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CyberCub · ‎07-17-2016

Currently my system main board is a Maximus VIII Hero Alpha which I only had for a couple of months. The other day lightening hit near the house causing a surge. The PC is perfectly fine as EVERYTHING in this house is on surge protectors. However lightning made it through our internet provider coax and killed the modem, set top tv boxes and guess what else.. the Ethernet port on this motherboard.

Clearly advertised as "Alpha motherboard's connection and deliver pumped-up throughput, plus electrostatically-guarded and surge-protected components (ESD Guards) for 1.9X-greater tolerance to static electricity and 2.5X-greater protection (up to 15KV) against surges!"

The on board network is now showing up in windows as "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) l219-V" with a warning on it that says "This device cannot start. (Code 10)"

Very disappointed with features that simply fail. In my line of work I delt with repairing pc's who lost the nic card during strikes and this so called tech in the etherport did nothing different than a generic $15.00 network card.

So ... here I am with a motherboard that no longer has a working nic controller and only thing left to use is wireless witch is useless to me as I am for wired connections. I will continue to leave this behind on NEWEGG as well for my review of the board. I am losing faith with Asus products lately.. I really enjoyed my old Crosshair V formula Z board and was looking for the same quality in this one.

Praz · ‎07-17-2016

Hello

Most lightning strikes have a voltage potential 3 to 10 times higher than the 15KV you are quoting. You may wish to research this before posting a review that will at best look foolish to anyone that has any type of knowledge of the subject.

CyberCub · ‎07-17-2016

Praz wrote:
Hello

Most lightning strikes have a voltage potential 3 to 10 times higher than the 15KV you are quoting. You may wish to research this before posting a review that will at best look foolish to anyone that has any type of knowledge of the subject.

It may but that is assuming the full force of a strike (which hit near the house not directly on the fios coax) did make it through all the devices and down the cat6 before hitting the pc. I would suspect more damage if it had. This was a upsurge or disruption in the electrostatic field that sent the surge. It should had been able to with-stand it. Perhaps my saying a direct lightning hit was not correct and I will revise that.

MeanMachine · ‎07-17-2016

Its a little unfair to blame the manufacturer in your particular instance. :mad:

Lightning peaks at 100,000 or more amperes and even if your surge protector protected 99% of the current, and the system wiring took the other 1%, you would still have 1%.
1% of 100,000 amperes = 100 amps direct to the wiring and could take out the MB.

I have an insurance policy against this, as my area on occasion has strong lightning storms.

We owe our existence to the scum of the earth, Cyanobacteria

My System Specs:

MB:ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero/WiFi GPU:EVGA GTX 1080 sc PSU:Corsair AX-1200i
CPU:AMD R7 2700X Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i Case: Corsair Carbide 780t
Memory:G.Skill TridentZ F4-3200C14D-16GTZR SSD:Samsung 500GB 960 EVO M.2

[/HR]

CyberCub · ‎07-19-2016

MeanMachine wrote:
Its a little unfair to blame the manufacturer in your particular instance. :mad:

Lightning peaks at 100,000 or more amperes and even if your surge protector protected 99% of the current, and the system wiring took the other 1%, you would still have 1%.
1% of 100,000 amperes = 100 amps direct to the wiring and could take out the MB.

I have an insurance policy against this, as my area on occasion has strong lightning storms.

I will rephrase again and add more information. Lightening did NOT hit the house or equipment! What it did was disturb the ESD in the area causing a SURGE!

Everything I had on the network is perfectly fine. My OptiPlex 760 crappy dells, Brother laser printer, two of my sons machines which are both crosshair V formula Z boards are perfectly fine NIC wise. The only device that couldn't handle the surge was this Hero Alpha and its so called enhanced protection. The most expensive nic card (This onboard nic) is what took the damage. I have a right to be upset about this.

Code_Frenzy · ‎07-20-2016

I'm in full agreement with CyberCub, other surge protected devices in the house were protected by they're respective surge protection equipment. It was not a direct strike and so this should be covered under warranty. I'd try my luck and see what ASUS say regarding RMA.

AKBAAR · ‎07-20-2016

I think your BIOS chip is Corrupted when you tried to Flash ME on the BIOS.

You will need to Flash the BIOS on the BIOS Chip manually using Flashing Hardware.
I had this problem when I modded the BIOS myself.

You can find people here have similar Error (10) in thie post
http://www.win-raid.com/t1892f44-OFFER-ASUS-Maximus-VIII-modded-BIOSes-10.html

CyberCub · ‎07-20-2016

AKBAAR wrote:
I think your BIOS chip is Corrupted when you tried to Flash ME on the BIOS.

You will need to Flash the BIOS on the BIOS Chip manually using Flashing Hardware.
I had this problem when I modded the BIOS myself.

You can find people here have similar Error (10) in thie post
http://www.win-raid.com/t1892f44-OFFER-ASUS-Maximus-VIII-modded-BIOSes-10.html

Wrong thread 😄

AKBAAR · ‎07-20-2016

CyberCub wrote:
Wrong thread 😄

haha it looks like its wrong thread ...

But for real, Error (10) means that the ME of the BIOS chip cannot initialize the Ethernet port. Either the ME region in the BIOS chip is corrupted or for reals the Network Hub is damaged.

here is a Direct post of error (10)
http://www.win-raid.com/t1892f44-OFFER-ASUS-Maximus-VIII-modded-BIOSes-6.html#msg27736

power surge may or may not damaged the ME Region of the BIOS CHIP

CyberCub · ‎07-21-2016

AKBAAR wrote:
haha it looks like its wrong thread ...

But for real, Error (10) means that the ME of the BIOS chip cannot initialize the Ethernet port. Either the ME region in the BIOS chip is corrupted or for reals the Network Hub is damaged.

here is a Direct post of error (10)
http://www.win-raid.com/t1892f44-OFFER-ASUS-Maximus-VIII-modded-BIOSes-6.html#msg27736

power surge may or may not damaged the ME Region of the BIOS CHIP

Thank you for clarifying 🙂 Perhaps performing a reflash of the bios or reload defaults might help. Currently I am on version 1601. I will try later and report back.

Maximus VIII HERO ALPHA - Onboard NIC + Surge = Bye Bye Nic