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

[apatch]

Z68E4G3 2.20 with Intel OROM 11.5.0.1582

Try at your own risk, some people reported memory leak problems with Intel OROM 11.5.0.1582 OROM, I'm using it right now and so far so good.

Before flashing this UEFI, Install newest Intel RST 11.5.2.1001 WHQL (installing newest version right on old one works too), if you will not do it system might not boot after flashing this UEFI !

The purpose of this UEFI is to test if TRIM/Unmap will work with this board in RAID mode, some of us needs this, in Z77 it works already, more here :

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...-Drivers/page9

http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?ca...2&pagenumber=1

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=367100

[presjar]

apatch,

I have been running this OROM and Intel RST version for a few weeks now and can confirm there is a memory leak. Some times the Intel RST software is up over 1GB ram usage. It takes a long time to get that bad though and I think using sleep makes it happen a bit faster. I just restart the PC a few times a week and don't notice the leak. Looks like we will have to wait for the next release for a fix.

From reading the links it seems z68 is not supported, only z77. Hopefully we will get support eventually!

[tipes]

apatch,

I have been running this OROM and Intel RST version for a few weeks now and can confirm there is a memory leak. Some times the Intel RST software is up over 1GB ram usage. It takes a long time to get that bad though and I think using sleep makes it happen a bit faster. I just restart the PC a few times a week and don't notice the leak. Looks like we will have to wait for the next release for a fix.

From reading the links it seems z68 is not supported, only z77. Hopefully we will get support eventually!

Hi,

Your post may go someway to explaining why my system is freezing when trying to resume from sleep - never had this problem till now. What is the best way to revert
to older driver as I am running a raid 0 system here. I understand you could corrupt your array if you do not take certain steps in trying to revert to older driver - any advice please?

Mark

[presjar]

Mark,

I am not sure really how to do it without loosing the array.

The safest way would be to:

1. Uninstall Intel RST in windows
2. Restart the system and boot into a Acronis or similar program to backup the raid. (Don't go back into windows)
3. Flash the BIOS with older ROM if you want. It shouldn't matter if the ROM stays at 11.5
4. Delete the raid in bios and make it again
5. Restore the backup and boot windows
6. Install older Intel RST and setup cache options etc.

Someone else might have a better way.

[tipes]

Mark,

I am not sure really how to do it without loosing the array.

The safest way would be to:

1. Uninstall Intel RST in windows
2. Restart the system and boot into a Acronis or similar program to backup the raid. (Don't go back into windows)
3. Flash the BIOS with older ROM if you want. It shouldn't matter if the ROM stays at 11.5
4. Delete the raid in bios and make it again
5. Restore the backup and boot windows
6. Install older Intel RST and setup cache options etc.

Someone else might have a better way.

Thanks for the reply mate, groan - a lot of work just for a faulty driver, but hey ho such is the price for living at the cutting edge. Lol.
Think I might be tempted to just trying an install of the 11.2 drivers ott, and see what happens - will do an image first though in case.

Mark

[Ket]

Hi Ket,

Sorry to be a pain, but any luck or news from your contacts about my issues with bios?
Thanks very much for your input/help - much appreciated.

Mark

Sorry I didn't get back to you tipes I got bogged down with my own things and as yet haven't scattered off a email. Did you get the issue sorted or do you still need me to get in touch with my contacts?

[Ket]

Z68E4G3 2.20 with Intel OROM 11.5.0.1582

Try at your own risk, some people reported memory leak problems with Intel OROM 11.5.0.1582 OROM, I'm using it right now and so far so good.

Before flashing this UEFI, Install newest Intel RST 11.5.2.1001 WHQL (installing newest version right on old one works too), if you will not do it system might not boot after flashing this UEFI !

The purpose of this UEFI is to test if TRIM/Unmap will work with this board in RAID mode, some of us needs this, in Z77 it works already, more here :

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...-Drivers/page9

http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?ca...2&pagenumber=1

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=367100

It should be noted that the 11.5 O-ROM is for Enterprise series boards. The latest commercial O-ROM is 11.2. Before flashing a modded UEFI for the O-ROM update I advise you enter the RAID utility as it will tell you the version in there. If it is not too outdated (and it more than likely isn't, I've hammered it home to Asrock on more than one occasion how important keeping O-ROMs updated is) then its more than likely not worth flashing. If you have a spare ROM chip to hand though just in case the flash goes wrong, then by all means.. go nuts.

[tipes]

Sorry I didn't get back to you tipes I got bogged down with my own things and as yet haven't scattered off a email. Did you get the issue sorted or do you still need me to get in touch with my contacts?

Hi Ket,

No problem mate. Now solved as Asrock sent me a new bios chip pre loaded with vers 2.30, but I assume with microcode for sandy chip - all working fine now. Just wish they had made two versions
available for download - one for Ivy and one for Sandy - would have avoided all these headaches for many that have been bitten by this.Have sugeested this to Asrock, but seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Perhaps you could suggest thisvia your contacts????

Thanks for your help/input anyway - much appreciated.

Mark

[Ket]

Good to hear all is well. I don't know why you had any issues in the first place - perhaps something very specific to do with your system. Maybe something to do with the stepping of the CPU you have? Asrock probably applied a CPU microcode patch update, hence the UEFI 2.3. Before moving from Z68 to Z77 I did try the 2.xx UEFIs Asrock put out and I didn't have any problems at all with my 2500k CPU. Quite the opposite in fact, I could boot to Windows up to 5.1GHz on the Z68 E4 which any 1.xx UEFI had no hope in hell of I'd get no POST once I hit 4.8GHz or so. All is well that ends well though

[MoInSTL]

I have found my first Asrock board (Extreme 4, Gen3) to be fussy about RAM. First issue was swapping out a 2500k for a 2600k. It suddenly would only show RAM in two slots instead of all 4 and seemed stuck in single channel mode. This last time all I did was move to a different case and heat sink/fan. and I could not even POST. I got error 55 which is RAM. Removed all but one 4GB stick. After posting I added another stick. That was okay so I added back the other two. left the RAM & CPU on the board when moved it. I use Corsair RAM. Why these boards hiccup with RAM issues lead me to believe it's still a BIOS issue as we have different boards. I called Asrock and told them about this last week and to contact their engineers in Taiwan to fix the darn BIOS.

Mark, glad you got yours working but what a PITA.

[tipes]

I have found my first Asrock board (Extreme 4, Gen3) to be fussy about RAM. First issue was swapping out a 2500k for a 2600k. It suddenly would only show RAM in two slots instead of all 4 and seemed stuck in single channel mode. This last time all I did was move to a different case and heat sink/fan. and I could not even POST. I got error 55 which is RAM. Removed all but one 4GB stick. After posting I added another stick. That was okay so I added back the other two. left the RAM & CPU on the board when moved it. I use Corsair RAM. Why these boards hiccup with RAM issues lead me to believe it's still a BIOS issue as we have different boards. I called Asrock and told them about this last week and to contact their engineers in Taiwan to fix the darn BIOS.

Mark, glad you got yours working but what a PITA.

Your not wrong it is/was a right a right PITA, but as Ket said above at least alls well that ends well. Wish Asrock would get their act together regarding bioses though.
But overall I am still happy with the Asrock board.

Mark

[coldkiss]

Hi,

i have been having a weird problem with my Extreme 4 Gen3.

ever since updating my board to the V2.x Bios i have had problems booting up.

sometimes i get a black screen others i get a message saying it failed to boot if i want to go into the UEFI.

i have had the board tested with Prime, memtest86 and IBT and nothing comes up with any problems.

i had it overclocked when i was using the V1.x bios, where everything worked perfectly, but i am using it with everything stock and user defaults(with a few things changed like using AHCI)

i have tested everything and cant figure out what is wrong. Has anyone else had this problem and found a way to sort it out?

i have used every BIOS revision of 2.x, and it happens on all of them.

on every flash i have reset the CMOS and clear the settings PRIOR to the flash.

My system is:
2500k
8gb Ripjaws
580 GTX
bunch of HDDs that have been removed except for the brand new 830 ssd which it boots from(issues have been happening since before i got this drive)

i have left prime95 and memtest running both for about 4 days each with no errors on stock settings.


Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Quick Edit:
The specs in the sig are what the original owner of this account has. we both have very similar specs and he is the one who forwarded me on to here, if you need more info about my build please feel free to ask.

[Ket]

Have you tried clearing the CMOS by removing the battery, power cord, setting the CMOS jumper to "clear" and pressing the power button 3-4 times to discharge the capacitors? If that doesn't work check your temps. A good infrared temp gun is only about £15 and well worth the purchase in cases such as yours.

[Ket]

I have found my first Asrock board (Extreme 4, Gen3) to be fussy about RAM. First issue was swapping out a 2500k for a 2600k. It suddenly would only show RAM in two slots instead of all 4 and seemed stuck in single channel mode. This last time all I did was move to a different case and heat sink/fan. and I could not even POST. I got error 55 which is RAM. Removed all but one 4GB stick. After posting I added another stick. That was okay so I added back the other two. left the RAM & CPU on the board when moved it. I use Corsair RAM. Why these boards hiccup with RAM issues lead me to believe it's still a BIOS issue as we have different boards. I called Asrock and told them about this last week and to contact their engineers in Taiwan to fix the darn BIOS.

Mark, glad you got yours working but what a PITA.

Without any fancy ways of saying something I'll say it straight - Corsair memory is crap. I had no end of issues with two different kits, the RMAd kit being worse than the first. Switch to G.Skill (except the Ares series) or Geil, and theres no problems.

[coldkiss]

Have you tried clearing the CMOS by removing the battery, power cord, setting the CMOS jumper to "clear" and pressing the power button 3-4 times to discharge the capacitors? If that doesn't work check your temps. A good infrared temp gun is only about £15 and well worth the purchase in cases such as yours.

Hi Ket,

I have done that with every bios flash.

As for temps mine is pretty cool. idle temps are 28C with load(IBT) being about 50C.
GFX card idles at about 35C with its load being about 70C.

the case i have is a cooler master CM 690 Advanced II, with plenty of airflow.

and just in case, the PSU is an Antec Trupower 750w.

Thanks!

[tipes]

Without any fancy ways of saying something I'll say it straight - Corsair memory is crap. I had no end of issues with two different kits, the RMAd kit being worse than the first. Switch to G.Skill (except the Ares series) or Geil, and theres no problems.

Ket,

I must admit to being somewhat shocked at this statement - are you saying corsair is crap now or has always been crap? I have personally used corsair memory in the past without issue.
Indeed I am still running some corsair in a spare rig. Just wondering why you say this.....

Mark

[Ket]

Corsair have always been a very hit and miss manufacturer when it comes to memory. These days the only good memory you are going to see from Corsair is their uber expensive kits. In contrast, even a super cheap 1600MHz 8GB kit of CL9 Ripjaws is likely to be capable of 1866MHz+ with timings along the lines of 10-9-9 @ 1.6v. Like most things, there are manufacturers that have the ball and manufacturers that don't. At this point in time G.Skill and Geil especially have the ball, Corsair... not at all unless you are buying their really expensive memory kits.

[tipes]

Corsair have always been a very hit and miss manufacturer when it comes to memory. These days the only good memory you are going to see from Corsair is their uber expensive kits. In contrast, even a super cheap 1600MHz 8GB kit of CL9 Ripjaws is likely to be capable of 1866MHz+ with timings along the lines of 10-9-9 @ 1.6v. Like most things, there are manufacturers that have the ball and manufacturers that don't. At this point in time G.Skill and Geil especially have the ball, Corsair... not at all unless you are buying their really expensive memory kits.

Hi Ket,

Thanks for the further info - think your right as it happens.Well at least I am running ripjaws x in my main rig - great stuff.

Mark

[MoInSTL]

LOL. I don't know why I typed Corsair. Maybe because I just got a Corsair AF-140 fan. I use 16GB (4x4) Crucial Ballistix Sport.

[Ket]

I haven't tried any Ballistix, but from what I know they are better than average and a very good middle ground.

[Ramon Zarat]

Z68E4G3 2.20 with Intel OROM 11.5.0.1582

Try at your own risk, some people reported memory leak problems with Intel OROM 11.5.0.1582 OROM, I'm using it right now and so far so good.

Before flashing this UEFI, Install newest Intel RST 11.5.2.1001 WHQL (installing newest version right on old one works too), if you will not do it system might not boot after flashing this UEFI !

The purpose of this UEFI is to test if TRIM/Unmap will work with this board in RAID mode, some of us needs this, in Z77 it works already, more here :

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...-Drivers/page9

http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?ca...2&pagenumber=1

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=367100

You said "The purpose of this UEFI is to test if TRIM/Unmap will work with this board in RAID mode," So, what are the conclusions?

I have a second crucial M4 128 on the way. Currently using Intel RST driver 12.0.0.1013 beta for the last week. No memory leak or instability and good performance. BTW, now with this driver, the storage controller is still SATA, but the disk drive section of the device manager refer to my M4 as a SCSI drive instead of SATA as it used to be! (I've read somewhere that this would be necessary to make TRIM work with Z68, so it seem to go in the right direction). Didn't flash my X4G3 BIOS with your moded OROM version yet. Hope to get an official one from ASRock with OROM version 12+ to go with this driver version.

I've read that there are rumors that only the Z77 will ever be able to truly support TRIM in RAID, that there is NO way to make it work on the Z68 due to some obscure hardware limitation. If true, what *exactly* makes it "impossible"? I really hope it's just that, a rumor.

Any update, current information and possible future solution to make TRIM work in RAID on thew Z68 would be very appreciated!

Thanks

Ramon

[TEDY]

Can anyone post all the settings for I5 2500K and Z68E4GEN3 ?

And also pretty please, updates files to install drivers/bios etc? What versions you suggest, etc....pretty please, thanks

My components are:

I5 2500K
SAMSUNG DDR3 GREEN 30nm 2x8GB
TRANQUILLO GELID 2
INTEL SSD 320 120GB
CORSAIR TX650M
MSI N460GTX HAWK
ASROCK Z68 EXTREME4 GEN3

[Ramon Zarat]

Can anyone post all the settings for I5 2500K and Z68E4GEN3 ?

And also pretty please, updates files to install drivers/bios etc? What versions you suggest, etc....pretty please, thanks

My components are:

I5 2500K
SAMSUNG DDR3 GREEN 30nm 2x8GB
TRANQUILLO GELID 2
INTEL SSD 320 120GB
CORSAIR TX650M
MSI N460GTX HAWK
ASROCK Z68 EXTREME4 GEN3

What research have you done so far? What are your conclusions? What kind of problem did you face? What is you current configuration? Why are you not satisfied with that config? What exactly is your goal?


Ramon

[Ramon Zarat]

UPDATE about RAID 0 TRIM on the Z68:

After looking all over the internet, the official Intel statement is: TRIM RAID supported only for Z77 in both Win7 and 8. They say "not supported", not "not compatible". The consensus on the different forum seems that's a deliberate tactic from Intel to block TRIM in RAID on the Z68 (and other 6th generation chipset), that there is no hardware limitation in the Z68 to prevent TRIM from working in RAID. The 2 options that floats around to make it work is to either:

1- Make the RST driver recognize the Z68 as Z77 with a BIOS / OROM mod. One fellow apparently was able to inject the Z77 hardware ID string into a Z68 OROM BIOS (or if you prefer, swap the ID string in the Z68 for the Z77 one) and the RST driver apparently recognized his Z68 as a Z77. He didn't mention if the TRIM function worked after that mod. This will need to be investigated further.

OR

2- To mod the RST driver to disable the Z77 check. Much simpler and less invasive solution than to mod the BIOS. On the other hand, every new driver version would need to be moded, as for the BIOS mod would be a more or less permanent solution as you update BIOS at a much less frequent rate than drivers.

Apparently, there is very good hope TRIM RAID with the Z68 can be achieved, only not with the help of Intel... I don't have the knowledge to swap hardware ID string in BIOS, but I would be willing to test it. Same for moded drivers. My board is an ASrock Exteme4 GEN3 and I have 2 X M4 128GB SSD.


Thanks,

Ramon

[presjar]

Hey guys,

I am having a strange issue with the on board USB3 on the Z68 Extreme4 Gen3.
Firstly, I have never used the USB 3 ports on the rear of the motherboard until today, so I do not know if this issue as always been happening or not.

The problem I am having is, when using the bundled USB 3 Panel plugged into the Extreme4 gen3 USB3 header I am able to read and write to an external HDD at 100MB/s (Measured with CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64) but plugging the same HDD into either of the read USB3 ports gives me a Read speed of 43MB/s and Write of 34MB/s.
Xfast USB is set to normal for all tests. I am currently running the latest Eaton Drivers 1.0.0.112 from their website: http://www.etron.com/EJ168.php Both Etron Host Controllers show in device manager as working correctly.

System Info:
CPU: 2500K Memory: 16GB Kingston HyperX
VGA: GTX580 SLI HDD: 2x 120GB Intel 520 Raid 0 + 2TB WD Black
OS: Win 7 x64

Please let me know if you have any ideas that could help me. (I have also sent this to Asrock support)

Thanks in advance