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    soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

    hi guys, i have two soyo-based machines here, and both of them are experiencing some weirdness (and have been for a while)... i'd heard about the capacitor debacle, but never suspected that it could be causing my problems.

    meet system one: a sy-kt266a dragon plus! i've seen several postings about this board, but this one has always performed very well. the system itself takes a lot of crap though, being under the control of three mostly tech illiterate people (*cough*family*cough*).

    it was having some baffling windows problems (certain programs not starting at all, others randomly "crashing" by completely disappearing, window, process/task listing and all). but once i would clear off spyware or reformat it, it would seem to be fine.

    until one day, when it would drop a BSOD every time it booted, without fail. eventually narrowed it down to the ram slots - two identical 256MB modules, which (separately) both showed as fine in memtest86, but as soon as they're both inserted, windows just barfs. i don't know of any other problems, but that one's big enough. i tried switching psu's, and there was no change. i haven't checked the caps yet, but what would you bet that's what the problem is?

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

    system two: sy-kt400 dragon ultra. this is my system, and i've loved working with it. unfortunately it is on its third power supply: a 550W antec truepower III, which was sent to replace a truepower II, which was sent to replace the original truepower. it's also gone through a mess of hard drives, but i attribute that to the constant heavy processing it does.

    it's always performed very well, but somewhere along the line it started having power-on problems: once shutdown from windows, it has a 50/50 chance of booting next time i ask it to. if it boots, it works fine. if it doesn't boot, i have to wait between 4 and 5 minutes to try again, at which time it will have a 50/50 chance of booting. repeat. it's pretty annoying, but i couldn't find the problem, as changing psu and removing/switching other components didn't help either.

    anyway the final straw was a few weeks ago, when it dropped another hdd on its head, this time the system drive which has been in use for 4+ years. as you might imagine, it was a mess to clean up. now that windows is reinstalled, my creative audigy2 (sb0240) has started to flag. its digital coaxial output is attached to a sony str-de597 receiver. this card has worked flawlessly until now, but suddenly there two distinct problems. when no sound is playing and it's in pcm (48KHz stereo) mode, there are single, loud, clicks audible from the right channel - it's random, but at least once every 45 seconds. the second and bigger problem, is that it has started dropping the signal when using passthrough mode for dolby or dts (no matter how many channels or what bitrate it's output at). i tested the receiver and cable with a $30 dvd player, and it didn't misbehave.

    when i was racking my brain trying to figure out what's wrong i noticed a milky stain around the base and... above? a single cap on the board between the northbridge and agp slot:

    (note that this is a stock photo, i'll be uploading proper ones tomorrow when there's more light)

    these are all sacon caps, and they all appear to be in good condition. what are the chances of the leaking electrolyte travelling upwards across the board, anyway? it doesn't look "dirty" like most of the pics i've seen, it's more like the trail of minerals you see when a splash of water dries on a mirror. sorry this was a long post, let me know if there's any other information (other than the photos) that might help.

    #2
    Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

    Unless you mounted the PC or motherboard upside down, leaking electrolyte should never travel UP the board from a vented cap. I have seen manufacturers put glue around the base of the caps (mainly in PSUs) to cut down on vibration noise. I have also seen what looks like dried milk on the solder side of PCBs before, and to this day I have never figured out what it could be - probably some residue from manufacturing.

    Note that caps don't have to be spilling out to cause problems; they can fail without showing any physical signs. Teapo caps are notorious for this. Also check the caps inside the PSU and any other board attached to the system that has caps on it - such as the sound card and video card.

    My father, who is a lecturer of Chemistry, says it may even be upwards crystallization. Something can leak out of a component and drip down the board, but will evaporate more from the bottom than from the top. Therefore, you'll see more crystallization occurring on the lowest part of the trail, not the highest.
    Last edited by Tom41; 09-07-2007, 02:52 PM.
    You know there's something wrong when you open your PC and it has vented Rubycons...

    Comment


      #3
      Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

      Rather than starting a new thread I'm going to dig up this one... Last month I replaced the capacitors on a few boards. The Leadtek board was absolutely horrendous; the solder was almost impossible to melt in most cases. That board now works great.

      Having gained some confidence from that, I got to work on my favoured board, the KT-400 Dragon Ultra that this thread is about. The work was a breeze, and everything went smoothly. I hooked everything back up and turned it on, and it doesn't work. But even worse than not working at all, it just has the same problem as before - being that it takes a lot of time and several attempts to actually POST.

      Are there any other small electrical components I could try replacing? Or should I just assume it's the chipset or ICs and scrap it?

      Comment


        #4
        Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

        Both boards are VIA chipsets and I don't favor these at all. Should had gone with AMD 780 series and 790 series or Intel chipset based.

        Cheers, Wizard

        Comment


          #5
          Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

          If it posts sometimes it's probably not ICs or Chipset.

          Some details about what you did would help.

          Most of the Soyo boards I've seen had a mix of OST, Sacon, and Evercon.
          Sacon and Evercon are both new names for GSC and are complete crap.
          The OST on those Soyo boards ~I think~ were counterfeits because they had an oddity in the vent that was EXACTLY like the oddity in the vents on the caps marked Sacon and Evercon.

          The oddity is that at the top edge of the cap the sleeve is pressed into the vent stamp depression as would happen if the vents were stamped after the sleeves were on.
          1 - I have not seen the the oddity in OST caps that are not on Soyo boards.
          2 - Soyo are the only boards I've seen oddity on at all and when they have it -ALL- the caps on the board have it no matter what name is on the caps.
          3 - The OST are silver with black writing, same as the Sacon/Evercons. I don't think silver/black is an OST color. [Could be wrong on that.]
          -
          Suspicious I think. The Sacon/Evercon might even be counterfeits.

          I'd at least replace everything over 5mm.
          Mann-Made Global Warming.
          - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.

          -
          Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

          - Dr Seuss
          -
          You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
          -

          Comment


            #6
            Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

            I'm no expert, but it sounds like a 5vsb problem.
            You could give another another PSU a try.
            Or you could try to find out which motherboard caps are filtering the 5vsb. This could be done with a DMM.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

              I have a Soyo SY-P4S-645DX Dragon Ultra. As you can see from the attached photo, I had a bank of nine Sacon 2200 uF 6.3 volt caps bulging and leaking at the top. Since this computer is used as a dedicated flight simulator (FS2004), I recapped with Nichicon PWM series. I'm sure FAA would not approve of flying with leaky capacitors!

              If the Sacon caps are not leaking in your Soyo boards yet, they probably soon will be. It wasn't a matter that one cap was leaking - a whole bank of them were leaking.
              Attached Files
              Old proverb say.........If you shoot at nothing, you will hit nothing (George Henry 10-14-11)

              Comment


                #8
                Soyo SY-KT400 Dragon Ultra - Black Edition capacitor map

                @everell: I only found the one bad one, I've thrown it out but I the ESR was something like 38 Ohms. Now, the older KT-266 board works perfectly, except it crashes the OS with >1 stick of RAM installed. Nothing's visible yet but I'm sure the caps are on their way out. Still, for a board with "bad caps", still working at all after seven years of heavy use seems like a pretty good run.

                @Wizard: The feature set was what I needed for work, and for gaming the board's speed was second only to the nForce(2?) at the time - even though it didn't have Dual Channel RAM functionality. I don't remember any boards using AMD's chipsets making my shortlist when I was shopping around.

                @PCBONEZ, glad to hear you don't think the chips are bad. As for what I did, I've replaced the caps (which are all Sacon on this board) 470uF and greater with the following Rubycons:
                Code:
                6.3V 3300uF -> MBZ 6.3v 3300uF
                16V 1500uF -> MCZ 16v 1800uF
                10V 1000uF -> MCZ 10v 1000uF
                16V 470uF -> MBZ 16v 470uF
                You mention changing everything over 5mm, that means doing the 220uF, 100uF, and 22uF as well... If it's worth doing those, I might as well try to find 10uF replacements while I'm at it and get them ALL switched.

                @jpdoe: unless the 5V is being regulated by 16V or 25V caps, they've been replaced already. I will give another power supply a try, as I can't remember if this was happening with the previous one or not. This system has seen three different PSUs (from OP: "a 550W Antec TruePower III, which was sent to replace a TruePower II, which was sent to replace the original TruePower" that came with my case). I seem to remember the first one died outright and wouldn't power on but I'm not certain. The TPII's 12V rails crapped out and took a few hard disks with it. I'm willing to bet this is around the time the issue started. The TPIII is still running OK, I've recently used it with some other boards and had no problem. But like I said, I'll try it.

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

                I've made up a map for this motherboard, and am linking it for anyone else who happens to want it. The polarities aren't marked at all, but that's something everyone should be checking for themselves anyway.

                Unaltered photo (1.63MB):


                Capacitor map (301KB):

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                  Frankly because they are Sacon, who is Evercon, who is GSC....
                  I -WOULD- replace ALL of them.

                  I think "-Ever- -Con-" was a really good choice for a company that keeps changing their name to stay in business.
                  Mann-Made Global Warming.
                  - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.

                  -
                  Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

                  - Dr Seuss
                  -
                  You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
                  -

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                    I had taken away the impression that anything smaller than 470uF would have a negligible effect on the board. But you're saying, assuming that:
                    1. Another PSU makes no difference, and
                    2. To me, the value of the board is worth the effort and cost to fix it
                    then I should replace the rest? Where do I start looking for quality caps that small?

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                      Usually don't worry about the small ones but these are GSC [which are about like Fuhjyyu but end up in different applications] and the board is a Soyo.
                      Not all, but most, Soyo boards I've seen have a slew of small ones around the chipset and around the RAM VR circuits where they can louse up things like Vtt.

                      Someone in here [forget which thread] had an unstable recapped board and found excessive noise in Vtt to be the problem. I started replacing down to 220uF after I read that and for brands like GSC [and company] I just do them all.

                      The time/trouble to replace the small ones when the board is out anyway is minimal compared to chasing some screwy problem around with a scope and/or having to pull the board again.

                      Small ones are usually cheap and easy to find. Both Mouser and Digikey carry a variety of them. Don't need super low ESR or anything. The likes of LXZ, FC, PW or better are fine. VZ if you must to match a hard to find size.
                      .
                      Mann-Made Global Warming.
                      - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.

                      -
                      Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

                      - Dr Seuss
                      -
                      You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
                      -

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                        True enough, guess I'll start looking for more caps =\

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                          Just finished replacing all the small caps with Nichicon PWs (it was convenient to get everything at the same time from digikey, but it's too bad the shipping cost three times the price of the order). Anyway, bad news - the same issue continues. The machine cold booted perfectly the first four times, then wouldn't initialize the video and halted, and is now back to being its old self. I ran Prime95 on it for a while, and saw no stability issues or other obvious differences from before the swap.

                          It's definately a tolerance issue with the board though... If I leave the default CMOS settings (thereby underclocking the CPU and RAM) the chances of it booting seem to be far higher.

                          Any other ideas?

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                            Might try a BIOS reflash.
                            It may have gotten a bit corrupted with the cap problem.

                            Consider replacing caps down to 22uF near chipset and RAM regulator chip.
                            Might take a bit of research, circuit tracing, and looking up chip numbers to figure what is involved.
                            The goal is to make sure the Vtt circuits have good caps all the way down.
                            Mann-Made Global Warming.
                            - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.

                            -
                            Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

                            - Dr Seuss
                            -
                            You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
                            -

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                              I guess I could try reflashing. As for the 22uF caps, I've replaced everything - there's not a Sacon left on the board.

                              It seems to be boot more often when the power supply switch was off, and less often when in soft-off mode, i.e. after OS shutdown. I don't know if I mentioned this before in this thread, but the beep code it seems to give me is the one for Video Error but I'm not even sure about that. It beeps once as soon as you turn it on, which iirc, is when the display should come on and it starts up. Then a few seconds later, it beeps again, which is the point the display DOES come on if it's going to work. If not, after that second beep there's a very slight pause and it does the long-short-short beep code. Now that the caps are replaced I'll try reflashing the bios and maybe boosting the video voltage a little to see if there's any change.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                                That last post wasn't very clear, and since I can't edit it I'm going to amend it here to make it a little more legible and to add some further info... apologies.

                                Similar to before the operation, it seems have a better chance of booting when the power supply switch was off. The problem is more frequent when starting from soft-off mode, i.e. after OS shutdown. I don't know if I mentioned this before in this thread, but the beep code it seems to give me is the one for Video Error. It beeps once as soon as you turn it on, which is when the display should come on and goes through POST - It doesn't do this. A few seconds later, it beeps again, which is the point the display will come on if it's going to work. If not, then after that second beep there's a very slight pause and it does the long-short-short beep code.

                                I cleared the cmos and reflashed the bios, it hasn't really changed anything. As before, with default settings the machine seems to work better - the display comes up after the first beep as it should. At this point the problem returned when I turned up the FSB - the CPU is auto-detected as a 1500+ when it's actually a 2700+. Thinking about this, it may be indicative of the root problem. I don't think it's the chip, because I've had no issues with it when testing the other boards I've recapped. What about a damaged North Bridge? The fan on it died maybe a year and a half after buying the board. I replaced it with a passive sink from zalman, but I wonder if it was already too late to prevent damage by the time I noticed?
                                Last edited by gintama; 07-25-2009, 01:24 AM.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                                  Gintama.

                                  I think this is better to call quits. The VIA chipsets is dying due to too long running with bad caps or other reasons.

                                  This is one of many reasons I dump VIA for strange going ons. And audio issues as well points out the poor design internal to the chipset also makes me nervous. I had SO MUCH problems with VIA that I didn't have with Intel or SiS and going to XP does not excuse this issues as this points out the VIA unwillingness to develop good drivers even for win98. Uh huh.. finger waving. Ironically at one point in time, the only reason I bought A7V400 series was to keep using 98 as can't afford XP back then. Yet but they still crash and lock ups etc blah-blah weird going ons. And yes they were all Asus boards, decent boards even, but with VIA, yet I still had little and big problems. Prior to this I had A7pro (plain version of A7V). Before that, was P2B excellent board. After A7pro, went with A7N8X (only time Nvidia got that part good once with 2000 Pro when I had the license from old machines). After that, went with 775 cpu and P5K, still good and stable even with radeon HD3650.

                                  Your reasons for feature set is not a big issue these days. A decent 775 with P35 or P45 chipset will net you not very much even with E5300 CPU and 2GB and have what you need. Only 2 things I only see were plenty of PCI slots and raid on these Soyo boards. These days not much need for PCI slots and it is helpful to state the need more clearly.

                                  Another option there is AMD mainboards as well now using 790GX, FX chipsets with AM3 socket and Phanhom II X2 550 is also decent, with DDR3 not very expensive now, about 80 for 4GB pair of sticks.

                                  PS: I was careful with cooling as well, even made sure the northbridge chipset got the thermal grease. MSI, Gigabyte and other boards maker used non-thermal thin double sided sticker to stick chipset heatsink on along with push pins. illogical, most frequently seen on VIA chipset-based boards.

                                  How is your clock generator's heat? I had to rig up plate heatsink using mainboard mounting points to keep that clock generator cool as I have seen too many boards die with bad generator clock chips back then as they were running red-hot. Hint that is where 14.7828 MHz crystal can is and that was bad in old days of pentium era and VIA boards of all types.

                                  Cheers, Wizard
                                  Last edited by Wizard; 07-25-2009, 02:25 PM.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                                    I know, I know. I had it in soft-off today and it actually booted on the first try... it keeps throwing me these little glimmers of hope. I'm not sure if you were referring to my sound problems or ones with VIA in general - mine turned out to be the Audigy card, I've since replaced it.
                                    The feature I'm most worried about is the IDE/ATA connectivity, I was hoping to use this as a server box because of all the drives that can be attached. Yes, I could get a newer, low power PC and a bunch of IDE controller cards, or even a NAS enclosure... but that's not cheaper than replacing the caps. I can still use it anyway, as it works fine once it posts. I'll have to check out that clock gen, from your description it sounds like you're referring to more than just the frequncy crystal?

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                                      Try reseating CPU.
                                      Clock speed off may be bad connection from CPU to the chip that parses the CPU VID.
                                      It's a long shot.
                                      Mann-Made Global Warming.
                                      - We should be more concerned about the Intellectual Climate.

                                      -
                                      Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

                                      - Dr Seuss
                                      -
                                      You can teach a man to fish and feed him for life, but if he can't handle sushi you must also teach him to cook.
                                      -

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Re: soyo dragon+ and dragon ultra

                                        There are plenty of socket 462 (A), P4 and P3 boards with IDE ports. But preferably not VIA if you do care about stability and reliability with data (server).

                                        Still, don't buy a board that has more than 2 IDE connectors. Use proper extra IDE cards if necessary. Sell some hard drives and obtain large capacity IDE drives. Still be had for new or low hours if you know the good source.

                                        There are a NAS OS called FreeNAS that turn MOST PCs into NAS. I used it and find this excellent. Even good on P3.

                                        Cheers, Wizard
                                        Last edited by Wizard; 07-27-2009, 01:48 PM.

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