@Lukeno94; The Athlon 2500+ in my Presario 2100US ran hotter than hell... But that was probably because I forced it to run full clock the whole time. It still works anyway.
No, you're right, it was the mobos that were the problem and I have observed very few direct CPU failures, in fact, the only ones I have which do not work are either through components on the motherboard killing them (VRM popped and took CPU with it) or through fan failure - never happened to me personally as I have mega paranoid cooling requirements - my systems must be cool if only half the fans are running or I deem them unfit for use.
nForce 2 boards are my most hated of the bunch, they never worked and they had very strange problems if you used Windows 98SE... The one I remember is how you could never use an SB Compatible card, regardless of how it achieved the compatibility. The board could see it, windows could use it and the software could detect it, talk to it and whatever but no sound came out in games that used it. Never understood why. DMA related I guess. The SATA never worked on them either though I was told nVidia never made that bit so I can only assume all board makers implemented the worst SATA Adapter available... Not that I used SATA back then, I was pretty much solely PATA until around 2008-2009.
One SiS AMD board I had I actually liked (that was the ITX one) but it was slow, some ASRock board. Fine for an internet faring Sempron in the last days of dial-up - which was around 2004-2007 here though it sadly died before the Athlon 64 and was so worthless I never bothered to repair it. I still have the CPU but I hate the Sempron with a passion, my Duron 1800 could outrun the thing pretty well until it failed a short time later - both were mobo failures but the other hardware (HDDs, PSU and otehr mechanical gear) was very tired by then.
So far as I know, my Athlon 64 will actually boot right back up if I glue the pieces back together. One of the 250GB PATA drives in my Pentium D (soon to be removed and replaced with the dead Core 2's 1TB SATA drives) which I use for storage is actually using the original partition from the Athlon 64 and would probably still boot my modified Windows 2003 installation if I plugged it in... Now..,. That could be interesting. Corvidae Precision...
The main problem with the Athlon 64 is that it and the motherboard seem to be ES parts. The motherboard looks closest to an ECS KV2 with minor differences and the CPU would probably be the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ but the print says it is a 3200+ (At least, the string printed on the lid would imply this) and the board simply reads it as "Hammer" even with the latest BIOS (Any X2 chip read as Hammer on this board with outdated BIOSes). The second core is not always available and generally causes the system to crash, I am unsure of the real intended CPU model though as the specs do not match the 3800+ exactly. It actually seems like an FX-51 with two cores and regular 939 chips do not fit in the socket. I may part with it shortly anyway, perhaps see if anyone wants it on eBay, I have no use for it and it serves only to annoy me.
You could say I soured my experience based on a prototype, but I actually found it more reliable and stable than the production models I had which were worse, such as the 64 FX-53 which I owned for a grand total of less than 24 hours before the guy I got it from actually came to take it back when I was trying to call him about it. He had gotten one too and he was disgusted by it, as I was trying to call he came around and said he could not leave me with such a horrible rig... I agreed. I didn't mind the 754 platform though.
The worst mobos I have run across are;
> DFI LANParty NF2 Ultra - Sucks, because I love DFI! (Owned one)
> MSI KT6 Delta FISR - Never even tried to set that up as it was so clearly a waste of time and did not come with the advertised features thanks to PC World Component Centre - another site now deleted by archive.org (DICKHEADS! Obviously, owned one)
> LeadTek K7NCR18D - The CMOS battery exploded after a week of use! Hottest running board I have ever seen. The only WinFast product I ever owned until the T230 which I still need to repair. (Owned briefly)
> ECS K7S5A - Sold by Amptron and PCChips too under different names. Designed by PCChips. Says it all. May be OK for a Duron if you don't use AGP video, but cannot supply power to faster Athlons and AGP Video cards. My first 462 board.
> MSI MS-6340M - By far the most unreliably Socket A board, and it was everywhere. Advent, Time, Tiny, Packard Bell, HP(?) and more all used this fucking thing! Including machines in my workplace. (Owned several, still have one as a reminder for future generations)
> MSI KT4-Something - Saw a few... As I took them to the dumpster, none worked. (never owned personally)
> Anything by Soltek - They were common around here. Some even had AGP Pro slots that never worked properly. (Owned some long enough to throw them in fires, they burn well SolTek's)
> Gigabyte 7NNXP - An unknown company back then, Gigabyte did NOT make a good first impression on me. I never owned this one but had to repair several, one of those components that you could smell and immediately identify. (Never owned one, never would)
> Abit AN7 - Another great maker lets the world down in the K7 era. (Never owned, saw enough in the store when we played with one there).
> ASUS Anything - More expensive models might be above average, but they still sucked and were usually badly made to the point you may as well just buy a DFI which would serve you much better... Except the NF2 of course.
> Anything with nForce 3 - These were notoriously unreliable. Seemingly paired with faulty drive controllers a lot too, I remember and can probably dig up many cases of corrupted drives under Windows 98SE and 2K with these - OK, I know this was for the 64, but it was so horrible I thought it was worth a mention.
Probably many more if I could remember them or had used them at all. Good boards I know of were;
> Chaintech 7VJL Apogee - Both models, this board rocks!
> Chaintech 7AJA - It works. Nothing special but it doesn't quit.
> MSI KT3 Ultra 2 - Holy shit! An MSI actually got here? It isn't a great board, but mine took a lot of misuse before it gave up. I was using a Duron though so I don't know if it stood up so well with Athlons installed.
> ABIT KT7-RAID - ONLY if you have the patience as it can throw a fit sometimes. Mine died by Chinese PSU unfortunately.
> ASRock 7S41GX - Slow, but it keeps going. This was the ITX I was referring to - it was actually a Micro ATX I guess.
> ASUS I cannot remember the model of - And that is a testament to it, because it means I haven't seen it in years, it is still droning away with it's Sempron 2400+ doing... Actually, what is it doing? I can't remember. "Claire" FTP mirror in case "Dave" dies I think... Or I'm wasting electricity. I should probably check that. Oops.
Hoo! That was a rant and a half. Still pretty mad about it all these years later though, I could have built something good in those years instead of mowing lawns and cleaning cars only to watch it fail and have to mow more lawns, clean more cars and paint more fences. Then I got community service and had to paint even more damn fences and wash even more cars without being paid, which sucked because I hadn't even done anything, apparently pushing someone out of your way because they try to smash a chair on your head is assault.
@sf78; Yeah, it is a king-size pain in the ass. I am stuck on an old bundle deal which costs £70 a month for 30GB usage... Not much fun.
Nice looking board there. I think anyway, not much experience with Epox stuff but I've heard of that one at least. Wonder what I'll find in my cupboards when I move, probably a bunch of dead drives I suspect.