Overheating problems on some KT133(A) Motherboards, namely Asus

I made the mistake of buying an Asus motherboard (A7V133a) a couple of years ago. This is the story of what happened as it appeared on my original site unixmafia.port5.com.

Overheating problems on some KT133(A) Motherboards, namely Asus

Last update: 2002-12-05

INDEX:
1. Introduction
2. The problem
3. Solutions
4. E-mail conversation with Asus support
5. E-mail conversation with my reseller, Comtechnology (Belgium)
Addendum 1. My setup
Addendum 2. Credits
Addendum 3. Reference

Follow up - The developments

The story ends (see the E-mails below):
"That was my last contact with Comtech. They didn't respond to my mail, and I couldn't find a magazine or TV-program interested in this. So, I sold the board together with the processor for less than half they'd cost, got more than 10 replies that same day. I informed the buyer of the problem, but he wanted the Asus anyway.
So, I'm happy running my cheap ECS board with a nice Athlon XP, and I'll never buy another Asus-product in my life. And I'll rather drop death than to to business with the vultures of Comtech again."

Introduction

A couple of month's ago, I got the greatest birthday present ever. My wife had saved up enough money to buy me a supercomputer. So I could finally retire my old, faithfull Pentium 200. So I went out an bought me a dream-machine, An Athlon 1.333 with an Asus A7v133a motherboard, all neatly wrapped up in a very large Aopen HQ08 Tower case. Together with a SuSE Linux on it, the greatest machine I could imagine.

Except for the first motherboard installed not working above 900Mhz, everything was fine. It worked like a charm, and handled like a dream. Slowly but steadily, I got everything working on it. Even my Motherboard's sensors. That's when I noticed something wasn't quit right.

My system temperature stayed steady at 56°C Idle!, that's hotter than any dessert I know! Stressed, it quickely exceeded 60°C, which made the machine instantly reboot, a nightmare for me. Soon thereafter, I replaced the CPU with a 1.4 Ghz, which I fitted with a copper shim. It ran smoothly, but strangely enough, at the same 54°C idle, going to only 56-57°C when stressed...

That at least took care of the sudden reboots, but I still had questions about the unusually high idle temperature. So, I started my own investigation into the matter, leading to some very strange conclusions. I documented, and wil update my adventure through the jungle of supportland here.

Top

The problem

The BIOS on several via KT133 and KT133A motherboards disable the HLT , STPCLK and STPGNT instructions of the processor (apparantly, some A7M266 boards have it too). These states are responsable for power savings (and heat production) under the APM and ACPI specifications. The boards that have these disabled therefor do not completely implement those specifications, although they do claim so in their propaganda.

This can have several reasons, but one of the most common is to hide the fact that a particular board has an inferior power-supply. Which seems to be the case with my Asus.
Asus uses a 2-phase power supply with 4 capacitators onboard, while most boards have a 3-phase supply with 6 capacitators. Especially the STPCLK instruction, which calls the C2 Power Management state of the Athlon processor, puts a heavy burden on the power supply, because switching between the lowest and highest power consumption can occur several times a second. The disadvantage of the C2 state is that it can interfere in realtime applications like video and audio, because it takes the processor a fraction of time to come out of it. Asus hides behind 'choppy audio' as a reason to disable both C1 and C2. If this were valid, why not supply a BIOS option to turn it on or off?

Modern OS's like Linux (also Windows 2K and NT) support the C1 power state, induced by the HLT instruction. This state allows a more modest saving in power and heat, but supports a quick resume, and is therefor the most desirable for normal use. On an idle system, it would keep the temperature down about 10°C, causing few to non noticable performance issues.

I have a 'test' setup, two virtually identical systems as described in Addendum 1. My setup. One is my expensive Asus board, the other is a new brand called Elite (about half the price of the Asus). They're both build arround the same Via KT133A chipset.

My Asus runs at 56°C idle, the Elite at 34°C. Stressed they both go to about 56-57°C, depending on the load and duration. The Elite board has an AC97 Audio chip, which plays nicely with the C2 state enabled.
So, Asus manages to get 20°C hotter than a mutch cheaper board. While having choppy sound when forced to save power, and even then only getting to 47°C, still 13°C above the Elite. Very nice... Top

Solutions

The most desirable solution would be that Asus (or other misbehaving manufacturers) would fix their boards, or recall them if they are too 'buggy'. The chance of this happening is very slim to none.
You can already see this in Asus' escape and run response to me.

What can you do then. Well not a lot I'm afraid, you can try to return your board if it's still under warranty. But I suspect you won't have much luck with that.

Or you can try Martin Peters' utility lvcool. For me, it drops the CPU temperature to about 47°C, but I get the choppy sound problem.
Another slight draw-back is that your CPU will appear to be 100% loaded, because the program executes an idle loop.
It does on the other hand, supply the C2 power state, allowing for very good power savings. So far, I haven't seen any intability to the system yet.

And that's about it. I would advice you to complain to your manufacturer anyway. To let them know that this id unacceptable. But don't expect to mutch from them... Top

E-mail conversation with Asus support
----------------------------------------

From: Van Sanden Guy
Sent: maandag 17 september 2001 09:57
To: '
tsd@asus.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
'
Subject: Bug in Asus A7v133A

Hello

I own an Asus A7v133A motherboard and I've tracked down a serious BIOS problem.
My processor runs at 55-56° Celcius, both idle and stressed. Which would mean that the BIOS fails to initialize the processor to accept the HLT instructions produced by my OS.

This is my setup:
Asus A7V133A motherboard, BIOS revision 1004
Asus V7100 nvidia GeForce2MX
Aopen HQ08 case with 300Watt power supply
AMD Athlon 1.4 GHZ processor
ThermalTake Volcano II 6cu
512 MB SDRAM
OS: SuSE Linux 7.2, kernel 2.4.4

I did the following test:
- replaced the original 1.333 GHZ athlon with 1.4 GHZ, no result, so the CPU's are all-right.
- Another system using the same CPU, on an Elite motherboard (VIA chipset) runs at 34°C idle with the same OS (SuSE 7.2, kernel 2.4.4).

The implication of this is that this board runs hot, even on any OS that generates HLT instructions in its kernel (being Linux, WinNT, Win2K and WinXP).

Is this a fundamental error, maybe to be solved with a future bios update? Or is my board malfunctioning.
It is still under warranty, and I'd like this one solved in that period.

Kind regards

Guy

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

From: Sean Hua [
tsd@asus.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
.tw]
Sent: woensdag 26 september 2001 22:27
To:
Guy.VanSanden@siemens.atea.beThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Subject: Re:FW: Bug in Asus A7v133A

Dear sir,

Thanks for choosing ASUSTek.

You can try the latest BIOS of A7V133.
http://www.asus.com.tw/products/Motherboard/bios_socka.html#a7v133
Ihe temperature between 50 Celsius to 70 Celsius is still acceptable.

Best Regard,

ASUS Customer Service Center Shanghai
ASUS Web site :
ASUS Ftp site :

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

From: Van Sanden Guy
Sent: woensdag 26 september 2001 07:56
To: 'Sean Hua'
Subject: RE: FW: Bug in Asus A7v133A

Dear Sir

I did some further searching, and it seems that Asus disabled it's HLT instruction in the BIOS because the board has insufficient capacitators to handle swithing between idle 5watt, and stressed, 60watt.

I'm already on the last bios release (1005), with no improvement whatsoever.

Although 50-70 °C is within tollerance levels of an AMD Athlon processor, it is by far not normal for a CPU running IDLE (with an OS that has HLT implemented).
I have another system, running an Elite motherboard (same OS) and an AMD 1.333 GHZ, which is running 34°C idle, 20°C less than my expensive Asus.

This behaviour is not acceptable, especially from expensive boards such as Asus.

I've already posted this issue on a number of mailing-lists. And I fully intend to make the further outcome of this public, so that all people with this problem can be helped, or at least informed.
I seriously hope that Asus can find a solution to restore my trust in their products.

Kind regards

Guy Van Sanden

At the time of writing, the last mail was dated a month ago. I have not received any response to date.

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E-mail conversation with my reseller, Comtechnology (Belgium)

The lack of a response from Asus left me with only one way out, my reseller, Comtechnology. Under consumer-law here in Belgium, they are the ones that would be replacing the board in any event. Well, their initial response was the same as Asus's "it's normal". But after calling, mailing and a lot of explaining, they understood that there was a problem.
That realisation didn't make them do something about it, in the contrary. On 29 November 2001 I was promised a replacement board by the store (via E-mail, see below). A couple of days later, on 6 Dec 2001, I got an E-mail from the manager, retracting their promise. So, they lied, and again, I'm to tired to fight it further.
The only thing I can do is warn people not to buy anything there, people who make a promise and retract it later are not to be trusted in any case.

Please note that the messages below have been translated from Dutch, there's always a link to the original in text-format. I did not post my own messages, as they're quoted in the replies.

----------------------------------------
Full message (in Dutch)

From: "Com Technology bvba"
To: "Guy Van Sanden"
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 09:46:13 +0100
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Dear,

First: 57°C stressed is well within tolerance (>70°C is bad).
Concerning those functions: the board supports some powersavings, but not all of them. This is very common for boards of that period.

There are messages all over the place that certain boards don't support certain features.
I recommend to turn them of anyway, because they often are the cause of several problems.

Kind regards,

Filip

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guy Van Sanden"
To: "Com Technology bvba"
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2001 2:26 PM
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord

>The messages was in the text-body, but my mail is PGP/Mime signed, which creates a multipart/mime message with the signature in attachemnt.

>Your mailclient probably has problems with multipart/mime, causing the text not to be displayed.
>I've removed the signature form this mail, you should be able to read this one.

>Regards

>Guy
>
> -------------------------------
> I already sent the message below on November 6, without any reply.
>
> Please contact me
>
> Kind regards
>
> Guy
>
>
> Dear
>
> I recently contacted you about the problems I'm having with my Asus A7V133A-board.
> As I said, it's running at 54°C idle, 57°C stressed. After some research, I found out that this board
does not comply with APM and ACPI standards by disabling the HLT and STOPCLK instructions in the BIOS.
> You said that you would make some inquiries about this with your supplier and Asus support, they're not repsonding to me.

> Do you have any response from them?
>
> I did some further research and documented my findings on:
> http://unixmafia.port5.com under news/special features.
>
> Please let me know what you found out?
>
> Regards
>
> Guy
>
>
> On Sat, 24 Nov 2001 11:38:03 +0100 "Com Technology bvba"
wrote regarding Re: Asus moederbord:
>
>
>
> Dear,
>
> Can you write your mail in full, I can't open attachments (virusses etc)?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Filip
>

----------------------------------------
Full message (in Dutch)

From Technology bvba"
To: "Guy Van Sanden"
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 12:12:32 +0100
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Dear,

If the board isn't running stable, you can always return it for another.
If none are in stock, you may choose a board of another manufacturer with AMD chipset. Concerning the questions to the manufacturer, we're not getting any decent answer either. If a board is unstable, we replace it. I too wish that they would do more about it, but that isn't the case. I've read before that some features are published by Asus, that are not actually on the boards.

Kind regards,

Filip

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guy Van Sanden"
To: "Com Technology bvba"
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 8:54 PM
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord

> Dear
>
> As I already stated over the phone:
>
> 1. The specifications of this board, also on the box, state that it is ACPI and APM compliant. If you check these standards you'll find that the C1 powerstate is defined in APM, and C2 in ACPI (which is AMD-specific).
> The C1 state is always required to comply to the PC98 standard, while this board even claims to be PC2000 comliant.
>
> 2. While >70°C is OK according to AMD's thermal guide, it is not OK for this board.
> If the temperature gets above 65°C, it simply reboots. There are no BIOS settubgs to change this temperature. (ECS also uses 65°C to trigger a reboot, but you can change this threshold in the BIOS).
>
> 3. This board is far from stable, my system regularly freezes up, only a hardware-reset can get it back. I have two more systems running on that same Linux-kernel, and they've never crashed.
> At work, I have 20 more running that kernel (2.4.10), all stable.
>
> 4. I've been doing research into this, and the only boards suffering from this kind of behaviour are the A7V, A7V133 and the A7M266 (certain BIOS revisions).
> Can you let me know what other manufacturers are also affected?
>
> 5. The ECS board in my wife's PC does support both features. This bord is even running stable under the heaviest tests I could throw at it, which is more than I can say for mine.
>
> 6. Stability or problems are not the cause why Asus disabled these features.
> The PSU on those boards are just too weak.
> BTW, if you check Tom's Hardwareguide, you'll see that Asus systematically overclocked their RAM to 133.4 Mhz to perform better in benchmarks, which often compromises stability (especially with cheap RAM).
>
> 7. You promised on the phone to address this problem with Asus support, as my mails to them remain unanswered.
> I find that a very doubtfull attitude for a manufacturer of such expensive parts.
> What is the status of that inquiry?
>
> Disregarding all above arguments, I bought this board with a promised set of functions, which are not on it.
> If you buy a car with ABS, but it doesn't appear to have it afterwards, you won't be satisfied with the statements that it is driving anyway.
>
> I've bought a bord that not only shortens the lifespan of my CPU drastically, but it also crashes all the time.

> I hope that you can understand my frustration, and the fact that I find it unacceptable that a board as expensive as my Asus provides less features, and is less stable than a good ECS board of half that price.
>
> I hope that this is resolved soon.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Guy Van Sanden
>

----------------------------------------
Full message (in Dutch)

From: "Com Technology bvba"
To: "Guy Van Sanden"
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 10:26:32 +0100
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Dear,

I meant a board on your list, hopefully you'll understand that we can't order one specially for you.

Kind regards,

Filip

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guy Van Sanden"
To: "Com Technology bvba"
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord

> Dear
>
> I would love to replace the board. The chance that you have a working A7V133A is very slim. This is already my second board, the first one wouldn't even boot at speeds above 900Mhz/FSB 100 (with an Athlon 1.333).
>
> I understand your situation, but you'll be able to imagine that if even you don't get any response, I'm not getting anything at all.
> Asus used to be a good brand, but lately I've been reading a lot of negative messages about them. Especially from users of this board and it's predecessor, the A7V.
>
> Concerning the replacement, I've done some research, and an ECS board seems the best choice.
> I certainly need a board with SDRAM (I own 2*256MB PC133 SDRAM) which would work under Linux. My preference would be an ECS K7S5A.
>
> It came out as most stable on Tom's hardwareguide. The price is 4200 BEF in the stores, which is slightly more than half of my Asus which I paid (7726 BEF).
>
> Please let me know if this is possible.
>
> It's very fair of you to replace this board, I will mention this on my page.
>
> Regards
>
> Guy

----------------------------------------
Full message (in Dutch)

From: "Com Technology bvba"
To: "Guy Van Sanden"
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 13:30:56 +0100
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Dear,

I've talked about it with the manager again, and older types of boards can not be returned for newer ones.
We get the same type in exchange and that can't be sold again. I can only tell you to return your board, and we'll have it returned to the supplier.
We've solded may of these boards and they don't have stability problems. There can always be a production-error in yours.
So, If you return it, you'll have a new A7V board with RAID 1-2 weeks later.

kind regards,

Filip

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guy Van Sanden"
To: "Com Technology bvba"
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 8:41 PM
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord

> Dear
>
> I can understand that, but I've invested in 512 MB SDRAM, which I'm not willing to throw away.
> In addition, I also need a board that is supported by Linux. My very expensive Asus board also had a RAID controller on board.
>
> What exchange do you propose?
>
> Kind regards
>
> Guy Van Sanden
>

----------------------------------------
Full message (in Dutch)

From: "Com Technology bvba"
To: "Guy Van Sanden"
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 09:43:01 +0100
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Dear,

We've sold many of those boards without people having problems. The board will work or be broken. If you think it's broken, we'll send it back to the supplier, which will exchange it for another board.

Kind regards

Schoeters David
manager.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Guy Van Sanden"
To: "Com Technology bvba"
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 7:22 PM
Subject: Re: Asus moederbord

> Dear
>
> Since this is already my second board, the chance that it would run better seems very slim.
> The stability problems do occur often, specially if you're running a 1.33 or 1.4 processor without water-cooling (not overclocked).
> You can verify this in the forums/newsgroups on Internet.

> If two subsequent boards show production-errors, together with all other issues, that the board seem all but stable to me.
> Exchanging it again for a third, and possibly a fourth seems a waste of time, both mine and yours.
>
> I find it strange that you promise an exchange for ANOTHER board first, and that retract it.
If you're unsure about some claims, you should have checked them first.
>
> I have the right, both under European as Belgian law, to return a malfunctioning product, that doesn't even live up to the promised specifications, and to demand a refund if it can't be made to function as promised, or if it can't be fixed in a 'reasonable' time.
> You can't even force me to accept an equal product from another brand. (there was a case in the television program "Ombudsjan" a month or so ago where a reseller had to fefund a translation program because it did not supply the quality of translation it specified on the box).
> I did my best to come to a fair solution with your, but you've even retracted your promise.
>
> I fully understand your situation in your relation to Asus, but I bought this bord from you, not from Asus.
>
> That's why I choose to buy a decent board myself, and somewhere else. I hereby request that you refund me for my broken board.
> If you should refuse, you'll force me to contact magazines and TV-shows such as ombudsjan. Apart from that I also have legal rights.
>
> As an IT professional, I've known your shop for a long time, I even regularly recommended you to other people. In all fairness, your reactions are a disappointment.
>
> I await your official response.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Guy Van Sanden

That was my last contact with Comtech. They didn't respond to my mail, and I couldn't find a magazine or TV-program interested in this. So, I sold the board together with the processor for less than half they'd cost, got more than 10 replies that same day. I informed the buyer of the problem, but he wanted the Asus anyway.
So, I'm happy running my cheap ECS board with a nice Athlon XP, and I'll never buy another Asus-product in my life. And I'll rather drop death than to to business with the vultures of Comtech again.

Top

Addendum 1. My setup

System 1: My system System 2: My Wife's system
Case/Power Supply AOpen tower HQ08 / Aopen 300Watt power supply Noname midi-tower case / 300Watt power supply
Motherboard / Sensor Asus A7V133A Bios 1005 / as99127f Elite K7VZA /
Processor/RAM AMD Athlon 1400 / 512 MB AMD Athlon 1333 / 256 MB
Cooler CPU: ThermalTake Volcanno II 6cu copper / 2600 RPM Case Fan CPU: ThermalTake Volcanno II / No extra cooling
IDE Disks HD 40 GB (UDMA 100) / DVD / Plexwriter HD 8GB (UDMA 33) / CDROM
Video Asus V7100 Geforce 2MX - 32 MB Powercolor Geforce 2MX 400 - 64 MB
Operating system SuSE Linux 7.2 (Kernel 2.4.4) SuSE Linux 7.2 (Kernel 2.4.4)

Top

Addendum 3. Reference
[1] C'T november 2001 http://www.ct.nl
[2] Site of Martin Peters http://www.naggelgames.de/vcool/vc_main.html

Top

Follow up

[Wed Feb 27 10:54:34 CET 2002] It's been a while since I updated this page. I recently got rid of the board, because it is unfixable.
I advice anyone who reads this to do the same. If you have money or live in a country where consumers are somehow protected, you can file a complaint, Asus should take up responsibility and either fix or recall these boards.
The first seems now impossible because it is a construction error, it's in the basic design of the board.
So why aren't they recalling their junk? The answer is obvious.
As this article in the Inquirer (thanks to Rich Sobrato for mailing it to me) shows, the A7A266 is also affected.
This would mean that a recall would force Asus to take back every board since the initial A7V133. They really don't want to do that, so the customers have to pay the price for their mistakes. And since very few of us can afford to take them to court over less than 250 EURO because we would need to pay a hunderdfold that amount, we're the losers here.

The only thing most of us can do is learn a lesson, as I did. I've regularly bought Asus products in the past, because I always trusted them. Sure, they were more then a bit more expensive than newer, unknown brands. But I knew them to be good... I trusted them, and they ripped me of. So next time I'm looking at components for my systems, or anyone asks me my advice on what to buy, I say "Stay away form Asus for sure, and go ahead, buy an unknown brand. It can't be half as bad as an Asus product.".
For me, it's over now, I'me very happy with my system running an Elite K7S5A board and an Athlon XP. It's stable and fast, just the way I expected it to be...

[Sat Oct 27 11:08:15 CEST 2001] E-Mails I recently saw on the SuSE mailing list about this, they indicate that the problem also affects some versions of Asus' new A7M266 motherboards are also affected.

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

From: ***
Sent: 23/10/2001, 14:33:58
Subject: [SLE] [OT] Asus' BIOS - More flames for the fire

Hello, everyone.

There has been a great deal of traffic on this list recently regarding Asus'
new BIOS limiting our efforts to keep our CPUs cool. I just thought

I'd share my experience this morning. Admittedly, this is the wife's W2K
machine, but this is a hardware issue, not an OS issue.

This machine has an Asus A7M266 mobo in it, running an Athlon 1.333 CPU.
Until yesterday, it had BIOS v1004A on it. Yesterday I *upgraded* it to
v1005. Under the previous BIOS, the idle temp was 50-51C, which is high,
but acceptable. With the new BIOS, this leaped to 60-61C. I left it over
night doing nothing, just to see if it would settle down. This morning it
was still humming away at 60C. This, I'm afraid, is unacceptable. I
downgraded the BIOS back to the older 1004A, and at the next reboot,
the temp was back down to 50C. These temps are all obtained using Asus own
monitoring utility. It seems that if we wish to upgrade our Asus mobos to
these newer BIOS, we need much more heavy duty heat sinks. I have my eye on
the Swiftech MC462. So, until I can justify spending $70 for a heatsink, it
looks as though this machine will be staying with the older BIOS

revision.

Bye for now,

---------------------
From: ***
Sent: 23/10/2001, 14:42:53
Subject: RE: [SLE] [OT] Asus' BIOS - More flames for the fire

Hi,

My Asus K7V133 has also a processor temperature at about 50C with a BIOS
v1004A on it. I got a Athlon 1,2 GHZ, and have 1,024 GB memory. I've got a
Globalwin heatsink which works nicely, but have heard that the Swifttech is
the top of the crop.

So I suppose I'll stay with that BIOS too.

Jostein

This article originally appeared at unixmafia (my old site)
Written by Guy Van Sanden
Licensed under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.