m8530f desktop PC with a m2n78-la mother board doesn't see my drives

[bomberbob]

Losing loyal customers, one PC at a time.

[MrMatthew]

Hello,

Please tell us more about your problem so we can help you.  

[bomberbob]

My problem is solved. I replaced the defective HP motherboard with a board from another manufacturer that I trust. This ordeal has soured my view of HP, all future purchases hinge on the question: "How long will this HP product I am considering purchasing last after the warranty period expires?" I recently bought a new printer, I went Epson. I am looking at upgrading to a newer scanner. Looking past HP scanners to see what others offer.

What you essentially have is not a manufacturing defect, you have a defective design. The NVIDIA chip on these select models creates a lot of heat, and instead of engineering using an active fan cooled heatsink, they opted for a cheaper passive heatsink. The chip slow-cooks itself and if you follow the other unhappy people in this thread, it fails right after the warranty period expires. I don't believe these were low end products that are failing. The failure is not easy to troubleshoot to the cause, so people sink additional resources into hard drives and other components trying to fix their HP product.

What HP should have done was realized they had mis-calculated the heatload on that device, and contacted owners to retrofit a fan/heatsink on the chip to keep PCs working that were still alive. For those owners whose machines had failed, HP should have offered something, anything to try and make up for the loss. Replacement motherboard, not free, but at a reduced cost, WITH a fan to keep it cool.

There is nothing that HP can do for me, I will take my consumer dollars elsewhere.

[davstivers]

Wow, this thread is really picking up steam.  I am afraid that the problem has affected a lot of people.  First, to respond to seddgg42, the gigabyte board does fit fine into the p6210f case that I have, and I am 99.9% sure that all the p series use the same case, so you should be fine.  It is a micro atx board, and these are micro atx compatible cases. You will need to replace the i/o backplate from the hp case with the one that comes with your motherboard and the hp plate is kind of a bugger to get off.

I couldn't agree more with bomberbob on all counts, this ordeal has really made me reconsider my hp loyalty going forward.  I still hold out hope that someone from hp will pick up on this and offer some kind of compensation, it is the right thing to do.

For what it's worth, I had recommended my parents buy the same model I had bought since it was a great deal and initally worked great.  I managed to install a fan onto the chipset heatsink before it started showing symptoms, and so far so good.  Use some decent heatsink compound like ones from Arctic Silver, remove the old stuff with alcohol or goof off and you should be good to go. 

[TimmmyGlue]

I called HP and got the same as others: No admission of any problem, even though I pointed them to this forum thread

specifically. They claimed they didn't know of any such problems but they knew how to instruct me to install extra fans after

they replaced my motherboard with the exact same board with the exact same defect for $350. Or they would give me a 

"discount" on a tradeup that would cost me $1000.  Gee thanks, All they seemed to care about was trying to get more $$ out of me.I asked if they would send me a replacement mobo that I could install myself to save some $$ they said that would cost

me $425.  Hmmm how does that figure?

I found an "ASUS M4A785-M" board that looks like it would be a suitable replacement and if I'm reading it right has a different chipset so I think it won't have the same problem.  Anybody try this one?

[chewybtc]

I have a p6310f that is about to go out of warranty.  It has the M2N78-LA motherboard with nvidia 9100. 

I was getting ready to give this pc to my friend as i never really used it much.  I had upgraded the CPU cooler to a Zalman because the stock one was so loud.  I also had a radeon 4850 PCIx16 graphics card in it since it was new.  The PC has run great for almost a year.

My friend didn't want the graphics card, so i uninstalled it and removed it.  Restarted with now using the onboard GPU and about 5 minutes later the PC just turned off.  When i restarted it said that it had shut down because of excessive heat and to service the PC immediately.

The GPU will get to about 103 Celsius and then just shut down the PC.

I've been in touch with HP support and they have replaced the MOBO 3 times now with no luck.  The GPU will get to about 103 Celsius and then just shut down the PC.

After trying different things on my own (new power supply, hard drive, fresh copy of W7 pro) I have discovered that by removing my Zalman CPU cooler and putting the stock cooler back on, that the GPU gets to about 72 Celsius MAX and doesn't shut down any more.

Why would the CPU cooler have anything to do with this?

The zalman does a much better job of cooling the CPU over the stock unit, but I am totally lost as to why it would cause such a problem with the onboard GPU.

Hp wants me to send the whole tower in to them again, but I just don't see the point after reading this thread.

I'd appreciate any input from you guys.  TIA

[gkdiamond]

On page 2 I noted that some CPU coolers do a much better job of cooling the motherboard components than others and that would seem to be what is happening in your case. The Zalman may do a much better job of cooling the CPU over the stock unit but the stock unit is doing a much better job of cooling the chip set.

[gkdiamond]

TimmmyGlue, the ASUS M4A785-M motherboard would work fine. It doesn't have a Firewire (IEEE-1394a) or eSATA port like the GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H motherboard that a lot of people are using to replace the stock m2n78-la motherboard but if you don't need them it doesn't matter.

[M2N78-LA]

Add me to the list of people with a failed north bridge.  No SATA and gets a bit further on boot only when cold.  Never makes it to the windows boot screen though.

I created an account on the forum just so I could reply and add to the count of people with this problem.  Makes you wonder for every one person that bothers to research this and find the problem and report it on this forum, how many also have the problem and don't report it?  I'd say 15 to 1.

I'm in the middle of replacing with the Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H Motherboard.

I've heard that the stock HP power supply is wired differently than what the connector expects on the Gigabyte board.  Anybody know the details?

[M2N78-LA]

Ok, now that I'm looking at it closer maybe the issue is not with the 2x12 (24 pin) Main ATX motherboard power connector, but with the 2x2 (4 pin) stock power supply's CPU power connector and the Gigabyte uses a 2x4 (8 pin) CPU power connector?  Looking at the pin out that seems to be a simple issue.  The stock HP power supply provides 2x12 and 2x2 connectors.  The Gigabyte has the 2x4 block.  The M2N78-LA only has a 2x2 block.  The extra 4 pins is just to double up the number of grounds and +12v supply lines, basically reducing the amount of current running through each individual wire and connector on the motherboard by half.  The Gigabyte manual states the connectors are compatible with a power supply providing a 2x2 connector (and even a 2x10 ATX connector)