Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

[> Evil E. <]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Could the Gigabyte staff answer this information request for me, please :

http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/ga-ex58-extreme-information-request-29840/

Thank you

[realfstkid]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Ok, not much on here for my motherboard so here goes.

System setup:

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P mobo
Intel E8500 stock freq
4 GB (2x2) Mushkin DDR2 1066 memory
Thermaltake 500W power supply
EVGA nVidia 8600GT 256MB (256-P2-N751-TR)
HEC 6XR8 BlackSECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
3 x 1TB HDD
sata blu-ray reader
sata dvd-rw

The first board I got had some problems, turning on and off, beeping, and finally, it stopped working altogether. The problems only seemed to manifest themselves when I had turned the computer off for over about 15 minutes. I could restart the computer with little problem, but turning it on after a while of being turned off, and it would post (one short beep), then turn off, post, then turn off, and continue this infinitely. I RMA'd the board, and just got a new one.

Things are happening frighteningly similar to how the old board acted. The first time I turned the computer on with the new board, it gave me a bunch of short beeps, then stopped, then more short beeps. Now, when I turn on the computer after it being turned off for a while, it does the same thing, turns on, posts (one short beep), then turns off, and repeats until I get tired of that and unplug the computer, plug it back in, and start it. Then it appears to work fine.

Looking in the manual, the problem is either the power supply, video card problem, motherboard, or something else, honestly I have no idea at this point. I know for a fact it is not the video card, because while the mobo was out for RMA, the video card was sitting in another computer working flawlessly for 3 weeks. I don't think its the PSU because I tried another from a different machine and the same problem was there (before RMA). The machine works fine 80% of the time it is not starting after being turned off for a while, but I'm guessing its just a matter of time before it fails completely and I have to RMA the POS again.

I have not messed with any BIOS settings except bumped the ram voltage to 2.04 (Mushkin recommends 2.0-2.1) and setting the Hard drives to RAID only (windows XP and ubuntu fail to work properly with AHCI/RAID enabled)

Sooo... either the problem is that Gigabyte has a HUGE quality control problem, or I am doing something wrong. For the sake of not spending $10 to ship the damn thing again, I hope it's something I can fix at home. Please help.

[infiniti25]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

@Realfstkid - Do you still have the boot problem if you remove all the hard drives and the DVD+blu-ray drives and try to power on after your 15min off period?

The PSU might be overloaded. You might need some more wattage for that setup, but thats not for definite.

Have you tried loading up with only 1 stick of ram in the socket closest to the CPU? Try this along with no drives connected. Will ensure that the PSU and the chipset shouldn't be overloaded, just to test.
If it resolves your problem, add a drive at a time and boot up after your 15 mins downtime.

LSDMEASAP will be along shortly no doubt.

EDIT: Just re-read your post, have you added some Northbridge/MCH voltage to compensate for all those drives? The chipset gets stressed during overclocking and/or with a lot of drives connected when a large amount of RAM is also used.
I don't know what the default voltage is on your board, but with it being gigabyte I assume you get increments of 0.1v or 0.05v so I would add +0.15 or +0.2v whichever your board offers.

Also check my post on page 11 (http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/welc...tml#post276838) for a possible bootup trick I used before I found my proper motherboard cable workaround.

[clo007]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Can I please get an official response to this thread:

http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/ep45-ud3r-wont-run-2-sticks-ram-30024/

Others are beginning to report the same issue I am having.

[realfstkid]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

@Realfstkid - Do you still have the boot problem if you remove all the hard drives and the DVD+blu-ray drives and try to power on after your 15min off period?

The PSU might be overloaded. You might need some more wattage for that setup, but thats not for definite.

Have you tried loading up with only 1 stick of ram in the socket closest to the CPU? Try this along with no drives connected. Will ensure that the PSU and the chipset shouldn't be overloaded, just to test.
If it resolves your problem, add a drive at a time and boot up after your 15 mins downtime.

LSDMEASAP will be along shortly no doubt.

EDIT: Just re-read your post, have you added some Northbridge/MCH voltage to compensate for all those drives? The chipset gets stressed during overclocking and/or with a lot of drives connected when a large amount of RAM is also used.
I don't know what the default voltage is on your board, but with it being gigabyte I assume you get increments of 0.1v or 0.05v so I would add +0.15 or +0.2v whichever your board offers.

Also check my post on page 11 (http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/welc...tml#post276838) for a possible bootup trick I used before I found my proper motherboard cable workaround.

Dude, thanks for your help. I haven't solved the problem, but I've at least found the problem.

test 1: boot w/ one stick of RAM, everything unplugged except main HDD. Post no problem.

test 2: boot w/ one stick of RAM, everything plugged in like normal. Post no problem

test 3: boot w/ TWO STICKS OF RAM, everything unplugged except main HDD, no post, restarting, same problems as before.

Soooo.... it has come down to the RAM being the problem. Now, the computer normally works correctly with both sticks of RAM, its just a problem with booting after a long period of being off. So is it my RAM or my Mobo settings? I am hoping its the mobo settings, and not my high-end Mushkin memory that I paid $90 for.

The only settings that I have changed Re the RAM is the DRAM voltage, set at 2.04 (Mushkin recommends 2.0-2.1).

I also figured out that my PSU is good until I try to OC, then there isnt enough power, so I'll be adding a new PSU to the list soon.

Please help with the memory problem.

[realfstkid]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

I tried upping the MCH to 1.3 (from 1.1) and putting in both sticks of RAM, that didn't help.

Here is something curious. I put the sticks of RAM into the computer, and after it being turned off for a while, it turns on, then off, then on, then off. And then I turn it off and turn it back on and it magically works. I'm guessing that it is using it's own settings or something because when I go back into the BIOS after this, I get a message that the settings in here caused the system to be unstable and might not be what the computer is using.

I am guessing that the computer is using some configuration that is working, I just don't know what that might be.

[infiniti25]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Good news is you are not alone with this problem, bad news I won't 100% say that a new high quality greater wattage power supply will fix the problem.

I am currently helping someone else on a 1 to 1 basis with what seems to be the same problem as you (and possibly clo007) with regard to long delay after cold boot and then the BIOS post error.
The person's system I am troubleshooting online is AMD based though, but he has only a 520watt corsair PSU (same as clo007 has) and he also has memory that is not on the motherboard compatibility list, he has 8gb of 1000mhz ddr2 ram which will work after the delay.
Unfortunately there is no option of getting a replacement PSU to try to solve his problem, but if you have money to burn and can get something like a Thermaltake toughpower or a thermaltake purepower PSU, or maybe something from either Enermax or Antec that is 650watts+ to at least try I would be grateful for a response to see if that cures these problems.

BTW I have an Enermax Galaxy 1000w modular PSU to power my aging beast.

For comparison - I have 8GB OCZ Gold edition kit DDR2 800mhz, GA-P35-DQ6 motherboard, 8800GT 1gb with silentPipe3, 1x 300GB Western Digital Raptor (1 week old), 2x 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, 1x 250GB Western Digital Caviar, a cheap DVD+-RW/RAM(rebranded liteon i think), Swiftech MCP600 water cooling pump and 5 120mm fans.

[clo007]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

The issue is not PSU related. My PSU is solid and I have read on the corsair forums that the 520hx would be capable of pushing my system as is.
I am currently sending emails back and forth with Gigabyte. There response to me is to buy value ram to see if I can get it to run b/c high performance ram seems to have issues sometimes....wow!!! So even though the motherboard can support high end ram and high end speeds, there response to me is to go buy some more ram to try out. I have $500 worth of different ram already and I am not going to buy more.

It seems more and more people are beginning to have this issue, on the UD3R and UD3P boards. There is a thread over on the XtremeSystems Forums - Powered by vBulletin where people are posting about this.

here is the thread starting on post #1510 ** Official ** Gigabyte UD3 P45 Series -- EP45-UD3 / EP45-UD3R / EP45-UD3P - Page 61 - XtremeSystems Forums

post #1523 is another person with the same issues.
post #1526 by someone else

[infiniti25]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Could you update your sig to include bios version currently flashed to the board, it will help others who come along and try to help.

I think on the xtremesystems forums they are talking of an F8a bios, might be worth a try as currently its BIOS/CMOS battery, PSU or buggy bios code in my mind until I can discount each one.

Would be nice to grab one of these boards and test it for ya, but I'm not wasting my money.

Could you not sell that board on ebay and buy a new, different, board? I dont think you will get too far with this problem until gigabyte realises they have many flawed boards.

[clo007]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

F8a is for the UD3P not the UD3R. CMOS clear/battery removal does not work either. I did this last night/this morning.

I would sell this last board but I am not going to do that knowing it may not possibly function correctly for someone else. I just am not that kind of person.

[realfstkid]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

So I seemed to have fixed my problem, at least for now. I have no idea what I did, but it is working, so I'm going with the ole "If it aint broke, dont fix it".

The last things I did was click "Load Fail Safe Defaults" and then I upped the RAM to 2.04V. I am running the bios that was released on 15 Jan (I dont know the version number). I spent about 30 minutes talking to a tech support guy at Gigabyte, and he said basically what the other guy who was emailing tech support said. Sometimes memory just doesn't work with their boards, and the best bet was to get some reg-performance memory and try that.

Whatever I did, I have my system (E8500, Mushkin 2x2GB DDR2 1066, 500W PSU, EVGA 8600GT) stable at 400x9.5 = 3.8 GHz. I just used the Gigabyte easytune thing after applying the Load Fail Safe Defaults.

I let my system sit overnight and I was still able to boot it up perfectly fine, so woot for me I suppose. I you guys have any questions, I can grab some numbers from my BIOS if you tell me what you are looking for.

Cheers,

Christian

[infiniti25]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

When I said sell on ebay, I didn't mean to scam someone, you would obviously put that there is a high possibility that it would not work with 4gb of non-basic ram in the description and take the hit on the price gladly for anyone who would buy such an item. I'm just not that type of person either clo007.

Regarding the load failsafe defaults, you are supposed to load failsafe defaults/load optimised defaults after flashing the bios for all the settings to be reset and the new bios to be properly loaded and pushed to the hard drive (and possible backup bios).

And again clo007, regarding the CMOS/BIOS battery I was suggesting replacing it with a brand new battery, not pulling it out and putting it back in. There is a guide on here for the pulling it out and putting it back in with regards to the reseting the CMOS/BIOS, something like 20min wait time to ensure its properly cleared CMOS.

Congratulations realfstkid, I guess being able to use all 4GB AND overclock is the best you can hope for with the problems you have had.

[clo007]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

I actually did the replace CMOS battery. I did it on the first board I had as well. I have basically tried every suggestion except going and getting some value- ram, as I am not going to spend more money on ram. Either Gigabyte needs to purchase some value ram for me and mail it to me to see if it will post then or they need to give me a refund because this is just complete bologna at this point.

BTW, i was not suggesting you'd meant to scam people on e-bay, just I would hate to sell something to someone and they have the same headaches over and over like I am having.

[Charles_Red_Devil]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

hello im new to the forum and also to tweaking and overclock and stuff...
im worried about the cooling system of my pc, so i searched in gygabyte's website for the program easy tune...
first i downloadded the latest version 6, i could use the program but "smart" and "overclock" options were not selectable
so i searched for the correct name of my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8I915ME-GL) and i saw that easy tune 5 was the correct program to be used, downloaded it, but i got the same problem...
so whats wrong? is it because my system is not cooling properly?


sorry if the english is not too accurate, but im from brazil LOL

[Reo]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

hello

some ram "problems" i got ud5, and ocz3P1600EB2gk x3 , but cant get those to run higher than 1200... enny troubles with theese sticks on I7 ?

attached mem spd for those sticks.. should be no problem realy to get those up to speed?? or will it be supported in some new bios ?