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

[old nubsauce]

Hello Old pc builder but new to OC'ing

My pc is i7 2600k
z68 extreme 7 gen 3
16 gig gskill F3-17000CL11Q-16BXL
580 gtx MSI lightning GPU
850 watt Platimax PSU
180 Corsair Force 3 SSD
2 TB WD black caviar HD

I cant seem to get all 16 gig of my ram in the board I get error code 45 when ever I populate b1/b2 slots tried different pairs in the A1/a2 slots boot fine. So the person a few pages back was using the same ram for his build I was wondering if he could pass alon his settings or if anyone knows best settings for this ram if said person could post them here. I have tried the 11-11-11 -30 @ 1.60 ,manual and xmp profile. I'm stumped do I oc the cpu to accept the other 8 gig or could it be bad ram slots.....Help

[vulture_g7]

Have you ruled out the possibility of faulty RAM modules, ie have you tried all your modules in the 2 working slots and the motherboard boots? If so, you probably have a faulty mobbo and you should RMA it.

[old nubsauce]

Yes I have swapped pairs into a1//a2 slots and booted up with no issues. I still may try to boot with a1/a2 empty and b1/b2 populated. I was hoping that if I changed some voltages on the ram they would work in all 4 slots. I've never had to RMA anything do I contact newegg or Asrock

[vulture_g7]

I suppose you contact the shop first, so, newegg.

[TEDY]

come on where is latest bios?

1.21d?

[vulture_g7]

Well, I'd like to try it out too, but as Ket said we'll have to wait for a short while while he rearranges and updates stuff.

come on where is latest bios?

1.21d?

[TEDY]

like nobody else has it?

[vulture_g7]

That's a good question, I'm sure somebody here has it and could be kind enough to upload it somewhere for the rest of us to grab.

[zoomee]

Right then, being more realistic - I've backed my 24/7 overclock down to 4.8 for now as temps (and volts) are easily controllable at that speed.

So I rebuild my system last night (new case) - reset CMOS (fully by pulling battery), and booted at stock settings / speed. Ran a quick IBT and shutdown.
When i booted up I then got stuck! - It refused to boot. Tried this four times in a row - eventually it booted. Tested it again by shutting down and starting up and worked fine this time.

Looks like my booting issues aren't just overclock related!! grrrrrr..Can't be my memory as I've had two different sets in here - one Mushkin the other Corsair. Can't be overclocking as I get the same. Can't be the CPU as I got the same with my 2600k and now my 2700k. Only leaves one thing - the mainboard!

Come on ASRock - give us a new BIOS before I return this thing!

[tipes]

Right then, being more realistic - I've backed my 24/7 overclock down to 4.8 for now as temps (and volts) are easily controllable at that speed.

So I rebuild my system last night (new case) - reset CMOS (fully by pulling battery), and booted at stock settings / speed. Ran a quick IBT and shutdown.
When i booted up I then got stuck! - It refused to boot. Tried this four times in a row - eventually it booted. Tested it again by shutting down and starting up and worked fine this time.

Looks like my booting issues aren't just overclock related!! grrrrrr..Can't be my memory as I've had two different sets in here - one Mushkin the other Corsair. Can't be overclocking as I get the same. Can't be the CPU as I got the same with my 2600k and now my 2700k. Only leaves one thing - the mainboard!

Come on ASRock - give us a new BIOS before I return this thing!

Must admit I am begining to wonder about my ext 7 gen 3 as well, but for slightly different reasons(Bios maturity to one side for a mo), I have had a 2600k and a 2700K - the 2700K supposedly from a good oc batch.
Yet I am finding like yourself that heat is more of a problem than volts, but I am now wondering if the power/voltage control of these Asrock boards may be somewhat less than stellar, as I keep hearing stories of people geting
easier and better o clocks with less heat and hassle on more mainstream boards, and better quality boards??? What is your view on this - as even under water I am struggling to keep temps down. For example my 2700 will do
4.5Ghz atr a modest 1.288 volts under Linx test + other tests stable, but in a cool room under good w cooling temps are still 66-70 degrees,so I feel I dare not attempt higher,although i think 4.6 will be just attainable.
I have made all usual checks for air/re seats of block etc etc, but no dice.Starting to suspect that although these boards give you a lot of features, and are good value in that sense - is it at the expense of good quality power/voltage
circuitry, and bios???? Where next I ask myself?????

Mark

[Ket]

Again I'll mention that temps are probably measured differently on the asrock boards, likely measuring the core temp itself and not the IHS temp. Its the most logical explanation, and probably the most probable one as well. I'll try to get the links back up later today but as I can't arrange things as I would of liked to UEFIs I'll probably consolidate into one downloadable package unless somebody can tell me why after copying a file with megaupload to a folder you created then deleting the other file it removes the file copied to the created folder as well

[zoomee]

Must admit I am begining to wonder about my ext 7 gen 3 as well, but for slightly different reasons(Bios maturity to one side for a mo), I have had a 2600k and a 2700K - the 2700K supposedly from a good oc batch.
Yet I am finding like yourself that heat is more of a problem than volts, but I am now wondering if the power/voltage control of these Asrock boards may be somewhat less than stellar, as I keep hearing stories of people geting
easier and better o clocks with less heat and hassle on more mainstream boards, and better quality boards??? What is your view on this - as even under water I am struggling to keep temps down. For example my 2700 will do
4.5Ghz atr a modest 1.288 volts under Linx test + other tests stable, but in a cool room under good w cooling temps are still 66-70 degrees,so I feel I dare not attempt higher,although i think 4.6 will be just attainable.
I have made all usual checks for air/re seats of block etc etc, but no dice.Starting to suspect that although these boards give you a lot of features, and are good value in that sense - is it at the expense of good quality power/voltage
circuitry, and bios???? Where next I ask myself?????

Mark

I manage approx 1.29v for 4.6Ghz mate. maybe the heat is from a poorly designed heatsink - I don't know and as I'm reaching near the 30day period for RMA (for a refund) I've already put the request in for it to be processed.
I'd happily live with 4.6 or 4.8 - but this darn boot-loop and black screen issue is too irratating. I can't have the missus using my PC whilst its like this!

But the problem is which board do we go to!?! - In this price bracket that leaves the MSI Z68 GD55 (G3) and Asus Z68 PV8blah blah G3 aswell (roughly same price) but my god are they fugly lol!!.

I'm not going to risk a replacement to find its even worse than this board either (some people reported 4 replacements before they finally go a working one!) - so I just don't know - waiting for my retailor to come back to me as i've waited long enough for ASRock to give us an updated BIOS with further stability, and they funnily enough have no forum of their own where we can highlight these sorts of issues....

[Ket]

Any legitimate bugs have been reported and rectified or being looked into, in regards to stability and so forth when OCing even I will have to say its down to user error until I have my own E4 G3 to conduct tests with.

[zoomee]

Any legitimate bugs have been reported and rectified or being looked into, in regards to stability and so forth when OCing even I will have to say its down to user error until I have my own E4 G3 to conduct tests with.

My problem is evident even at stock settings......

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[saphirex7]

Except for on the initial firing up of my system and flashing to the latest version 1.30 of the UEFI then setting the XMP profile for 2133mhz I have not set any special timings/voltages and the XMP settings simply worked for me...

It sounds like your b1/b2 slots are bad RMA the board to NewEgg for faster turnaround then ASRock

Sorry I could not be of more help

SaphireX

Hello Old pc builder but new to OC'ing

My pc is i7 2600k
z68 extreme 7 gen 3
16 gig gskill F3-17000CL11Q-16BXL
580 gtx MSI lightning GPU
850 watt Platimax PSU
180 Corsair Force 3 SSD
2 TB WD black caviar HD

I cant seem to get all 16 gig of my ram in the board I get error code 45 when ever I populate b1/b2 slots tried different pairs in the A1/a2 slots boot fine. So the person a few pages back was using the same ram for his build I was wondering if he could pass alon his settings or if anyone knows best settings for this ram if said person could post them here. I have tried the 11-11-11 -30 @ 1.60 ,manual and xmp profile. I'm stumped do I oc the cpu to accept the other 8 gig or could it be bad ram slots.....Help

[tipes]

I manage approx 1.29v for 4.6Ghz mate. maybe the heat is from a poorly designed heatsink - I don't know and as I'm reaching near the 30day period for RMA (for a refund) I've already put the request in for it to be processed.
I'd happily live with 4.6 or 4.8 - but this darn boot-loop and black screen issue is too irratating. I can't have the missus using my PC whilst its like this!

But the problem is which board do we go to!?! - In this price bracket that leaves the MSI Z68 GD55 (G3) and Asus Z68 PV8blah blah G3 aswell (roughly same price) but my god are they fugly lol!!.

I'm not going to risk a replacement to find its even worse than this board either (some people reported 4 replacements before they finally go a working one!) - so I just don't know - waiting for my retailor to come back to me as i've waited long enough for ASRock to give us an updated BIOS with further stability, and they funnily enough have no forum of their own where we can highlight these sorts of issues....

Hi Zoomee,

Take on board(no pun intended lol) all that you say, and I would be equally frustrated with your problems.As for me - must admit I only have a dual rad, but am purely only cooling the cpu with it - so I would have thought it would cope better.The other problem could be my cpu block as it is an EK supreme HF EN block, and have heard others say that for some strange reason these blocks cool these chips less well than other copper blocks, but are ok on other cpu's - weird. Must admit I can't believe that could be the case, but......
As i said in my earlier post - i hear so many peeps getting to 4.6 to 5 gig with better temps with air coolers even, which I find hard to accept given my investment in w cooling. I am also wondering as I said earlier I do wonder if the high temps on this board are being at least added too by bios/chipset/voltage control quality of the Asrock boards - who knows. I know Ket says that he believes that Asrock measure temps differently to other boards but I cannot understand why it would seem as if it makes such a big difference. It is so frustrating to have plenty of headroom on voltage, but I cannot use it because of v high temps which are not manageable. Should I have spent more on a premium board from Asus or Evga etc in the hope that their bios/voltage control is better to the extent that it makes the difference?????
Btw Zoomee - follow your posts on ocers as well - you've prob seen mine too.Any further oppinion you would like to share on this????

Mark

[Ket]

If you are concerned about temps in that way, just take the side panel off your case, finger probe the MOSFET and CPU heatsinks with the system idle then again with the system loaded. That should set your mind at ease. Alternatively if you want I can load my system up (CPU uses a modded CoolIT ECO) and point a temp gun at the block and the back of my board and measure the temps. If nothing else it may help in solidifying if the board does indeed measure the actual CPU temp and not the IHS temp.

[fullerms]

Hi all,

Long time lurker here, and have been following this thread for the past few days. While I am impressed by what the Ex4G3 has to offer at this price, I am also concerned on performance and stability.

From what I have read so far, the key issues are

1. Unstable overclocks
2. Unreliable USB 3.0 performance.
3. Laggy BIOS

If I am not going to overclock and willing to live with only the USB 2.0 ports, is this board usable? Do the USB 2.0 ports have the same performance issues as the USB 3.0 ones? How about the SATA ports? Any reported issues there?

I could stay off OC and USB 3.0 until the BIOS / Drivers mature a bit, but what can I expect in terms of user experience in the meantime?

[vulture_g7]

@Ket

would it be possible to get individual core overclocking in some next bios revision? For example, budget Gigabyte and Asus boards have this feature why not the Asrock extreme series?

@fullerms

After I resolved my oc issues thx to zoomee's kind help, I've nothing but praises for this board. At least , so far. I hope it stays that way.

[zoomee]

Hi Zoomee,

Take on board(no pun intended lol) all that you say, and I would be equally frustrated with your problems.As for me - must admit I only have a dual rad, but am purely only cooling the cpu with it - so I would have thought it would cope better.The other problem could be my cpu block as it is an EK supreme HF EN block, and have heard others say that for some strange reason these blocks cool these chips less well than other copper blocks, but are ok on other cpu's - weird. Must admit I can't believe that could be the case, but......
As i said in my earlier post - i hear so many peeps getting to 4.6 to 5 gig with better temps with air coolers even, which I find hard to accept given my investment in w cooling. I am also wondering as I said earlier I do wonder if the high temps on this board are being at least added too by bios/chipset/voltage control quality of the Asrock boards - who knows. I know Ket says that he believes that Asrock measure temps differently to other boards but I cannot understand why it would seem as if it makes such a big difference. It is so frustrating to have plenty of headroom on voltage, but I cannot use it because of v high temps which are not manageable. Should I have spent more on a premium board from Asus or Evga etc in the hope that their bios/voltage control is better to the extent that it makes the difference?????
Btw Zoomee - follow your posts on ocers as well - you've prob seen mine too.Any further oppinion you would like to share on this????

Mark

I had exactly the same problem with my Supreme HF and watercooled 120.3 Thermochill. I couldn't believe that it couldn't keep a 2700k @ 1.41v under 80 Degrees C whilst overclocked to 5Ghz!. To be honest in the end I've just given up now. Sold all my watercooling and bought a 'pissy' Corsair H100 to cool the CPU at 4.8ghz @ 1.35v (or 1.36 ~ 1.38v depending on the boards mood)

I think the heat problems only occur at high overclocks as for some reason using offset voltage (and fixed voltage) results in wide fluctuations in the volts when using LLC. LLC is a MUST, as vdroop is quite high when overclocking above 4.6. The problem seems to be LLC on this board - Its not very good and fluctuates too widely - one day it goes upto 1.35v (at 4.8) - next day it goes up to 1.366v! hence why I think heat then becomes an issue. Some users have also reported that for some reason or the other they have to give more voltage to become stable on the ASRock extreme boards than using the other type (i.e Asus or MSI).

Don't get me wrong its a great board if your after a conservative overclock - but once you get into the extreme levels of overclocking - i.e. 5ghz+ - Your much better off paying extra for a good high-end board from elsewhere (i.e. Asus Maximus).

[sviola]

Hey guys,

Just finished my build yesterday:

Core i5 2500k
ASRock Extreme4 Gen3
16 GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600MHz
Seagate 1 TB 7200.12 HDD
Evga GeForce 560Ti 1 GB
Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
Intelbras Wi-Fi N adapter

All is working flawless and I have had no issues so far. Next I plan on trying out some overclocking. Any tips for this board (sorry if you already have posted these here, but the thread is really long)?

[Ket]

Hi all,

Long time lurker here, and have been following this thread for the past few days. While I am impressed by what the Ex4G3 has to offer at this price, I am also concerned on performance and stability.

From what I have read so far, the key issues are

1. Unstable overclocks
2. Unreliable USB 3.0 performance.
3. Laggy BIOS

If I am not going to overclock and willing to live with only the USB 2.0 ports, is this board usable? Do the USB 2.0 ports have the same performance issues as the USB 3.0 ones? How about the SATA ports? Any reported issues there?

I could stay off OC and USB 3.0 until the BIOS / Drivers mature a bit, but what can I expect in terms of user experience in the meantime?

While I don't have a Gen3 board at my disposal at this time, I do have the non Gen3 version which is almost the exact same board. I have no stability issues while OCd, USB3 performance is fine and reliable (if anyone is plugging USB2 devices into USB3 ports... well thats just silly at this point in time with everything transitioning), and the UEFI is not laggy. In the case of the Gen3 board though there are literally 1 or 2 input devices that have issues but thats it.

@Ket

would it be possible to get individual core overclocking in some next bios revision? For example, budget Gigabyte and Asus boards have this feature why not the Asrock extreme series?

Probably if I was to ask my contacts, but really whats the point? Nobody OCs just one core when their looking for a 24/7 OC.

Hey guys,

Just finished my build yesterday:

Core i5 2500k
ASRock Extreme4 Gen3
16 GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600MHz
Seagate 1 TB 7200.12 HDD
Evga GeForce 560Ti 1 GB
Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
Intelbras Wi-Fi N adapter

All is working flawless and I have had no issues so far. Next I plan on trying out some overclocking. Any tips for this board (sorry if you already have posted these here, but the thread is really long)?

For the non Gen3, but same rules apply; Click. Only reason to raise CPU PLL over 1.75v is if you are going for high memory clocks. Raising VTT will also help when OCing the memory.

[TEDY]

Is there a list of compatible coolers like Noctua has? Noctua has a compatibility list on their site, very informative, which memory, which boards etc.....

I want to know this board + Mugen 3 + GSKILL 12800 Ripjaws yes/no?

[vulture_g7]

@Ket

Thx for your answer. Actually there is a good point to this: When playing games where the first 2 cores are mainly used, you can bump them to 5ghz more easily while keeping the other 2 at (much) lower speeds improving the overall cpu temperatures/stability while getting all the needed speed. It may not make sense for 24/7 oc but it is a practically very useful feature for gamers which is a large part of ext4 gen3 (and extreme boards in general) owners.

[videogamer323]

i5-2500k
Z68 EXTREME4 GEN3
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 16gb 2x model:996988
2x 5850 xfire (tested with single card and onboard with same results as well)
corsair ax850
crucial m4 64gb (OS) and 256gb (Games), WD 450gb VelociRaptor (Data)
6x 120 radiator space (CPU, Mofsets cooled so far, GPU when I get a next gen ATI/Nvidia card. Debating on chipset and/or memory just for fun)

I have more of a cool head now after beating my head against the wall and being pissed earlier after spending all this money and not having it work the way I planned.
I seem to be having an issue and I think maybe the board is at fault? I can set everything to stock and it will boot, change only the spread spectrum to disabled and it will not boot... Is this normal or am I missing something? I get either a F1, F2, 71 error followed by a reboot or a 70 error that just hangs until I power the machine back off (hold the button or flip the power supply rocker switch). I have contacted ASrock about the issue, but have yet to hear back after days... customer service seems to be VERY lacking.

Right now I am running 4.5ghz with all settings stock except voltage around 1.4 on cpu. I know this is high, but my temps never go above 60c full load at 4.5ghz and left the volts there from my 4.5+Ghz overclocking attempts. It works, but anything over 45 multiplier ends in the same result above with the same error codes. I am really at a loss, but I don't want to be stuck with a bad board either. I have tried disabling all power saving C states and messing with Turbo settings as per other users results. What I don't understand is the first day I got the rig up and running I had spread spectrum disabled and I was at 5.0ghz and was stable for a few hours of LinX, had something like 8+ score in Cinebench, next reboot and bam, won't boot past 45 multi.

As for temps stress testing (LinX, Prime95, OCCT and some Gaming @ 4.5ghz:
CPU hasn't gone above 60c (when I could, 5Ghz showed 69c)
Chipset hasn't gone above 50c yet.
mosfet is in the 30s
RAM is ever so slightly warm to the touch

I still have a few days to return the board to Amazon for either an exchange or refund...
Thank You for any help you can provide. I plan on working on this all night again...