A new lease of life

With the new motherboard installed

My aging PC finally breathe to new life today. After dealing with statics problem that made me unable to house the motherboard and peripherals inside the CM Elite 330 case, the PC finally beeped to life!

The problems

1. The aging MSI P915 finally rest in peace. There are significant signs of aging capacitors all over the motherboard. They might have just vaporised and malfunction causing the whole system unable to power up.
2. I came to Ariff's room to test the all the hardwares and detect the faulty ones as he has the extra hardwares. Later we found out that the graphic card (XFX GeForce 8600GT) is the culprit.
3. Upon installing the new motherboard, the system beeped frantically. Checked the manual, the beeps indicate ROM problem. I suspected that this is due to statics problem.

The old MSI 915P motherboard


The peripherals waiting to be installed on the new motherboard

The solutions

1. I replaced the aging motherboard with a new one (Gigabyte G41M-ES2L). RM 205 at PC Depot, Ipoh.
2. Sent the GC back to shop for RMA as it is still under warranty. Lucky me!
3. For statics problem, I have insulated all of the screw holes of the motherboard with cellophane tape. The frantic beeps gone and the system boot up normally!
4. I also replace all the interface cables (SATA and IDE) with the new ones bundled with the motherboard and all of the drives are detected and works like a charm!

Biggest gratitude

1. I would like to thank to Ariff for assisting me troubleshooting my PC problems. I owe you dude!
2. I would also like to thank Ariff's roommate, Wira Aiman for lending me his a stick of 1 GB DDRII 800 MHz RAM as the new motherboard is not compatible with DDR2 400 MHz RAM.
3. Gigabyte is generous enough to bundle the latest Norton Internet Security with the motherboard even it is the low end model. Surprisingly the antivirus does not bog down my system even though it only use the aging Pentium 4 630 processor with crippling 1 GB RAM (do not forget some of the RAM has been taken out by integrated graphic). No significant lag!

The new Gigabyte G41M-ES2L

Usual bundle