The MVP3 Killer?

Three weeks after this report was published, Enlight sent a response which you can read about in the followup article to this one, entitled MVP3 Killer – Enlight’s Response”

The MVP3 Killer?

During the past several weeks, there has been a discussion on Usenet regarding the apparent connection between the Enlight EN8254901 power supply and a high incidence of ‘fried’ MVP3 based motherboards. The model in question is an ATX PS, which replaced the EN8257901 around the May or June time frame.

The connection between these two components was first proposed on Usenet after a running discussion about the reliability of particular motherboards. This individual claimed that he had two Epox boards ‘die’ on him as soon as he plugged in a PCI network card. His assumption was that when the PCI slots were filled, the PS threw out a spike that damaged the South Bridge chip. When he replaced the PS with the EN8254942, his replacement motherboard worked fine.

Soon, several individuals confirmed that they, too, had experienced a the early demise of an MVP3 based board using this same power supply. The models that had the problem included the AX59Pro, Epox and the PA-2013. I began querying those who were returning ‘dead’ boards and found that all 4 of those I asked had used this power supply. One of them had used it on two Soyo SY-5EHM boards(AT form factor, but has an ATX power plug), and had both of them die after a short while.

In an attempt to substantiate this issue, I contacted Enlight’s tech support. They acknowledged that they had ‘heard’ of the problem, but said that their power supply manufacturer denied any problems. They said the manufacturer claimed to have done ‘extensive testing with a bunch of motherboards’ and found no problems. When I mentioned that the problem seemed to only manifest itself after a few weeks, or when the PCI/ISA bus was ‘overloaded’, the support person sounded like that was news, but also indicated that they did not intend to persue the matter much further. The reasoning was that the EN8254942 was going to completely replace the EN8254901 in a few months anyway.

Since that time, I have alerted a few vendors and a few manufacturers. So far, I have heard no confirmation of the problem, but since it takes a few weeks for any problems to manifest themselves, I expect no feedback will be forthcoming soon. In the meantime, I would request that any vendors or users who are using this PS with an MVP3 based board please contact helpdesk@realworldtech.com and provide me with your experience – either positive or negative. Please indicate how much time you have been using this combination, and how many ISA/PCI cards you have installed.

My intention here is not to start a ‘panic’ about the PS, but instead to gather enough information to determine if the manufacturer needs to take immediate action, rather than wait for several months until their stock is depleted. To this point I have heard of no problems with other chipsets, so the PS should still be able to be offered to a limited audience. If vendors and users are a bit more cautious with this combination, perhaps some RMAs can be eliminated.