to post this in every board that I write, maybe it helps someone

[BWX]

My NF7 v2 powered by Antec true control 550 works great. http://driverheavenuploads.co.uk/BWX/SIG.txt

[refraction]

ive only just got my NF7-S today, but its been fantastic for me, and all the people i know with the board havent had problems