Have you checked or replaced the capacitors? For example, I changed 6-7 caps on an ASUS A8N-SLI series board (socket 939); the board was resurrected and now it works perfectly. I also cleaned the heatsinks (VRMs and chipset) and replaced the thermal paste. It's an awesome board, and it was rock solid back in the day (almost 20 years ago). I have a socket 939 cpu, an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and, when I have some time, I’ll test it with the motherboard. I might even build a retro PC using various old parts that I have, like GPUs, sound cards, and RAM.
Note: Around 2005, the capacitor quality declined significantly, even among reputable manufacturers.

Can you elaborate a bit on the BeQuiet 450W part? BeQuiet has had plenty of PSUs with that rating.

I haven't replaced any caps yet. The PSU is a be quiet! Blackline BQT P4-450W.

Alright, just checked the specs and it should be well suited for a system of that era, given the rails are stable and the PSU is working fine.

MemTest did pass successfully, temperatures look fine. Caps still look good in my opinion?

Those Caps do indeed look lovely and Asus used great capacitors.
I would start with another PSU. Then reluctantly look into caps situation. You can start by severely underclocking CPU.

I had an A7N8X Deluxe back in the day. I gave it to my sister after upgrading to a Core 2 Quad system. After she finished using it she stored it quite badly. She returned it to me in 2022. The caps looked rusty and some were bulging. But, anyhow, I tested it and it still worked fine. I couldn’t be bothered replacing the caps though, so I sold it. The buyer messaged me afterwards to say they were very happy with the build they made.

So, personally, I think even if the caps are bad, it should still work.

I do have a new old stock A7N8X-X that I bought last year. Funny enough, I think it was a 450W beQuiet PSU that I tested it with. SFX size, as my plan was to put it in a compact micro atx case. It worked fine when I tested it, though I don't recall what graphics card I used.

My motherboard is currently put away, but if nobody knows what it wrong, I could try to build a system similar to yours. I don't have an AGP X850 Pro though. I do have a Geforce 6800 GT.

BTW, what OS are you using?

BTW, I think the X850 Pro will be bottlenecked by the system. Even my 9700 Pro was bottlenecked by my Athlon XP 3200+. Scores went up quite a lot when I put that GPU in an Athlon 64 system.

I'm starting to believe it could be a software related issue. I'm running XP Home with Catalyst Driver 12.1.

I tried other versions of the driver (7.11 and 9.1) but with 9.1 games crashed quite earlier and with 7.11 games wouldn't even start at all. I tried stuff like THPS4 or NFSHP2.

On the other hand: My original plan was to use a GeForce 6800 (see first post), which had completely different nVidia drivers, but it hat the exact same problems als Catalyst 12.1, which would hint towards the hardware.

These are the some of the error messages:

Very small bumps seem to have started forming on two capacitors (marked with X). I'm not sure about the others (marked with ?).

As you can see in the two photos, I've circled the problematic areas. The capacitors marked with an 'X' are probably bulged and failing. The ones marked with a '?' also show some concerning signs. Since these are all the same series, they are likely all degraded. I strongly suggest having them replaced by a professional to avoid further damage to the motherboard.

Note: I may be wrong, but that's what I see.

Hmm, yeah, those errors sound like a hardware issue to me. Especially as it happens with both GPUs.

I played around some more and even the MS System information app (which aint' that graphically advanced) crashed randomly, so i started clocking down the CPU (from 200 to 133 and later on 100). Since then the crashes got a bit better, but still occurs sometimes.

So i guess i'll have to tackle the caps. That sucks. 😀

KZG series caps are notorious for failing, so those should definitely be replaced.

I just replaced some on a P4 motherboard with polymer caps.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-04-17, 00:17:

Those Caps do indeed look lovely and Asus used great capacitors.
I would start with another PSU. Then reluctantly look into caps situation. You can start by severely underclocking CPU.

those caps are dogshit. There was a time when Asus used only Rubicon capacitors, they started to mix with another brands in 2001

I would do a full recap, you are using the top of the line processor in a motherboard without 4 pin 12v aux. Its pulling all from the 20 pin ATX connector.

Probably a good idea. Any hints where i could get a nice cap kit in europe?

if crashes get better after underclocking then its either cooling or cpu supply aka caps

Rolling wrote on 2026-04-17, 11:00:

Probably a good idea. Any hints where i could get a nice cap kit in europe?

Your best bet is to spec out individual caps and buy from a reputable electronics vendor. This way you can ensure you are getting the appropriate caps and avoiding counterfeits.

Rolling wrote on 2026-04-17, 11:00:

Probably a good idea. Any hints where i could get a nice cap kit in europe?

That’s a very strange question for a mate from Germany.
The home of Siemens (now TDK), WIMA and Würth.
https://www.we-online.com/en/components/products/WCAP-PTG5