New Motherboard

[Dan Farrell]

On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:55:44 -0600
Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com> wrote:

> 
> 
>         I have had no success with the motherboard I now have with
> lots of nVidia hardware. It has been prone to sudden crashes at just
> the wrong time. I asked and got plenty of Ubuntu guys tell me they
> have nVidia motherboards and they work fine! So it appears my board
> is somehow bad.
> 
This made me think; have you looked on the mother board for blown
capacitors?  

Capacitors are generally used to filter out small voltage variations.
Sometimes if cheap capacitors they 'blow' and no longer work.  This is
a very common cause of instability.  

capacitors are supposed to look something like this:

http://www.welbornelabs.com/images/ps8new.jpg
http://www.drx9000repair.netfirms.com/12VBefore.jpg
 (ignore the red circles, those circular things are capacitors)

whereas blown capacitors look more like these:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/200302/capblown_6.jpg
http://www.pavelec.net/adam/CapsCrop.sized.jpg