DFI Ultra-D...SUDDEN DEATH (Part Two)

First, I experienced a great deal of sadness. Fine. I can accept the fact that, sometimes, these things happen unexpectedly and without valid cause. This is the reason why manufacturers and retailers extend RMAs to their customers.

I woke up fairly late today. Staying up until 5:00am watching television has that effect on me. But guess what I woke up to? The sound of Mr. Federal Express knocking on my door.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...id=25076&stc=1

I greet Mr. Federal Express with a mouthful of funky morning breath. He tells me where to sign. I take my packages, close the door, and run over to the living room with box in hand and a morning hard-on to go with it. Box is ripped open and my replacement DFI Ultra-D is lookin' sexy.

Everything gets plugged in. This time, I chose to play around with some OCZ TCCD instead of the VX. Everything boots up at default settings on the shipping BIOS (01/25) and I'm off to test out the VMOD I had performed on my 6600 Non-GT.

After one hour of trying to find a sweet spot for my card, I decide to give it a rest. Everything is still at default BIOS settings. Here's the plan: shut down the computer, smoke a cigarette in the patio, come back inside, format the HDD, and reclaim my throne on the 6600 Non-GT ORB.

Guess what? I've got fans spinning, some pretty LEDs, and no signal to the monitor. Deja vu? Call it what you want but after 3 hours of messing around with the board, I'm callin' it quits. And just to top it all off, Newegg will not be giving me a refund for this board. I'm going to have to ship it back to them and wait another week for them to send me the same exact board...just so I can experience the same exact problem again. Sweet deal. I'm not even going to open the box for the replacement, so if you're in the market for a DFI Ultra-D, hit me up. I'm picking up an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...id=25077&stc=1

man that sucks hard.. whats the diff between the DR and the D. I would look it up but im much to darn lazy.

sorry to hear that :(

what a crap! :(
tell bud, are you using any USB mouse/keyboard? maybe the info in of the threads here will help you, though i'm not that sure since you've have it running, but who knows... :rolleyes:

more to add, how about investigating your other hardware? maybe you have a kamikaze one over there, that misses the MoBo, eh?

again, sorry to hear about that.

:( Unbelievable - send OPB a PM that he can report to OSKAR. 1 time O.K. - but 2 times the same issue should not happen. So I'm looking forward anxious what will happen to my RMA'd bord when comming back to me.......... :confused:

Sure - there is the MSI NEO4, but I need 1,8 Vcore for my FX and I read about the NEO4 is not able to deliver that voltage even with the 20% + trick.

We will see....., good luck to You. :toast:

Dont want to sound like a jerk, but, I dont think it's the motherboards creating this problem.

Being that this has happened twice, and in the exact same manor, one has to start thinking there is an outside influence.

Could it be your power supply? I also wonder if the voltage mod on your video card isn't killing these motherboards?

I mean, it's not beyond possible in any way, but to go through two boards and get the same end result is more then just poor QC.

Good luck with it bro, hopefully the third times the charm on this one.

The difference between the D and DR is four SATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil3114 chip.

I can guarantee that the other threads regarding USB voltage jumpers, bent capacitors, and what have you will have no effect on my board. The problem is much deeper than that. Again, the mods on DFI-Street are not sharing something that the rest of the community should be aware of. Why? I do not know.

The hardware I used is the same hardware others are using with success. A Newcastle processor, TCCD memory, PowerStream 520W PSU, and a Raptor hard drive. I tested with VX on my first Ultra-D, so I decided to give my TCCD a shot this time around.

I don't mind the lack of options on the Neo4. I'm sure I'll find a few VMODS that can easily be implemented to give me close to what I'll need. I just need a board that will last longer than a few hours and the DFI is just not a lucky board for me right now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GRAFiZ

Could it be your power supply?

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I doubt it. A lot of people are running the same exact PSU on the same board without grief. I have also tested my Zippy PSU with the same result.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GRAFiZ

I also wonder if the voltage mod on your video card isn't killing these motherboards?

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Absolutely not. I did not have a VMODed card for my first board. I only performed the VMOD on my card last night, and that was over 12 hours prior to the arrival of my replacement board.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GRAFiZ

I mean, it's not beyond possible in any way, but to go through two boards and get the same end result is more then just poor QC.

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I know. And this is why I believe that there is something more to it than just the basics. With this board, I didn't even get to flash the BIOS or modify any setting in BIOS. It was completely stock and untouched. Not even the date in BIOS was changed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GRAFiZ

Good luck with it bro, hopefully the third times the charm on this one.

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Thanks, bro. But when the 3rd board comes in, I'm selling it to avoid the same hassles. ;)

Really sorry to hear this Conrad, I know how much you have prepared for this rig.

Jus for shts and giggles have you tried unplugging the PSU from the board completely and leaving it, then plugging it in again and powering up?
The Zippy has a known issue with the DFI, but I mean putting the OCZ back in again...
Sounds like after a restart something real dodgy is happening... something not initialising properly or jus plain corrupting itself.

Good luck with the Neo4, let us know how that goes bro.... and good luck in dominating the 6600 class! :toast:

What is the known prob with the zippy P/S with the DFI boards? I have the same setup with the 700 WATT zip..

Alex - I've tried everything, bro. The first board was even allowed to sit inside of its box overnight. I never got anything more than a bunch of fans whirling and a few LEDs. I can accept bad luck when it comes to hardware not overclocking to my satisfaction. But bad luck with hardware just randomly having a stroke is completely unacceptable to me. :(

eclypse - There are several of us here that are not able to boot our systems with the 4.0VDIMM jumper enabled while using the 700W Zippy. It works fine, though, with the jumper in the default position.

Have you tried removing the battery from the board, with no power connected m8?
Real bad luck, with two boards :(

Yes. I've removed the battery, set the jumper to clear CMOS, set the jumper to safe boot, unplugged everything. Nothing works.

Man that's fusked up. :| I may have to stop recommend this board. She's built but I've been hearing to much BS.http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...&enterthread=y

Don't get me wrong. I've had 2 DFI 754 boards. They were excellent. The new DFI 939 boards are just as good (for other people). They're just not good for me and it's starting to hurt me feelings. :(

250GB is good or god.:) But I dunno about this one. I was doing some searching and found about 14 threads at AT and serveral here with same GD issue. Just won't boot. I'm not going to start rumor but poor QC at minimum.

Boy that sucks! Sorry to hear of the troubles.

That said, given the thousands of DFI NF4 boards that sold in the span of a few days, and the fact that there is only a handful of dead mobo reports around the net (even a report of 20 dead boards is nothing when compared to what sold), its hard to say there is any "issue". In fact, given the huge number of boards that sold in such a short period, I would have expected to see more reports. If there was a real issue, you'd see DFI Street full of dead mobo reports....not just a handful like we are seeing.

I dunno what others might think, but two boards going down the exact same way seems to indicate something you are doing, or something in your hardware config, that is the common denominator. There just isn't a large enough percentage of bad boards out there to support the theory that you happen to receive two bad boards as a practical explanation.

Not ragging, just suggesting you double check your whole system. Good Luck!

Excuse me, I had to go change my underwear after reading your 1st post.

My replacement board arrives today.
I bought another rather than wait on an RMA.
Let's hope this one is without issues and the RMA board is repaired/replaced.

My 1st setup went without a hitch and was smooth sailing until it went down. Still not sure it was the board or me that caused it.

Whatever has caused the problem is made completely frustrating by the fact you CANNOT enter the bios. You're screwed, blued, and tatooed. Would a bios savior solve the issue? I didn't use one. Most of us still have it in our NF2! But even with a newly flashed bios chip I was unable to enter bios.

I don't think DFI-street mods or anyone else know positively what is happening. Otherwise there would definately be a fix out. DFI has been through this before. I have to believe it is some type of Bios corruption.

conrad, I want you to know, I really feel bad for ya. Hoping the re-built rig is problem free. For both of us. good luck brutha.

His motherboard isnt grounding properly.
Change out all the motherboad screws and use smaller ones.

this has happened to me alot. the board is fine

I don't believe this. Conrad, you of all people are the one I was anxiously waiting for a response from on your new board. Now you tell me its dead again in a couple hours? This is getting really hectic. It seems more and more that this is happening. Poor QC is right. I heard of other people getting their boards only to have the onboard power and reset buttons broken off floating around the box.

The more I hear this the more I am staying away from the DFI as I have heard many others are doing. I really don't feel like these hassles. Let me know how the MSI goes as I may go that route too. I have most of the stuff for my new setup except the board as I was leary to get the DFI after these stories. I am going cpu hunting today and then getting myself a new gpu and im done.

I glanced through your previous thread also and have to ask if you've tried a PCI video card in there?
I certainly would try everything possible to get this figured out, normally something reoccuring like this is not a coincidence.
Try:
no mouse/only a ps2 keyboard/no hdd/cdrom/floppy with only one vidcard pci or pci-e.
When using USB mouse/kb try all USB ports as on most boards no all of them initialize properly on boot. If you are using the sound module thingy try disconnecting that too.
GL with whatever you do but i would really like to see your problem fixed or found.

Bummer man. I setup my board last night and it went the smoothest an upgrade has gone in quite a while for me. No problems what so ever and I was expecting quite a few.. Are you using the 5v rail for ram on both of these boards? Just curious. It does sound kinda fishy two boards dead same symptoms .That's whats so aggravating about DFI is it the board or the user.

Sorry to hear about your board conrad. It does seem like DFI is having some CQ issue just as they did back in the nf2 days. Some people would get really great overclocking boards and others would get board that would not even post.

I was one of those people that got a bad nf2 board back in the day but decided to give DFI another try after I heard the nf3 were alot better. Now it seems as though they are having the same issue as they did back then so for now I would stay away from DFI. I think I've seen over 20 threads on various forums about DFI sudden death.

:D Hm, think it's time for the ultimate solution:

http://img127.exs.cx/img127/1811/asusrepairkit2hu.jpg

What's good for ASUS should also work on DFI.............. :toast:

"The difference between the D and DR is four SATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil3114 chip."

but what does this mean or do
??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mtemel

"The difference between the D and DR is four SATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil3114 chip."

but what does this mean or do
??

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Means you have a choice of sata controllers.

If you have sata DVD drives or a lot of hard discs etc they may come in handy.

Bad luck conrad.maranan :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by split

Means you have a choice of sata controllers.

If you have sata DVD drives or a lot of hard discs etc they may come in handy.

Bad luck conrad.maranan :(

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:D Yep - also means that there is something more to RMA.......... :toast:

mdzcpa - I would love to admit that I am the cause of my boards dying. But after analyzing everything several times, and re-tracing the steps I took to install my components, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I am doing everything in the correct manner. I didn't want to mention this in my first post because most people would think I'm a freak, but I actually went as far as wearing powder-free latex gloves to assemble this system. I wanted to eliminate any and all factors that would possibly be cause for the demise of another board this time around - all to no avail. I think it's fair to say that the components I have utilized are "common" for what others might use with the board. It's possible that I just received two bad boards in a row. Although this type of thing rarely happens, I know it does happen.

soundx98 - I have seen more than several posts on DFI-Street regarding users having issues with their boards. The numbers are not indicative of some sort of epidemic, but one may easily note and subscribe to the thought that there are people experiencing problems with their boards. I have noted that most users' dilemmas have been related to PSU problems - using 20-pin connectors as opposed to 24-pin or simply using an underpowered, lack-luster PSU that isn't capable of putting out the juice a high-performance system requires. I wish you luck with your board.

Unrealcpu - Just for the record, my board was not installed into its case. I had it sitting on top on the foam sheet that it was enclosed with, laying on top of its respective box. I have eliminated the case as being a factor and was attempting the most naked of builds when I was testing the board yesterday. I'm not sure what type of test equipment Newegg utilizes, but when they received my first board, they, too, concluded that the board would not operate and did not have an explanation for me other than we could not send a signal to screen.

Poki - I do not have any PCI video cards available, so a friend of mine came over with his X300 PCIe card. We tried that card and still could not push a signal to screen. I tried both 16-lane PCIe slots and the results were nothing. I did not install the Karajan sound module and I attempted to use both USB and PS/2 peripherals and a combination of the two. The test build was very basic: motherboard, CPU, one module of RAM, display adapter, SATA HDD, PSU, and input peripherals. No optical drives or unnecessary cables that lead to other devices - just the bare minimum to test everything out.

Wolf - For this board, I didn't even get around to using my VX, so i left the jumper in its default position because the extra VDIMM was not required by my TCCD. EVerything went smooth for me with both boards...right up until the point where they just died.

HARDCORECLOCKER - I might consider using the 3rd board I receive. I will consider the option in your picture if it suffers the same fate as its two predecessors.

Sounds like a screwed bios chip.

Too bad man, i feel your pain. :(

I've seen enough DOA or Sudden Death DFI NF4 boards to stay a long way from it.

The QC on these boards seem to be as bad as the support from DFI street. :mad:

If it is a improper grounding problem wouldn't the board require to be mounted to a case to properly ground? I know in cars, most ground points are just bolted to the frame, would it be the same with PC's?

Anyway, If you don't want the board I would be glad to take it off your hands :p:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by conrad.maranan

mdzcpa - I would love to admit that I am the cause of my boards dying. But after analyzing everything several times, and re-tracing the steps I took to install my components, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I am doing everything in the correct manner. I didn't want to mention this in my first post because most people would think I'm a freak, but I actually went as far as wearing powder-free latex gloves to assemble this system. I wanted to eliminate any and all factors that would possibly be cause for the demise of another board this time around - all to no avail. I think it's fair to say that the components I have utilized are "common" for what others might use with the board. It's possible that I just received two bad boards in a row. Although this type of thing rarely happens, I know it does happen.


HARDCORECLOCKER - I might consider using the 3rd board I receive. I will consider the option in your picture if it suffers the same fate as its two predecessors.

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:D Conrad, I'm not as far as You, my board is still under RMA at DFI and I do really hope I'll get a better one or they repair it.

On NF2 some time ago I decided to buy an INFINITY, no go, even no BIOS.

DFI's comment was something like problems with BH-5 RAM and the mobile XP-M 2600+ and they sent me a new BIOS chip.

Those days I didn't want to stretch my nerves further - sold the board and the new BIOS chip and kept my ABIT AN7.

Now I thought I want to be more clever and don't give up as fast as time ago.

But I tell You straight from my heart, if my RMA'd board is DOA again I'll be thru with DFI........... :grr:

If - and I say if there is the smallest issue I'm going to buy a NEO4.

My current feelings are full of hope but I can't understand that such a bull.... does really happen, waitin' for the board so long to get such a disappointment.

So keep us informed what's going on. :toast:

I know your are no noob conrad.maranan, that is what concerns me. I have that knowledge on one hand, but, on the other I have to weigh the chances of two "bad" boards coming your way.

I hope you know where I am coming from here. I'm not drawing your talent into question, only trying to go to the most logical conclusion....the most likely answer. And, after being in this hobby/business for all these years, I have to say that it is far more likely that there is something in your system borking the set up than the chance of you getting 2 bad boards in a row.

No need to "admit" anything...again, I'm not pointing fingers. :banana::banana::banana::banana: like this can happen to the best of us. And when it does, the answer usually ends up being something silly and overlooked.

Is it possible that the modded vid card is frying the PCI-E slot?

Also, I'd definitely try another PSU and a PCI vid card.

Good luck!

Edit - I'd like to add that my opinions do not form based on my own narrow experience with a single DFI NF4 board. On the contrary I've now just finished install #5 and it went smooth as silk. I just don't get it. :confused:

I would go as far as to swap out everything and test on a whole new setup when you get the new board. Of course, that requires more resources than most people have available. No one is immune no matter how long they have been working on systems of overlooking something. It happens to all of us. I've seen keyboards and even a monitor stop a board from posting. Check all your bases.

Whats with all these dead board threads, i didnt make one when my asus a8n sli deluxe died or when my ocz died, i just brought them back becuase they had warrantys, simple as that ;)

mdzcpa - No worries, bro. I was never under the impression that you were questioning my ability to assemble a system. We all make mistakes from time to time and, being human, we're all subject to err. So if I did make a mistake assembling my PC, and it was quite obvious that there was an error on my part, I would love to have that pointed out to me or brought to my attention so that the incident would be less likely revisited in the future. But with all that I have done and examined, it is beyond nebulous to me why these events are occurring. With my first board, my video card was clean - no VMODs or physical modifications. :confused:

With that said, I shipped the board back to Newegg at 2:18PM (PST) today. I paid $5.85 (again) for the shipping and am expecting to receive my third unit as early as next Wednesday. I will gladly give the third board a chance, with high hopes that my luck will improve this time around. And just to make sure that this event does not repeat itself for a third time, I will hold off on using the board until I have all other components that I desire in place. This means that I will not test fire the board until I have my FX-55, X850 XT, and probably an OCZ PowerStream 600W PSU. A buddy of mine has a fresh set of G.Skill LE that he will be willing to loan me for the sake of my first 24-hours of testing. With the aforementioned components, I have eliminated the possibility of any of my existing hardware being possible cause for my next board's demise.

We'll see what happens next month. :D

Three strikes you're out? Maybe give one more change the DFI..good attitude..:)

Best of luck bro..I feel for ya.

I starting to suspect its the actual BIOS chip. Dead BIOS's chips act in a similar manner. Do you have a BIOS Savior that you can use on this board? The one i use on my NF3 UT can be used on the NF4 UT as well.

Thanks, Zebo.

Trust me. There is no other board on this side of the galaxy that I would rather use than the DFI nF4. With all of the BIOS options available on that thing, there's no reason to pass it up. My VX was 3DMark stable at 10x271MHz and 9x277MHz on the DFI. These are numbers that I could've only fantasized about with my Neo2 Platinum. I just need to pray for better luck since I do have a natural affinity to bad luck. If I can only trade places with OPB for the remainder of 2005, life will be swell. :p:

EDIT:
The Mofo - I did attempt to hotflash with my first board. Nothing good came out of it. :confused:

Welp, youre in OC. If you want, i could flash over to my BIOS savior with one of the newer bios's for you and see if we can get it going. If we can confirm that it is a BIOS issue, it may help DFI solve the problem faster. Let me know what you want to do bro.

I shipped the board back to Newegg at 2:18PM today, but thanks for the kind gesture. :toast:

Just wish me luck with my third board and we can all move on and forget about the past two weeks. :D

Hell, at least you have had a board. I got one pre-order in for my SLI with monarch, ETA march 01 and a auto notify with newegg.. All i need is the damn board at this point and jumping on the first place who has em in stock.

glad u never give up ! :toast: u have my morale support all the way....

not for anything but for the die hard spirit...

This is XtremeSystems - we never give up. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by conrad.maranan

This is XtremeSystems - we never give up. :D

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:D Conrad - You're the man, let's hope to avoid the 12th RMA...... :toast:

4 more sata hdds.....

could it be the USB problem conrad?????

try finding the 3 USB jumpers and change them to 5vSB instead of 5v ....if you havent plugged any usb device in it, it surely cant be that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [G.N.U.]Fragman

4 more sata hdds.....

could it be the USB problem conrad?????

try finding the 3 USB jumpers and change them to 5vSB instead of 5v ....if you havent plugged any usb device in it, it surely cant be that.

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:D Say I use my PS/2 port but want to connect the MACH II GT and my digicam to USB - do I have to set all the strange jumpers to 5VSB ???

:toast:

well it has solved problems for ppl with usb devices......if i works without, then it should be fine....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [G.N.U.]Fragman

well it has solved problems for ppl with usb devices......if i works without, then it should be fine....

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:D O.K. - I asked because conrads board did not only had a "problem", it died.

So I couldn't imagine that this has been caused by a wrong jumper setting when using USB............ :toast:

Here is another DOA DFI NF4 Ultra. 3 leds on but no go. I have tried 4 different memory stick (mushikin pc2700, Samsung TCCC, OCZ EL Plat Rev2, Mushikin PC3200 (the one someone are saying UTT but I doubt it).
Checked all jumper, tried all memory slots, resetted cmos, spit on the board few times in disgust. This one is getting up there with intial MSI Neo2 fiasco to me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jinu117

Here is another DOA DFI NF4 Ultra. 3 leds on but no go. I have tried 4 different memory stick (mushikin pc2700, Samsung TCCC, OCZ EL Plat Rev2, Mushikin PC3200 (the one someone are saying UTT but I doubt it).
Checked all jumper, tried all memory slots, resetted cmos, spit on the board few times in disgust. This one is getting up there with intial MSI Neo2 fiasco to me.

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:slobber: Try once again after having some garlic........... :lol:

I think the only way to drop the hate is to joke about it all.... :toast:

Man, that sucks....g'luck dude.

:D Here's another funny - when I had finished building in the board and all componets I wanted to connect my printer at last, but........... then I recognized for the first time that there is no parallel / serial port anymore :am: - so I spent some bucks on a USB printer cable.

Now owning the right cable but don't have the board........ :toast:

Bad side: ZZF is being ass about it. Not buying anything from them.. btw, board looks like it was used when I got it meaning they probably sent me RMA'd board. What a crook.
Good side: Talked to DFI and they will replace the board under their shipping. Sounds like much better plan than screwing with the ZZF. Time for me to go around and bashing ZZF at few places I know that people use. Well, guess X850XT PE is going to have to wait again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jinu117

Bad side: ZZF is being ass about it. Not buying anything from them.. btw, board looks like it was used when I got it meaning they probably sent me RMA'd board. What a crook.
Good side: Talked to DFI and they will replace the board under their shipping. Sounds like much better plan than screwing with the ZZF. Time for me to go around and bashing ZZF at few places I know that people use. Well, guess X850XT PE is going to have to wait again.

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:D Fine - this is my understanding of a customers service........ :toast:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jinu117

Bad side: ZZF is being ass about it. Not buying anything from them.. btw, board looks like it was used when I got it meaning they probably sent me RMA'd board. What a crook.
Good side: Talked to DFI and they will replace the board under their shipping. Sounds like much better plan than screwing with the ZZF. Time for me to go around and bashing ZZF at few places I know that people use. Well, guess X850XT PE is going to have to wait again.

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What makes you think the board was used when you got it....was it an A00 or A01 revision.....My SLI-DR A01 looked as though it had been opened and repacked, due to the tape seal being broken and another applied over the top on the motherboard anti-static bag.....i wonder if this was done to load the later bios or make the supposed component changes by DFI before shipping to distributers??
This was in the UK.

conrad.maranan,

How clean is the power in your house? Is it a new house/residence? or older? I ask because I've seen problems such as yours, where one person has had 3+ boards destroyed by by really dirty power getting fed into his computer. Maybe this board is extra sensitive to power spikes?

Mine is prime/memtest stable for 24+ hours, but every once in a while, the thing just reboots. The wiring in my place is very old, and I have to use converters to convert the 2 prong outlets to grounded, 3 prong outlets (gives me nightmares). None of the other 5 computers I run are rebooting, but every component in this computer, aside from the motherboard, has been tested in other systems.

Just an idea.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bito

What makes you think the board was used when you got it....was it an A00 or A01 revision.....My SLI-DR A01 looked as though it had been opened and repacked, due to the tape seal being broken and another applied over the top on the motherboard anti-static bag.....i wonder if this was done to load the later bios or make the supposed component changes by DFI before shipping to distributers??
This was in the UK.

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Was A02 board. However, the screw thread on Socket mounting mechanism was stripped. Unless you are real novice, it is not common you will strip those big screws really... -_-;
Not to mention accesory bags shows some sign of wear. (and Kazan sound board plastic box was not packed correctly)
Well, if that isn't enough proof, it didn't boot up at all (here goes another proof :P)
Out of 20+ mobos I went through in 1 year, there were 2 DOA boards but they didn't look used at least.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jinu117

Here is another DOA DFI NF4 Ultra. 3 leds on but no go.

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That is exactly what I got with the two boards I had. Three diagnostic LEDs, the other LEDs on the board, and a bunch of spinning fans. In both instances, the two front LEDs on my Lian-Li PC-65 would just blink in 0.5 second intervals. The LED for my DVD drive would constantly blink as well. RMA that board and get a new one. I've exhausted every option available to me to get the board back to normal and nothing would work. So just save yourself the headache and exchange it for a new one.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DavidHull

conrad.maranan,

How clean is the power in your house? Is it a new house/residence? or older? I ask because I've seen problems such as yours, where one person has had 3+ boards destroyed by by really dirty power getting fed into his computer. Maybe this board is extra sensitive to power spikes?

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The power is clean (at least it should be). My place is fairly new so all of the electrical side should be up to par and within spec of today's standards.

What bugs me is that I have other high-powered gizmos in my home that require tons of juice, and I'm not just talking about computers here. I can have all of the televisions on at the same time, power up all of my surround sound systems, have some food in the microwave while vacuuming the carpets, and none of the lights will flicker. I also have a 120-gallon aquarium that has two high-powered pumps and two rows of PowerCompact lighting running 24/7. I do not tax my electrical system by running amuck with everything on, but when I was playing with the Ultra-D, the computer and my aquarium were the only appliances running. My computer runs off of a different circuit than the aquarium, so we can basically eliminate shared circuits from the equation.

That was a good post, though. Stable electrical current and power regulation within the home is very important for a rock-solid system.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by conrad.maranan

That is exactly what I got with the two boards I had. Three diagnostic LEDs, the other LEDs on the board, and a bunch of spinning fans. In both instances, the two front LEDs on my Lian-Li PC-65 would just blink in 0.5 second intervals. The LED for my DVD drive would constantly blink as well. RMA that board and get a new one. I've exhausted every option available to me to get the board back to normal and nothing would work. So just save yourself the headache and exchange it for a new one.

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Didn't connect any of above as I didn't really expect the board to work when I saw the stripped screw :) RMA is already shipped under DFI's account and I will probably get new board monday or tuesday :)
You didn't happen to buy it from ZZF and RMA'd it would you have? If so, I might start wanting to make few calls to some people I know :)

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Originally Posted by jinu117

You didn't happen to buy it from ZZF and RMA'd it would you have? If so, I might start wanting to make few calls to some people I know :)

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:lol: Hahaha. I'm a Newegg and mWave patron, so you don't have to worry about it being one of my returns.

EDIT: Just a few more post and you shall be ordained Xtreme Addict! Watch out now. ;)

If it's a dead Bios chip, it wouldn't be the first board having those problems on A64 platform.

Shuttle AN50R had it's fair share of those.

I also killed by Bios on AN50R with default settings just by shutting off the computer. Symptoms were exactly like those conrad faced.

Only thing to do was to get a new Bios chip programmed at a service shop and change the Bios battery to a high quality one that give 3.5V minimum.

No problems after that for me (not saying it'll cure DFI ills though).

get the fatality board!

i had the MSI, and it capped me off at about 285, even then at 285 i got sata corruption and my OS was acting funny. so i guess it was really at 280.

that and my NB fan was incredibly loud and annoying. it was driving me fricking nuts.

Is this sudden death issue only with the NForce4 Ultra boards or is the SLI boards as well? I was looking to pick up the SLI-DR as soon as I can find one.

:D Hm, maybe some of You can do this when the RMA'd board or a new one arrived back (it was my last test before I RMA'd the board myself):

The DFI has an onboard power and reset switch placed right on the PCB - so if pluggin' in the 24PIN ATX and the 4PIN 12V WITHOUT doing anything else (means no RAM, no CPU, really naked board) and switch on the PSU and push the onboard strartknob there should happen something.

I think at least the board should get power and give an error message by the 4 LEDs or some beeps because of missing CPU and RAM.

My board did nothing - but if some of Yours do You can be sure thet the board at least is under voltage and go on with installation.

It took me a lot of precious time to install all the components including the MACH II GT to recognize at last that the board is DOA - maybe You can avoid this by using the described test at first.

:toast:

1. Conrad - FIND A PCI VIDCARD (Cheap and someone's gotta have one)
this is a good thing to have on hand for just these issues.

2. About ZZF - they've been heading down the dark side for awhile now.
I will not trust them for anything and will never buy from them again.

3. I got the funny lights when I first started. Sorry I can't remember what I kicked or slapped to make it work :confused: .

Good luck to all. :toast:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mad mikee

1. Conrad - FIND A PCI VIDCARD (Cheap and someone's gotta have one)
this is a good thing to have on hand for just these issues.

2. About ZZF - they've been heading down the dark side for awhile now.
I will not trust them for anything and will never buy from them again.

3. I got the funny lights when I first started. Sorry I can't remember what I kicked or slapped to make it work :confused: .

Good luck to all. :toast:

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:D You lucky one - got more than me, only saw the 5v standby diode all the time........ :toast:

maybe those blinking lights are circuits charging lights....i think....

mine always blink upon startup after total power down and then the GPU bios info appear...once appear the blinking would go off..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HARDCORECLOCKER

:D Hm, maybe some of You can do this when the RMA'd board or a new one arrived back (it was my last test before I RMA'd the board myself):

The DFI has an onboard power and reset switch placed right on the PCB - so if pluggin' in the 24PIN ATX and the 4PIN 12V WITHOUT doing anything else (means no RAM, no CPU, really naked board) and switch on the PSU and push the onboard strartknob there should happen something.

I think at least the board should get power and give an error message by the 4 LEDs or some beeps because of missing CPU and RAM.

My board did nothing - but if some of Yours do You can be sure thet the board at least is under voltage and go on with installation.

It took me a lot of precious time to install all the components including the MACH II GT to recognize at last that the board is DOA - maybe You can avoid this by using the described test at first.

:toast:

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Hum... I think you need at least the CPU in addition to the PSU to get some life from the mobo, then it should beep if you don't have memory and/or video card.

about grounding cable...i have one seperate in my new tagan...newer seen any other psu with it before, so just jacked the cable (with plastic hood on) under the board...but should i use it and where?

Mine suddently died and killed my CPU TOO!!!! Man, you cant know how much money I'm loosing with this! I'm loosing like 400$!!! Now, it is really the first time that I am angry like this!

I'm not sure if this will help but has anyone tried installing a port 80 diagnostic card into a dfi to see what post code it nails when this happens?

If anyone has a dead dfi that they have given up on and are not rma'ing maybe you should send it to me and i can do some diagnostics on it at least to see the cause of the hardware failure........

:eek: Please keep your bad luck away from me. It's dampening my spirit. :eek:

[OC RITUAL]Begins rubbing his magic OC leprechaun for good luck.[/OC RITUAL]

Where can I pick up one of those diagnostic cards? How do they work? Link?

i had the same problem with the 3 led lights and no go. i can't remember exactly what i did to get it going, but i DO remember hating (i mean REALLY hating) the dfi board for the 1st 2 weeks. after that, i started being grateful that it worked. most of my problems with the board ended up being due to a faulty IDE cable i had bought. some new-fangled ide round ide cable (IOSS gladiator) that was supposed to be the bees-knees helping with ide transfer speeds. i'm going to try a few things this weekend, gonna move over the usb jumpers to 5vsb and see if that helps the zippy boot into 5v vdimm mode.

i still regularly get stuck on the boot screen at 3 led's where the screen will read out the 1st line (award bios blah blah) but never show the cpu ident/memory. resetting the board from the switch on the board doesn't help either, i still get stuck. i find that powering down, unplugging the psu, clearing the charge by toggling the psu switch on/off while unplugged, pushing in the sata molex and sata hd connections and sacrificing small animals to the overclocking gods usually gets me to boot correctly.

i have a sneaking suspicion that most of the instability with the board lies in the usb. if you have 3 led's on, that means the mem,cpu and board have passed post. the rig then tries to seek out hd's and usb iirc. using that as a theory, i changed the hd delay speed setting in the bios to 3 sec but still didn't help. then a few days ago, i tried booting into my acronis secure zone (3rd party ghost imaging software) and the logged boot screen showed me some error messages saying that usb blah blah had timed out and wasn't responding. i went into windows and turned off the power management settings for the usb ports and so far haven't had any problems.

i really can't wait for the ati board to come out. hopefully, it'll work well with my zippy and i won't have to deal with random problems like i am with the dfi. the thing that worries me is that these are the same exact feelings i had with the msi neo2... well not as bad as the neo2, but failing boot 25% of the time is getting on my nerves.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by conrad.maranan

:eek: Please keep your bad luck away from me. It's dampening my spirit. :eek:

[OC RITUAL]Begins rubbing his magic OC leprechaun for good luck.[/OC RITUAL]

Where can I pick up one of those diagnostic cards? How do they work? Link?

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http://www.soyogroup.com/products/proddesc.php?id=261

you stick it in a free pci slot it is kinda like the epox post code reporter comes with a manual though that is far more in depth on post codes and such.
Cost me 24.99 at my LCS(local computer store)

Its great as a overclocking tool also because if you have a failed overclock you can determine if it was board cpu memory and so on :)

Thanks, chew*. I'll be on the lookout for one.

Just out of curiosity Conard, what kind of case are you using? Because when I had symptoms like your guy's, I trouble shot everything 1 by 1 and found that it was the power connetors (and I don't mean the 20 or 24 pin connectors, I mean power/speaker/reset/HD etc.... that set) on my case that was messing everything up, got the board's LED indicators in the left lower corner to light up, fans spin, computer didn't go, what did I do? I unhooked the reset cable and everything was fine after that, this happened on 2 rigs I built for customers each time, and each time I had to unhook the reset wire and just did not use it, sounds to me like this is your guy's problem (assuming you have tested all your components and they all work properly), I did pull everything out of my customer's rig and test everything independently in my rig to make sure it was not a component issue. My Lian Li 7077 doesn't come with a reset cable so I had no problems, smooth install, the last 2 of 2 cases I have used to build for customers (did have reset wires) and did have the very same problem. I really hope this is your problem because it's quite easy to fix. It was just too unbelievable to me that I would get 2 boards that didn't work properly either so... 6 hours later...heh.

man sorry to sound stupid, BUT , where are you testing the mobo?

i assume it aint in a case, so check whether its possible that static
is killing it? any loose items or something on the table ?

Here is a range of options. Everything from simple post code detectors to a full-up diagnostics card. The newer PHD diagnostic card can actually take control of your system and test the works, as long as the PS and CPU are good... even the BIOS can be bad and it'll work. There's a review of the PHD diag card somewhere, just can't remember where I ran across it, lol.

Someone really has to make something with this problem. Come one, I lost 400$ because of a BAD chipset. And I cannot RMA because of abusive use, but I am 100% it is not my abusive use that killed it! Normally I wouldn'y say that, but I think I will still RMA.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by skate2snow

Someone really has to make something with this problem. Come one, I lost 400$ because of a BAD chipset. And I cannot RMA because of abusive use, but I am 100% it is not my abusive use that killed it! Normally I wouldn'y say that, but I think I will still RMA.

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:D Why don't You even try ??? :toast:

Because normally I try to go by the rules, and I chilled the mobo... But this is just ARGGHHH..... Because I know it is not because of that.... I will try though. I just need to remove all of the dieelectric grease...:rolleyes:... And my CPU as some bent pins...

Hey Conrad, sorry bout all this, I bet it must be really irritating not being able to use your comp. In the end it'll all work out. Just gotta be patient. This is what overclockin is all about aint it?

OVERCLOCKING - The process of installing high hopes, dumb luck, and several paychecks into a rectangular
box which transmits a signal to a screen that displays your fate. The outcome is usually depressing.

I have seen those diagnostic card things at my nearby CompUSA. The one I see there all the time is made by Soyo and has tons of features and stuff.

Holy thread resurrection, Batman! :eek: Considering how many months old this thread is, I've been over it for quite some time.

i read all this and it's 2 months old grrrrr

Dam cold boot problem. just as the rest of us now.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=62804

I had to post something i just spent a hour reading all this grrrr

Peace Nugz