2 z97x-gaming gt boards from newegg, is this normal?

[jupitersj]

Hi all , I could use some help

1st Motherboard:
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I purchased a Gigabyte Z97x-Gaming GT from Newegg at the beginning of the month, and unfortunately didn't get to test it until a few days ago due to my work schedule. Anyway, I installed Windows 8.1 and when it rebooted after setting up the install files, I was met with an my monitor powered down(amber light) and the board showing code A0. I manually reset the PC and it loaded into windows, but occasionally I was getting black screens with a white bar across the screen horizontally, that would jump across the screen vertically very fast, several times a second; it looked almost like tv static the colour of the bar.

This PC only had an h105 hooked up, a 500GB Samsung EVO, 8GBx2 2400mhz Trident G.Skill DDR3, EVGA 1300 G2, and an Asus DVD Burner. I was hooked up via DVI using the 4790k's onboard video. The black screen with white jumping static would come and go very rarely, but 100% of the time I shutdown it would also happen. I powered down and unhooked every power cord, swapped out the DVI cable and still had the issue. I changed over to HDMI and did not have the black screen issue, but had some overscan in bios and windows. I went back to DVI, loaded F5 bios (board came with F2) in Bios using Gigabytes inbios flasher; was successful. Still, I had the screen dropout issue in Windows.

I powered down and took a break, when I came back, I powered on to my monitor powered down(amber light), no amount of resets worked. I reset the cmos with the power cables unplugged, the system turned on fine and went into windows. I shutdown and got the black screen with white lines again. When I tried to power on the system it would not turn on; I checked the motherboard and the power switch was not lit up nor the red led near the pcie slots nor the audio led line. I tested the PSU with a PSU tester and it powered up fine and spun some molex fans I plugged into it. I also tested the motherboard with a Corsair 750tx and no go; no lights or power. I tried both psu with the board in the Cosmos S and breadboarded outside the case on the motherboard cardboard box.

I assumed the DVI port was bad, but I guess the motherboard itself was DOA

I videotaped the board with my note 3 before sending it out for RMA refund to Newegg today, and the board has no damage on it I could see, CPU socket pins are all perfect also.


2nd Motherboard:
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I paid for and overnighted a new Gigabyte Z97x-Gaming GT and videotaped this one while unboxing it also. I found what look like solder specs trailing from most of the solder pins on the bottom of the motherboard, I don't remember seeing this on the old board, but I'm pretty tired and wanted your opinions on this and if I should even bother spending the time testing this board or just sending it back; I'm pretty angry at this point. Everyone is talking up Gigabyte quality in the z97 thread on OC forum, so I took a chance; this build is replacing an e8400 + DFI LP LT x38.

I am including some photos, please help!

Here is a link to a Gallery of photos I took showing this

http://postimg.org/gallery/7fa7v0vq/

You can click on each one to make it bigger; second click for full res.

Thank You for your time,

jupitersj

[SoulsCollective]

Not sure if I'm reading this right, but if you're saying that you're contemplating sending back the second board without even plugging anything into it, then Newegg almost certainly won't accept the RMA. Popping CPU, RAM and a 24-pin and EPS leads in for long enough to try installing an OS really isn't that onerous.

[BeepBeep2]

Well, the board could short out if there are traces of solder from one point to another. That's what it appears to be, from the patterns. The machine used to make the boards was probably ramped up too fast, or defective.
The lines don't look solid though, so the board will probably be fine...

As for "Gigabyte Quality"...some home users must really like the matte finish of Gigabyte PCBs. Otherwise, there's not really any quality difference between Gigabyte and other major brands. Just because everyone's board worked doesn't mean anything about "quality"...

[jupitersj]

Not sure if I'm reading this right, but if you're saying that you're contemplating sending back the second board without even plugging anything into it, then Newegg almost certainly won't accept the RMA. Popping CPU, RAM and a 24-pin and EPS leads in for long enough to try installing an OS really isn't that onerous.

Since Motherboard boxes don't come sealed, as long as I don't use the board or open the accessories which are sealed, I can return the new motherboard for a full refund with no restocking fee as a Premier member of Newegg. I don't want a board that might have issues down the road because of build quality.

Well, the board could short out if there are traces of solder from one point to another. That's what it appears to be, from the patterns. The machine used to make the boards was probably ramped up too fast, or defective.
The lines don't look solid though, so the board will probably be fine...

As for "Gigabyte Quality"...some home users must really like the matte finish of Gigabyte PCBs. Otherwise, there's not really any quality difference between Gigabyte and other major brands. Just because everyone's board worked doesn't mean anything about "quality"...

Yes, after both of you posted I looked over the board and couldn't see any connected pins with my naked eyes, so I tested the new board. This time I had no issues with the DVI, but when updating to bios F5 the board failed it's reboot sitting on monitor turned off amber light with normal AO code. Unplugged everything, removed battery for 30 minutes and system came back to life with no problems.

However, in windows (even with chipset/imei/lan/audio/intel vga) drivers installed, whenever I reboot, I see rainbow lines being drawn on the screen horizontally and vertically like a colour version of a vectrex + etch a sketch until you hear the fans/dvd respin up and get the Gigabyte splash screen. I also got a DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION bsod when coming out of Hibernation, so I disabled it for now. As long as this isn't indicative of some major problem I should be able to live with it. I have never owned an igp processor before so I have no clue. I assume it won't be an issue when I swap over to sli/cf again.

I obviously couldn't go DFI this time around, 4.41GHz e8400 was good times but I chose Gigabyte because of the z97 threads on OC; in the price range they offered digital controller, beefy VRM design, op-amp/dac for my Audio Technicas (don't want a sound card) and I don't want to ever deal with Asus RMA ever again. Those A7N8X-D's were fun though

Anyway, my time is severely limited this summer with work and this whole new build has been such a hassle and waste of what precious few hours I have to relax. I've been away from the enthusiast community for quite awhile now and am not Xtreme anymore I didn't mean to come off as a donkey's rear if that was perceived.

Thank You for your time and I will update this thread on my first boards RMA. If anyone else would like to share their opinion I will gladly listen

[SoulsCollective]

DPC WATCHDOG could potentially be a problem further down the track, but is usually a symptom of faulty hardware plugged into the board rather than a problem with the board itself. I don't suppose you've got an SSD plugged into the board, do you? Can occasionally be caused by SSDs with outdated firmware.

I'm also really not liking the sound of that IGP output, however, are you saying that once the board POSTs you never see it again? Have you also checked another PSU with the new board to see if the same thing occurs?

[jupitersj]

DPC WATCHDOG could potentially be a problem further down the track, but is usually a symptom of faulty hardware plugged into the board rather than a problem with the board itself. I don't suppose you've got an SSD plugged into the board, do you? Can occasionally be caused by SSDs with outdated firmware.

I'm also really not liking the sound of that IGP output, however, are you saying that once the board POSTs you never see it again? Have you also checked another PSU with the new board to see if the same thing occurs?

My main drive is a Samsung EVO 500GB. I haven't checked into it's firmware yet, the only DPC WATCHDOG error I got was the one time the pc came out of Hibernation (fans off etc). I used the same Windows 8.1 install from the previous board, is that bad? They are identical revisions other than being built a week apart. I didn't install any drivers at all until the 2nd board, and did not install any "preinstall" drivers (sata achi + raid, and marvell sata) but Intel INF and Marvell controller + drivers installed when in windows seems to have done that(no issues in device manager).

The only time I see the colourful fun is during reboot and shutdown, when you hear everything power down; this board seems to need a second or two to re-power up, goes away as soon as the Gigabyte splash screen comes up.I haven't tested a 2nd PSU on this 2nd board, but I have a 750tx I can try.

Unfortunately, I'm at work at the moment I can video the light show and post it on youtube if you'd like to see it when I get home in the morning.

The system still only has:

BenQ FP222W H (1680x1050) (hooked up via DVI atm, which is what I also plan to use on my 7950)
Asus DVD Burner
Samsung EVO 500GB
H105
2x8GB G.Skill Trident 2400 (running at 1333 atm until I make sure everything is ok).
EVGA 1300 G2
4790K from Microcenter (hope this is ok, was a 160 mile round trip to microcenter)

I don't plan on using the IGP other than installing the new system, but I haven't put my r7950's in either of the boards.

[SoulsCollective]

Windows 8.1 can sometimes not play nicely with older SSDs, so my advice would be to see if there's an update for your Evo and apply that before looking at the mobo as the cause of that particular symptom. Shouldn't be an issue to be reusing the same OS install if the underlying hardware is exactly the same, so I wouldn't expect that to be causing any issues.

As for the IGP output, weird colours can be a symptom of a number of things from wrong voltages to shorts to bad drivers. Can you try loading up something with a heavy 3D load (Furmark etc) and seeing if you get any screwy colours then? From your descriptions it sounds like the only load you're placing on it once booted is 2D desktop mode, which may be masking an underlying issue with insufficient load.

[sin0822]

U need to contact newegg about those solder lines, that is not normal, I have gotten a lot of boards from GBT, and 0 of them had lines like that. To me it looks like newegg is trying to send u a board someone else RMAed to cut down their loss. You should call GBT and explain to them and show them the pictures.

I have a Z97X G1 Gaming and I have been using the onboard DVI output for about a month and a half now without any issue. BTW A0 means it is in the OS, the video output failed to load if your monitor is blank (could be iGPU, board, or monitor).

[jupitersj]

I appreciate the replies, just wanted you all to know I'm not dead I had to pull a 110 hour work week and ended up sick =/ I just got off the phone with Newegg before I saw the latest replies because there was a price issue with my RMA.

Thankfully, they refunded me the cost of the original board, some weird coupon code that I never applied and they deducted, the additional 1 day shipping I paid on the 2nd board, AND the new price reduction that is currently on the board. I haven't had a chance to play with the system since I last posted, but I promise I will put a load on the cpu/igp when I get back from work in the morning.

Sin0822, I hope that isn't true, as the 2nd board was a separate purchase I made after I initiated RMA and not part of the RMA process. This monitor has been fine for many, many years and had no issues right before the system change out, but I am planning on a 1440p or 21:9 1440p purchase in the future.

I'll give GBT a call when I can tomorrow if they are open; this build has been seriously hampered by my job hours this month and I hope I don't get burned.

[jupitersj]

I'm alive!

I redid my build and benched and no issues with the IGP other than during the reboot/shutdown still, so I gave up caring about it. My Samsung EVO is already on the latest firmware, but I haven't had any watchdog problems since the time I disabled Hibernation still .

In the meantime, I have dropped my enormous pagefile to 200MB-1024MB, disabled indexing service, disabled prefetch/superfetch, and I still haven't decided on if I want/need RAPID mode yet; my drive is already benching above Samsung specs by a bit.

With my H105 (push only at the moment, will be push/pull soon) cougar CF-V12HP fans all around, 4790k idles in my hot room at 27-30c (depends on cores). My 4790k is pulling 4.4GHz across all the cores during turbo because of some setting on this motherboard; I have hyper-threading enabled, still on auto voltage and all power saving states enabled.

Most games are 36-46c load
60c for Wildstar ~_~ (40c after last patch woohoo)
iirc aida64 is 57c-60c on cores, that is a System Stability test CPU FPU cache memory all running at once, if you include max spikes, 64c-67c cores pulling 1.185v across the cores.
54c-60c across cores in 5 minutes of XTU.

These temperatures are in my relatively hot room over a garage, usually 80f.

Prime95 version 28.5 (hot hot hot!) Small FFTs only, Hwinfo64 reporting 1.179-1.180 vcore, I see a max of 1.185 but I'm not sure if that was from another bench, I'm kinda tired
4 hours of prime I get up to 74-80c on the cores, and heatsoak up to 84c across the cores, 87c spike.
with my air conditioner on I'm at 72c-80c across cores after heatsoak. These temps are with Hwinfo64 reporting Prime95 pulling 159 watts on the cpu.

don't know how strong my IMC is but I have been running my ram at 2400MHz Cas 10 2T during all the benching. I would have to disable power saving states in bios to absolutely check stock vid, but I believe it is usually 1.16+ on auto in bios.

Weird solder motherboard seems to be running like a champ so far, guess I should disable vt-d, it can keep TSX company so it isn't so lonely

Will post some pics soon

Gallery: http://postimg.org/gallery/2ulz3zba/