serious Pain with Z68AP-D3 Rev 1 (cant get my GTX 980 tu run)

[mannitu78]

Hello,
few days ago my ASrock z77 Board broke, so i bought a GA Z68AP-D3, which i got for a good price. So i can say all my hardware works for sure, because the 980 was running with my 750Watt Powersupply in my old Asrock board with my 2700k. Only Board was changed.

From the beginning it took me hours and hours to get the board running, because im not used to the Gigabyte Bios and all it Voltages and Values. For exampla i have no fixed CPU-Voltage, only dynamic, QPI Voltage, System Agent Voltage, took me very long until i had everything stable and i didnt even overclock so far.

Worst thing possible happened, i cant get my 980 classy to work. Its no that i have no picture, its not even getting "registered" by my system. Theres only the HD3000 to find in the settings. I tried all different Bios-settings for-and backward, i flashed the F8 BIos, which is the newest, back to the F7 and then back again to F8. Spent at least 10 hours so far. I know that Z68 works with maxwell, i googled it.

And yes, oc course i tried to take out the battery and cmos reset. The board itself is in very good shape, the PCI x 16 slot looks flawless and it seems to work, lets say at least the slot is recognized as working, but not populated when i use some programs like HW Info or AIda.

I even tried the unofficial Z68AP-d3 U1a bios, which is supposed to be UEFI, even for my revision 1 board, but that bios didnt work with Q-Flash, it showed me something like wrong number or wrong checksum, cant remember anymore.

Thing is, everytime i make a cmos, it takes me 30min again to get the borad running, it is so damn unstable, it crashed on the way to boot or OS, i must raise the QPI voltage and the ram Voltage to 1,6 Volt, enable AHCI and XMP-Profile..

im just so sad right now, it was so difficult to get an new (used) 1155 Board and now this thing is so annoying....
What can i do to make the system recognize my 980 finally, maybe without new bios flash or cmos reset again?

[dmdilks]

Sorry that you are having problems, but you really went backwards on boards. You went from a board that supports 3.0 cards to a board that supports 2.0 cards. Your CPU i7-2700K is a Sandy Bridge 2.0. You could try a Ivory Bridge 22mm CPU but it still might not work.

Your board is revision 1 board and if you got the revision 2 board. That one supports 3.0 cards with 22mm CPU. Many people have had problems with GTX-980 cards on the Z68 boards. Yes I know it should be backward compatible.

Because it ran on he Z77 board but that is a 3.0 board too. The other thing is that yes your card ran in the Z77 board but it really only ran at 2.0 speed. Because of the sandy bridge CPU only support 2.0 cards. Plus using the UEFI bios that even made more problems with some people too sorry.

[mannitu78]

a 980 even runs on old PCIe 1.0 Boards...its absolutely unimportant if 2 or 3. And like i said, people are running 980 and 980tis on Z68 and even 1156er board. If you dont have any real advice, i dont need senseless comments likes "many Z68 have problems" or "maybe an IVY Bridge will work, maybe not"..

-seriously-

[dmdilks]

That is fine just been doing this for 35 yrs and I'm not the one having the problem. Maybe some body else can help. I only build 20 to 30 computers a year. I have two of those series boards. I know what the boards can do and not do.

You have already update the bios and that didn't work. Plus if you bought the board used then by what you said you had problems with the CPU to start with. Then there could be is something wrong with the board.

I even tried the unofficial Z68AP-d3 U1a bios

The board that you have doesn't have that update only the revision 2 board does.



 

[mannitu78]

there is an Uefi for Rev1, but you wont find it on Gigabyte driver support, thats why i said "unofficial"...meanwhile through a lucky accident i found the error...after about sickening 30+ hours of thinking and trying...the cpu-cooler put too much pressure on the cpu/board/socket. The socket is lying about 8mm higher than on my 2 old 1155er Boards and did react very sensitive when the srews were tightened even just medium.

theres only a very narrow sweetspot between tight but not working, or PCIe working, but cooler sitting to loose, but everything s fine now...

[shadowsports]

mannitu78,
Hey mate.  Just thought you should know that plenty of people have run into trouble trying to run Gen 3 cards with previous gen Gigabyte boards running Sandy and Ivybridge processors.  Yes we all know that PCIe should be backwards compatible and in most cases it is, even with a Gen 2 CPU.  Granted your issue was an installation problem, but please keep an open mind when someone is trying to offer suggestions or assistance.  Glad you got it sorted.

[mannitu78]

there was no real "suggestion", thats what annoyed me bit but i didnt mean to be rude, my nerves were just a little oversensitive after hours and hours of build- an rebuild.

When it comes to GPUs on old boards, i have always been lucky, even had modern cards on my Socket 775 Q9400 CPU, i even never hat to update Bios or something like that.

[dmdilks]

When it comes to GPUs on old boards, i have always been lucky, even had modern cards on my Socket 775 Q9400 CPU, i even never hat to update Bios or something like that.

Yes you might be lucky but everything that you put on a older board runs at that speed of the board. It is nice that you can do that but the thing is that nice new GTX-980 card is only running 2.0 speed and you are losing performance.

I build a Z77 computer one time for somebody. At the time I was just putting things together and only had i7 sandy bridge CPU. Yes I got things up and running. I was waiting on i7 Ivory bridge CPU.

When I put in the Ivory Bridge it was like WOW all the bells & whistles came on. This is just me but any thing with a 1156 or older most of the time goes into the trash. Plus there was somebody else on here one time had the same problem heatsink to tight. Very hard to trouble shoot too.