**Official** Asrock Z68 Gen3 Extreme7 & Extreme4 thread

[MayhemNJ]

Microcenter near me finally had the extreme 4 gen 3 in stock so I was finaly able to get one. They are selling it for 199.99 and 60 off of that if you buy a 2600k for 279.99 with it. The board is a steal for 139.99.

[Ket]

Don't worry. You motherboard is not affected by the Etron problems, because Extreme7 uses ASMedia ASM104 USB 3.0 controllers, which are reliable.

The Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 motherboard uses the famous Etron EJ168A controller.

XFast does more harm than good, so I after a few test I have removed it.

ASM1042 and regardless of USB3 controller its recommended to use the USB2 ports for USB2 devices according to my contacts.

[mRSUS]

Ket, any chance to get in touch with your contacts re stupid issue for code 70/71??? I seem to have the same problem as zomee posted earlier, but probably even worse!
Can't even boot with stock/default settings as it keeps restarting. Managed to do some oce prior to that and after it got the code for the first time that is it!
Strangely.. this Turbo 50 setting overclocked the 2500K to 4.8GHz and worked no problem. When I tried to do it manually with exactly! the same setting it didnt work!

I am starting to hate this mobo so much...

I am also having the same issue , manual oc was working fine before and then a bsod hit , now it won't boot on any manual setting , turbo 50 work fine tho

[Ket]

Update UEFI if you haven't already, then clear CMOS by removing the battery, power cord and settings the CMOS jumper to the "clear" position.

[qbazdz]

Same again today... cleared BIOS and started of from the beginning again.
44x LinX stable
tried 46x with PPL overvoltage and extra Vcore and stupid code 70 again and again...
My patience with this board is running out...

[stefa]

New Extreme3 Gen3 BIOS 1.10H:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11952531/Z68E3G3(1.10H).zip

AAM bug fixed
LLC2 bug fixed
Lag in UEFI fixed

[chippy]

Wheres the beta bios gone from the first page for the Extreme 4 Gen 3 ?

[bat4]

ASM1042 and regardless of USB3 controller its recommended to use the USB2 ports for USB2 devices according to my contacts.

Funny. Whatever I plug in the USB 3.0 ports of my new Asus motherboard, it just works.
I think the recommendation to use the USB2 ports for USB2 devices and not the USB3 ports is just ridiculous. The manual clearly states USB 1,2,3 support on the Etron ports:

- 2 x Rear USB 3.0 ports by Etron EJ168A, support USB 1.0/2.0/3.0 up to 5Gb/s

Your recommendation it is also in conflict with your review:

The chip itself is touted as being the world’s fastest USB 3.0 controller and the first to be interoperable with USB 2.0 and 1.1. EtronTech also claim their drivers are WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) tested and certified.

I think it is the time to correct that review and stop misleading those who are reading it. (I have been also mislead by your review).

It is certainly not the fastest USB 3.0 controller and certainly not backward compatible yet with USB 2.0 and 1.1.

[vulture_g7]

Wheres the beta bios gone from the first page for the Extreme 4 Gen 3 ?

I was wondering about that too....

BTW, hello all, 1st post here, I'm getting my e4 gen3 tomorrow

[TEDY]

please sum on the first page all the usefull links, files etc...getting mobo soon :P

[zoomee]

I think its about time asrock gave us gen3 users some bios loving too!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[LJHCPA]

how to update bios? same way as asus in bios?

I think you can flash the BIOS at least 2 different ways. I'm not at my system now, so I can't confirm the F-Key used, but you can press F11 (or some other F-Key#) to go directly to the Flash program, or access it from within the BIOS menu. In either case you need to have the BIOS file on a flash drive inserted into a USB port and the BIOS finds the file, you select it and press enter and sit back and pray it completes properly.

My USB connect/disconnect problem seems to have gone away since using the 1.3 BIOS, as I have added 2 more USB 2.0 external hard drives (on a USB 2.0 hub) and they stay connected full-time. The problem I had was with 1 USB 3.0 external hard drive connected to a 3.0 port. I've since switched that drive to the e-sata interface, so don't know if there's still a problem with USB 3.0. All-in-all I'm happy with the new BIOS version. Now, if ASRock can just fix the G510 problem...

[vulture_g7]

guys, if anyone can help me here, here's the thing:
I've set the multiplier to 46 , I've disabled cpu throttling, speedstep and thermal protection. Now, I run prime95 on all 8 cores and frequency automatically drops from 4.6 to 3.8 on all cores. I get some occassional peaks at 4.6 , but only for a couple of seconds every minute. That's on a extreme4 gen3, bios 1.00 or 1.10 doesn't make a difference. My GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 for all its shortcomings (same piece of cpu , same cooler, same case, same everything) never had that problem, kept going on that frequency without trouble. Any advice? Am I doing something wrong? I'm using cpu-z and argus monitor to check what's going on. The same happens under linx too, albeit the speed drop is lower -> 4.1ghz. Also, temps never exceed 65c , so I fail to understand why even thermal throttling should be an issue which is already disabled, so.... Plz help!

[zoomee]

FYI, I'm probably going to take the plunge myself on a Extreme4 Gen3 in the near-ish future so I should be able to get a lot more issues ironed out.

Cant wait till this happens mate!
This board has some serious stability issues which you'll see.

Power cycle issues upon bootup.
LLC is all over the place

Wierd that one minute it all works ok. Reboot and it all goes to pot and system refuses to boot

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[hshah]

I just have a few questions about my latest PC build. I have just got myself an ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 motherboard with 4 x 3TB drives. I have a SSD drive as my boot drive, so that is separate but I want to run the 4 x 3TB Western Digital Green drives in RAID5.

Initially I set up the RAID5 from the configuration screen just after the BIOS (64kb stripe), and then in Windows 7 x64 I used the IRS software to initialize the drive. When that took absolutely ages I deleted the volumes and recreated it in IRS with write caching enabled and that too is taking about 75 minutes per 1%. However, before initializing it in IRS I initialized it in Windows so I can see 8.5TB drive in My Computer whilst the initializing through IRS is still going on.

It will take 5 days to initialize the array... is this normal? How do I know what stripe/cluster/offset/alignment etc I need to set and how would I set them?

[zoomee]

guys, if anyone can help me here, here's the thing:
I've set the multiplier to 46 , I've disabled cpu throttling, speedstep and thermal protection. Now, I run prime95 on all 8 cores and frequency automatically drops from 4.6 to 3.8 on all cores. I get some occassional peaks at 4.6 , but only for a couple of seconds every minute. That's on a extreme4 gen3, bios 1.00 or 1.10 doesn't make a difference. My GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 for all its shortcomings (same piece of cpu , same cooler, same case, same everything) never had that problem, kept going on that frequency without trouble. Any advice? Am I doing something wrong? I'm using cpu-z and argus monitor to check what's going on. The same happens under linx too, albeit the speed drop is lower -> 4.1ghz. Also, temps never exceed 65c , so I fail to understand why even thermal throttling should be an issue which is already disabled, so.... Plz help!

You need to set your Min and Max Turbo settings higher mate

[vulture_g7]

Thx for the advice

I did the simple thing, chose the predefined oc settings for 4.8 , tweaked it, and now it happily runs at 5ghz stable. Many thx everyone

You need to set your Min and Max Turbo settings higher mate

[tipes]

You need to set your Min and Max Turbo settings higher mate

But keep an eye on temps though, because this can make them shoot up,unfortunately stability = higher temps normally., or so I have found on SB.

[zoomee]

yeah thats teh problem I currently have - temps are getting a bit on the high side when running 5Ghz @ 1.41v
I've finally got my system prime and IBT normal stable by upping the Turbo voltage to +0.050

However one REALLY iratatting thing about this Z68 X4 G3 is that anything (irrespective of settings) is giving me boot loop city when I startup or restart. We seriously need this addressing! - only happens above 4.6Ghz. I even changed my RAM to 1.5v stuff and literally tried EVERY single other setting same as the user who mentioned it earlier yet getting the same. It takes two or three attempts to boot up and sometimes even fails to boot (resulting in Waiting for BIOS dialogue) because it resets the settings to stock

The last BIOS update we had for the Z68 X4 G3 was back in september - P67 users are getting all the love the greedy gits :p :p

[tipes]

yeah thats teh problem I currently have - temps are getting a bit on the high side when running 5Ghz @ 1.41v
I've finally got my system prime and IBT normal stable by upping the Turbo voltage to +0.050

However one REALLY iratatting thing about this Z68 X4 G3 is that anything (irrespective of settings) is giving me boot loop city when I startup or restart. We seriously need this addressing! - only happens above 4.6Ghz. I even changed my RAM to 1.5v stuff and literally tried EVERY single other setting same as the user who mentioned it earlier yet getting the same. It takes two or three attempts to boot up and sometimes even fails to boot (resulting in Waiting for BIOS dialogue) because it resets the settings to stock

The last BIOS update we had for the Z68 X4 G3 was back in september - P67 users are getting all the love the greedy gits :p :p

Now, Now, Patience is a virtue Lol

[vulture_g7]

Heh! Seems, I was too quick to proclaim my 5ghz oc stable. Worked fine the first time as long as I had it in sleep/wake mode, but failed on restart. Now, I can't even get to 4.80 !?!? It freezes before even entering OS and it also freezes the moment I click apply if I try it with AXT utility from windows. Any suggestions guys? For reference, the best I can get right now is 4.76 and my temps are between 61-67 celsius at most.

@zoomee
Could you please share with me your oc settings if possible? Thx!

@Ket
Is it possible that z68 ext4 gen3 users will get saving to disk of bios profiles? Thx for your efforts!
Also, I've read about a 1.10D bios for z68 ex4gen3 , but I can only get 1.10b from ASRock's site. Anyone here has it? Is there a significant improvement over 1.10b regarding overclocking/stability?

yeah thats teh problem I currently have - temps are getting a bit on the high side when running 5Ghz @ 1.41v
I've finally got my system prime and IBT normal stable by upping the Turbo voltage to +0.050

However one REALLY iratatting thing about this Z68 X4 G3 is that anything (irrespective of settings) is giving me boot loop city when I startup or restart. We seriously need this addressing! - only happens above 4.6Ghz. I even changed my RAM to 1.5v stuff and literally tried EVERY single other setting same as the user who mentioned it earlier yet getting the same. It takes two or three attempts to boot up and sometimes even fails to boot (resulting in Waiting for BIOS dialogue) because it resets the settings to stock

The last BIOS update we had for the Z68 X4 G3 was back in september - P67 users are getting all the love the greedy gits :p :p

[zoomee]

CPU Ratio: 50
PLL Overvoltage: Enabled
Min and Max Turbo - 250
Core Load: 200
Turbo Volts + 0.050
Spread Spectrum: Disabled

Offset Volts: +0.065
LLC: Level 2
Rest Auto

oh and in CPU settings - disable all the power state stuff except C1E.

This is sorta wierd and I don't trust this board - As I had it running 12hours of prime95 stable on them same settings above (actually with only min and max Turbo of 200 each) when I first got it - no problem. ran Prime95 overnight last night - checked it at 4hrs - working fine. Checked it this morning and just a black screen! (no BSOD)

Its why i'm insisting on a more reliable BIOS.

[vulture_g7]

many thx dude, will try it when I get home, cheers!

[tipes]

Think we could do with a bios option on the ext 7 gen 3 to disable LLC rather than only being able to select Auto or manual level 1 to 5.
I say this because Auto setting selects level 5. Need an off selection so that when using offset mode to fine tune it does not play nicely with LLC
being on as well. Can we have this option added to a future bios please Asrock?

[Stormad]

Hey guys have got the extr4 gen 3 too also weird issues, when everything is switched of, speedstep, spread spectrum al off the power states the board still keeps throttling down, i had the volts on manual then and it was really stable at 1.315 volts for 4.7, now i left it all on except spread spectrum and set volts offset to -0.030 and oc auto to 4.6 with 102.1. At this points it also throttles back but also the voltage throttles together thats not a bad thing except the voltage goes over 1.45V and the heat goes up to. To me this V is too high but i can't lower the offset further because it woudn't boot then. Also when F@h with these settings it throttles to multiplier 43, weird? Another thing i don't think it recognises my logitech G500 mouse. When I go to setpoint to change the settings in setpoint the program says this devise is not connected. Also no new biosses in sight for this one? Plusses for the board, lay out is perfect.