GA-X58A-UD3R "Died"

[Tinker]

GA-X58A-UD3R "Died"

Well this piece of junk died on me today. It's been left for a while so decided today to clone
drive before I partitioned it, try Ram Disc, then add software to use.

Cloned drive, & inserted in drive bay to be confronted by a constant beeping, no boot.
Put back original drive, still same. Have reset Bios, taken out battery, swopped Graphics
card. Tried swopping single sticks of memory. When switched on will not boot to post
with or without drive. All LEDs are on fans are running & drives when inserted. Beeping
has stopped. Only extra cards were TV & PCIe 6gb/s which have been removed.
Cloned Drive has been checked via USB on another PC & reading ok.

This is the final straw. Have contacted Scan & want to send board back under Trades
Desciptions Act re USB 3 naf, & no SATA 3. They say I will get charged if nothing wrong.
If they can run this in SATA 3 would be worth paying but as we know not possible with
this board apart from add on card that I had installed. Can you clarify if correct about
USB 3 as had problems with USB 2 until I disabled USB 3.

Have to decide now, am chasing my GA-EX58-UD3R that is still not back from RMA &
promised last week. Gigabyte are an utter shambles. I could use this board if memory
problems fixed with i7 950 as with add on 6gb/s it was more reliable & easier to program.
It's nearly 2 Months now that I have been waiting for board to be returned.

Or do I throw away a £200.00 CPU & start again with later board & will it be Gigabyte after
two bad boards !!!!!!!!


Regards tinker.

[Dark Mantis]

The SATA3 does work after a fashion but not as it should do. You cannot run a RAID0 array on it to give the advertised 4x speed of SATA2. It will take a SATA3 drive on it's own though but not an SSD.
 
Personally I would suggest building the board up outside the case  and doing an extended CMOS clear followed by loading Optimised BIOS Default settings and any other tweaks that you want to add. If you want any advice on doing this please just ask.

These are good motherboard/CPU combinations and very powerful so I think worth trying to get running properly.

[Tinker]

Thanks for the reply DM The only thing left to check is PSU or CPU, that is run at stock & usually around 35C so
never been cooked. After battery is taken out & CMOS drained go back to consistant long period of beeps then break
& beeps again. Swopped Graphics & memory, beeps will stop then if all original items put back no beeps.
As you know have spent a lot of time on this board & some things can't be cured.


Regards tinker

[Tinker]

Just an update on this, tried another PSU but no joy. Odd thing was had to put heatsink  fan to board as only
put in main connectors & fan is normally connected to external controller. After reconnecting original PSU
forgot to reconnect the contoller lead back to board. On power up the power kept switching on & off. On
the board just above battery are 3 what looks like miniature capacitors. one of them glowed bright red
on cycles so must be LEDs. Just above them says SB voltage. The problem stopped once fan connector
was replaced. The ominous thing is though PC doesn't boot cant feel any heat on heatsink pipes.


Regards tinker.

[Aussie Allan]

  If you feel you have everything connected correctly , ..... either the CPU is totally blown, ...or ...the board is not supplying and power the the CPU!

  Time to get the board and CPU professionally tested .... if I had to guess ..... it would be CPU closely followed by the MoBo as to which one!

  If those 3 capacitors you described have blue tops with about a 6mm diameter!..... there are in fact capacitors ......Don't power the machine on again unless you have ear plugs in!

  Sorry mate!

  Aussie Allan

[Tinker]

Thanks for reply Allan. Just had a look at onboard devices with magnifier. They look slightly yellow
in colour & about 2.5mm long & virtually flat to board. Was not reffering to mainboard capacitors.
It was a shock to see one light up red  but as said ok once controller refitted to onboard fan connector.
Must be some kind of failsafe for CPU fan. All power leads were connected ok.

Looks like I will have to strip PC tomorrow. Don't know how to get CPU tested but gather EX58 should
be finally back early next week so could use that. Am concerned about lack of heat at CPU not sure
if any warrenty on CPU, it's had very little running time but purchased last October.

Have seen a capacitor blow. I worked not too far from electronic section. Must have been fairly large
capacitor as there was a muffled bang then it looked as though it was snowing, the look on engineers
face. It was quite funny & luckily engineer was OK apart from the white powder !!!

Regards tinker.

[Aussie Allan]

  Yeah you described LEDs .... test CPU next week is the go .... if it fires up, the MoBos toast.

  I served the first 4 years of my time at Honeywell in OZ in the instrument testing devision .... my bench was two down from a Puerto Rican ....

  He had a 6" high 515V capacitor go "BOOOOOOM" ..... my ears ring till this day, ..... the look on his face was priceless as he took of his glasses to reveal two dinner plate sized eyes! ..... through a mist of paper snow blasted across his entire face ..... Absolutely pissed myself laughing!

  Aussie Allan

[Dark Mantis]

It sounds to me like we ........should stay well away from Tinker's place in case of thermonuclear meltdown!

Seriously I would agree with Allan except I think it is more likely the motherboard that is at fault. The CPU is warranted for three years so you should be covered there ok.

[Tinker]

Thanks for replies Allan & DM. Left battery out overnight, upon replacement booted PC. Back to power
on then off & Red LED & power on cycle. Thought it was fan connector but it started up originally when
I applied light pressure to main power lead on MOBO. That was after I removed test PSU & was double
checking. Could be dry joint, anway switched off mains for safty. MOBO is now back in box to return.
Whatever the outcome won't use it again & asked for refund about you know what.

Glad to know about CPU warrenty DM, appreciate that. Called supplier today & think they will handle it
though now technically a different company. Have 3 options now, reuse GA-EX58 then everything fits
including Floppy. Can add PCIe card so probably not much difference in speed without the faults.
Wait for new 79-2011 & prices will drop on 1155 or risk the faults newer boards will probably have !!!

One annoyance is the sticky pads on Zalman cooler as have used up 2 supplied.

With regard to AHCI was going to retry on X58A but didn't like added boot up time. Used it for first
time on older PC that I updated to Win 7 & 120gb SSD no boot delay at all.

" the look on his face was priceless" Thanks for the laugh Allan, think I could say the same looking back !! 


Regards tinker.
 

[Tinker]

The Final episode !!! After return, was notified board was faulty, mail said credit/ replace. Though I had returned for refund.
Received mail today saying replacement so a panic Phone call & now getting credit. So two lots of postage around £18.00 &
phone calls plus a lot of work & wasted time & never actually used PC.

Finally got my RMA'd GA-EX58-UD3R returned today after around 2 month wait. That board only ever got progammed & had
memory fault. No charge apart from wasted time, calls & postage, so again faulty board. 2 in a row is not a good record from
GByte.

Have mocked up board on Desktop this afternoon & is at least reading 12gb finally in Bios. Good news for me is X58A didn't
damage my CPU or Memory as far as I can tell at present. Next step is test with drives tomorrow before putting in case again.

If only GByte spent a little more time on products it would save customer a lot of wasted time & money, way above what it
would cost them. Also might improve their image & sell more boards.


Regards tinker.

[Dark Mantis]

Sounds like you have been extremely unlucky Tinker. What I did find unusual though was the extreme length of tiome it took to repair the motherboard. Two months is over the top.

I didn't reply to your PM regarding the choice of board as it is dependant on so many things and a lot of them are specific to how you use the system. If you have any particular questions though I will do my best to help out.

[Tinker]

Thanks for reply DM, even had a problem with UDP as they sat on delivery. As for boards may wait a while until new ones are
sorted once available. EX58 is slightly slower with mechanical drives than X58A but better on boot up using AHCI that hadn't
bothered with. Have been experimenting with Ramdisk so speeds are about same now. Am using PCIe 6GB/s card that was
used with X58A, drives didn't have to be reprogammed due to not using add on drivers Marvell & USB3. Still have to test SSD.

Am looking at LSI9260-4i PCIe SAS/SATA quite a good price or a fair bit more with 512mb onboard so not sure if worth paying
extra.

When I bought EX58 the GByte heatsink covers were both marked/scratched as though it was badly made, was a bit suspicious
about it but was properly sealed. When the board returned checked serial No, odd thing was first No's were same & end 4 were
same but middle Numbers different. This is definately same board as sent.


Regards tinker.

[Dark Mantis]

Well I am glad that you got the board back eventually even if it did take a while. The extra cache on the add on card, the PCIE, is just going to help with enhancing the data throughput so it really comes down to how much extra speed it gives you compared to the extra cost. I would imagine too that you would have to make sure it was fast cache if you are using a SSD which is pretty fast anyway.