Official GIGABYTE X38-DQ6/X38T-DQ6 Info/BIOS Thread

[BulldogPO]

What is cure for that endless reboot cycle?
I tried 500x8 with E8400 and it is now doing that.

Nuthing heped this far, no CLR_CMOS and not removing battery...

[p2501]

Hey Kondik, your board died? Why, did you torture it? No offense, i'm just asking because mine arrived yesterday and i wonder if it's really solid..

As it seem not just my 965p-ds3 died, but it took my e6600 with it. I went through the trouble of lapping the HS, put everything together, just to realise that the chip must be dead. The board keeps rebooting every 5 seconds. Gpu, ram mainboard heatsinks all get warm but the cpu stays cold. Ordered q6600 now, so let's see.

Damn you cruel world.

[ChrissTi]

What is cure for that endless reboot cycle?
I tried 500x8 with E8400 and it is now doing that.

Nuthing heped this far, no CLR_CMOS and not removing battery...

Do a reset a few seconds after power on. You should try this untill you get the right moment, and the bios thinks that there is an error, and resets to defaults frequencyes .

[BulldogPO]

Does not help

I´ll try removing all power cables and battery for few hours.

[ChrissTi]

Does not help

I´ll try removing all power cables and battery for few hours.

Put the Gigabyte cd in the cd-drive (must be on gigasata), and repeat the reset operation.

F8d has some first boot problems. Do not use it !!!

[Kondik]

Hey Kondik, your board died? Why, did you torture it? No offense, i'm just asking because mine arrived yesterday and i wonder if it's really solid..

As it seem not just my 965p-ds3 died, but it took my e6600 with it. I went through the trouble of lapping the HS, put everything together, just to realise that the chip must be dead. The board keeps rebooting every 5 seconds. Gpu, ram mainboard heatsinks all get warm but the cpu stays cold. Ordered q6600 now, so let's see.

Damn you cruel world.

Nope it just died ... i was in Windows listnening to music .... BAM .. a plastic smash to the case side .. PC freezed instantly so i jumped to the power cord switched it of and i saw a piece of platic head of the transistor and a terrible smell ... imo it was just a bad piece .. the board worked still but nothing could be attached to the two bottom PCI ports .. if i put XFi Elite in it the system freezed from time to time ... so i RMAed it and ended up wit ... Product is EOL bye bye

[Zenoth]

What was the "LLC bug" in the first place? I never heard about that one.

[BulldogPO]

Put the Gigabyte cd in the cd-drive (must be on gigasata), and repeat the reset operation.

F8d has some first boot problems. Do not use it !!!

Board is GA-X48-DQ6

[jimmsch]

All you need is the flash to be formated FAT32, and the bios on it. When in bios press F8 and yes. Then flash the bios it's not so hard. You can flash it also from an FAT 32 HDD. Intel ICH9R must be in IDE mode, if you have the hdd on it.

Wow, it's really as easy as that? I don't need to make the USB stick bootable? All I need to do is insert it into a USB port, boot the machine, hit delete to enter BIOS and once in hit F8?

I don't need to make the USB stick bootable and follow some DOS commands?

COOL!

Thanks!

[ChrissTi]

Board is GA-X48-DQ6

K, then ios avaliable only the first part

For the GA-X38-DQ6, F8d is buggy ...

[Richard Dower]

Put the Gigabyte cd in the cd-drive (must be on gigasata), and repeat the reset operation.

F8d has some first boot problems. Do not use it !!!

Works OK here

[BulldogPO]

It is still booting and booting and booting.
Damn, I should try other CPU.

[BulldogPO]

Same ing thing with old celeron CPU.
Continuous rebooting.

I have tried clear cmos several times and battery + PSU connector removing few times, nothing helps.

[ChrissTi]

Same ing thing with old celeron CPU.
Continuous rebooting.

Then your bios is ed up ...
Did you tried to remove one memory ?

[Buggalugs]

Well my X38DQ6 just died of a corrupted bios. It still goes but dead lan port, and general flakyness etc.

Its wierd that its the only board that has failed for me ever...but its still my favorite board. At least when it was working.

I guess those early reports about X38 chipset problems werent completely solved. Anyhow RMAed it but as someone mentioned there are none around to replace it so hopefully it gets replaced with a X48 in the coming weeks.

Until then its back to my P5B deluxe.

[Richard Dower]

Corrupted bios?...then it should boot from the backup bios??

[ChrissTi]

Works OK here

What mem strap ?
Mine on 2.4B and 450 FSB if I shut it down and turn it on I get endless loop...

[Caped Crusader]

What? X48 STILL has boot problems?! Didn't they learn anything from X38?

[GAR]

even tho it has a couple of flaws, this board is one of the couple of good X38 boards, much better than the maximus formula, i had both and loved the gigabyte much more.

[M@deira]

Good Bios for C2D F3 0204..

[Alcibiades]

Same ing thing with old celeron CPU.
Continuous rebooting.

I have tried clear cmos several times and battery + PSU connector removing few times, nothing helps.

Quite a few ppl on this forum incl. me have experienced the endless reboot cycle and have thought fukc, I'ts dead I killed it, I pushed too hard.
Usually memory related, like too aggressive perf setting combined with a high mhz and low mem strap, maybe played with clock skews... doesn't matter many of us have been there.

Things to try:

POWERING OFF
Always shutdown, flick psu switch off, remove power cord, press power on button to fully discharge the system.

Unplug all unecessary devices, just keyboard & monitor needed.

CLEARING CMOS
Clear cmos batt using jumper
OR
remove cmos wait 5-10 minutes replace cmos batt
may have to repeat this a few times.

The following has worked on MOST occassions, But not always
Try tricking the bios into thinking it had a BAD boot attempt.
shutdown, flick psu switch off, press power on button to fully discharge the system, flick psu back on, press power on button, wait about 2 secs, press and hold power on button to shutdown the system, fingers crossed press power on and pray

Getting scared and desperate stage.
SWAP your memory to alt slots, eg. from 1&3 to 2&4 or vice versa.
Also try each mem stick in each mem slot, one at a time until you can boot into bios.
might also want to unplug and then reseat psu to mb power, also have a good look and make sure everything is "ok" with connections.

If you get into the bios again
Change all settings MANUALLY to default cpu and mem values, make sure you put correct perf setting trD and give enough juice to the mem.

Also if you were experimenting with a new bios rev. flash back to a more trusted and stable version.

Good Luck

[road-runner]

Hey guys I have the x38 ds4 and I was wondering if the stock northbridge cooler will be ok? Is there a water block that will fit it if not? I took it off and looked at it and it has a thermal pad on there, I guess if I use the stock cooling block I need to remove the pad and put some arctic silver?

[Zenoth]

Hey guys what is the "LLC bug" ? I never heard about that one, can anyone tel me please? I might be affected by it (Memory instability) but I don't know what it really consists of.

[BulldogPO]

I finaly did get over that constant booting ..
I sweaped in other memory modules, and then back, weird.

But now that board is priming fine E8400 at 1.4V Vcore and 8x525MHz.

[REVHEAD]

Corrupted bios?...then it should boot from the backup bios??

I am going to slam that bios in mine now, wish me luck.