K7S5A loses video card?

[John Prophet]

Fresh build....K7S5A....been sitting in box on shelf for a year at least, lol.

Built with GF2 Mx-200, somewhat cheap (acheive 400 watt) power supply, and one 256m stick of ram. Actually one of the power supplies died on me after using it for a while.....I didnt realize I had the second fan facing downward on the table...but even so it had the fan grill holding it up a few millimeters etc so I dont think it died cuz of that...especially since most psu dont have that fan in the first place etc.

Anyway, I built it without a case at first, just sitting on a table, with the board on its foam cushion...It built ok but it kept losing the video card...id reboot and it wouldnt kick the vid card....so Id reseat it and it would work...then it lost the hard drive...so i swapped drives and bios batteries. Plus I built it in a case to see if it was losing the vid card cuz the card was moving from the weight of the monitor cable.

In the case it seemed to work fine but now it has lost the video card again??? I ran it for a while..cut it off, let it sit a few minutes, rebooted..no video..I hit reset and the vid kicks in fine....??

So whats the deal here?? IS this the sort of thing a cheap power supply would cause or is it the board being flaky or what could it be?

The RAM is probably kingston or something similar that comes from OfficeMax or OffieceDepot etc since thats where I have bought most of my 256DDR sticks.

Yes I have the latest bios.

Thanks, JP

[MDS]

I had the same problem with K7S5A Pro and I kept fighting it till one-day I stuck another video card in and never had any problem since. I thought for the longest time it was due to video card not seating just right but out of the blue not moving system or anything it would just loose the video again. Maybe contacts on the card were worn or maybe it just didn't like the video card. BTW it was a PNY GF@mx card replaced with a GFIII card. One more thing what are the rail volt ratings on the current PSU? A good 350w PSU vs a cheap 400w and the 350w will usually win due to better rail voltage.

[stroyal]

could there be a setting in the BIOS or jumper that has the board looking for a PCI card. ( assuming that you have an AGP)

[John Prophet]

Well I switched power supplies to a powmax 350wt and it hasnt lost the video card yet.

BUT...it did give me the checksum error ONCE out of like 50 boots....but once out of 50 boots is absolutely totally unnacceptable. (never mind the extraordinary time it takes to do 50 reboots looking for some odd flaw...I promise you I will never buy ecs again, lol....never had these issues with other types of boards)

[Peter M]

I have about a dozen of these boards in my short range influence, all equipped with good RAM and adequate PSUs. I've had one that did the CMOS reset once in a while - PSU was dying. Swapped it out, and system is fine ever since, even though at the same time the CPU got upgraded from Athlon-1000 to XP2400+.
Another one that got abused during system assembly (at the dealer's) had similar symptoms. Warranty swapout, all fine since.

Bottom line, if you've done everything right, it'll be OK. If you got something even remotely flakey, it won't.
On the power supply units, keep an eye on the +5Vstandby rail (must be 1.5A at least, 2.0 with keyboard power on activated) and its stability during main rail powerup. Many many cheap PSUs screw this up, despite ridiculously high wattage ratings.

[John Prophet]

hehe..the +5vsb on the current powmax is 1A.

I have some other supplies here I could try...Id have to rip em out of other cases etc.

Peter do you have a particular supply you recommend for the k7s5a?

I admit I am a cheapo and I like the $13 variety of supplies, hehe...for budget builds anyway...which are all I do.

Any good supplies for THIS board in the say... $30 and below range?

Thanks, JP

[Peter M]

Just read the fine print. It needs to be ATX 2.03 compliant (implying the higher standby power), and for Athlon boards in general, the combined total maximum output on 3.3V and 5V must be strong. So when you put your candidates side by side, go by these criteria and choose the strongest.

If you look around a bit, you'll find good enough supplies in $50 cases, but there are also crap ones in $100 cases.

Peter's educational paragraph:

Standby power needs to be solid because when you turn an ATX mainboard "off", it's not actually off. Part of the chipset, the keyboard controller, and the combined RTC/CMOS RAM chip are still live, powered from the standby rail. This to let users power back up via keystroke, modem ring, or case pushbutton.

Now when the standby power is weak, and takes even more of a nosedive when the main power rails fire back up, then the RTC chip will raise the "CMOS power failure" flag. Consequently, the BIOS will disregard current CMOS settings, wipe it, and revert to defaults.