Subj : Re: USB port issue -follo
To   : Barry Martin
From : Ky Moffet
Date : Sat May 16 2020 17:22:00

BARRY MARTIN wrote:
> Hi Ky!
>   KM> With the Asus P5B-Deluxe board (like mine where USB quit and
>   KM> voltage measured by the board was low) ... turns out it's a
>   KM> design problem with the southbridge wiring. Evidently it slowly
>   KM> cooks the relevant capacitors, and eventually, USB fails, tho the
>   KM> rest of the board keeps working.
>   
> Oh goodie!  ASUSTek here, so the same company.  (Some do sound similar
> so checked.)  OTTOMH I don't know what Northbridge and Southbridge do --
> one of those Black Box things.

Yeah... not thrilled with Asus, but a bunch of 'em have followed me 
home, so....

>    In Northbridge/Southbridge chipset architecture designs, the Southbridge
>    is the chip that controls all of the computers I/O functions, such as
>    USB, audio, serial, the system BIOS, the ISA bus, the interrupt
>    controller and the IDE channels. In other words, all of the functions of
>    a processor except memory, PCI and AGP.
> 
> By that sounds like if the Southbridge goes one just has a bunch of parts
> on a big printed circuit board.  Any suggestions as to what to watch
> for/starts to occur when the thing starts to fail?

USB quits? :)

I suppose some "hard drive fails" might also be southbridge.

> And as a FWIW I did finally replace the 'AMD-approved' heat sink and fan
> assembly with a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO; CPU now running a lot
> cooler.  Highest I've seen (per PSensor) is 112, maybe 118øF (44-48øC)

Yeah, the stock AMD heatsinks are junk. I replaced the stock aluminum 
HSF on Westworld with an Adaptec-branded solid copper HSF, and CPU temp 
dropped significantly.

I have a second one and would like to replace the HSF on Double Vision, 
but the socket is just a wee bit off shape and can't get it to seat. And 
no longer matters, as 1) it's socket939 and tho it desperately needs a 
CPU upgrade, they're too expensive, and 2) I'd forgotten til I banged 
into it the other day, but this was AMD's class of supposedly-x64 CPUs 
that won't reliably run a 64bit OS (apparently does not actually do 
64bit I/O). And I don't know how far up the CPU chain the bug continued. 
(AMD had a similar bug back in the K5/K6 era, where the 32bit CPU could 
not do 32bit I/O. Windows would run, linux would not.)

Westworld: Asus M2N68-AM Plus with Phenom II X4 840
Double Vision: Asus A8N-SLI with Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice)

DV will run ReactOS, and sorta runs Mint (not well), but so far have not 
gotten ANY other OS to run reliably. Bunch of us over on LQ forum have 
had similar problems with same board and CPU family, so.. it's a Thing.

Westworld's CPU is supposedly faster than any quadcore. In Real Life 
it's about 40% slower. AMD does not impress, repeatedly.

> -- old heat sink and fan would get up to 180ø ==> could use the CD/DVD
> tray to hold my mug and the CPU to warm up the water for my coffee and

Egads!

> tea!  The 'USB sensitivity' is less but then it's May and the humidity
> is more and seems that has always helped the problem.

Dunno why humidity would help; more humid the air, the more heat it holds.

> .. Prism: Where Light Rays Are Sent For Committing A Minor Refraction.

Ah, that explains it!
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