i have two once identical dfi motherboards, one needs a fan blowing on the northbridge to work (at least i think that's the reason it's working now) is it possible the northbridge was damaged JUST enough to cause it to get too hot to run properly without extra cooling?
the reason for the "special" motherboard is detailed below, kept seperate so you don't have to wade through the entire story to find the question
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a little over a year ago i got a dfi lanparty nfII ultra b, for a week or two everything was going fine then the smell of burning electronics hit me, long story short, the cheap and cheerful memory had died and taken the slot->nothbridge->motherboard with it (or so i had thought)
i operated (i SHOULD have sent it back, but i didn't think they would believe my story about the kamikaze memory) one of the pins inside the slot was melted to half the length it should've been and the contact of the memory was still welded to the end of it, with a donor pin from an elderly motherboard i resurrected the slot/motherboard. it worked.....kinda, but on trying to install xp with it i kept getting a (0x0000008x) memory error message and the northbridge was getting very hot each time, i figured maybe the death of the memory did something to the northbridge, so now, with an application of arctic silver between the heatsink and the chip and a fan blowing straight onto it, i managed to get right through to the end of the xp installation :D
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