DFI Ultra-D...SUDDEN DEATH (Part Two)

[conrad.maranan]

First, I experienced a great deal of sadness. Fine. I can accept the fact that, sometimes, these things happen unexpectedly and without valid cause. This is the reason why manufacturers and retailers extend RMAs to their customers.

I woke up fairly late today. Staying up until 5:00am watching television has that effect on me. But guess what I woke up to? The sound of Mr. Federal Express knocking on my door.



I greet Mr. Federal Express with a mouthful of funky morning breath. He tells me where to sign. I take my packages, close the door, and run over to the living room with box in hand and a morning hard-on to go with it. Box is ripped open and my replacement DFI Ultra-D is lookin' sexy.

Everything gets plugged in. This time, I chose to play around with some OCZ TCCD instead of the VX. Everything boots up at default settings on the shipping BIOS (01/25) and I'm off to test out the VMOD I had performed on my 6600 Non-GT.

After one hour of trying to find a sweet spot for my card, I decide to give it a rest. Everything is still at default BIOS settings. Here's the plan: shut down the computer, smoke a cigarette in the patio, come back inside, format the HDD, and reclaim my throne on the 6600 Non-GT ORB.

Guess what? I've got fans spinning, some pretty LEDs, and no signal to the monitor. Deja vu? Call it what you want but after 3 hours of messing around with the board, I'm callin' it quits. And just to top it all off, Newegg will not be giving me a refund for this board. I'm going to have to ship it back to them and wait another week for them to send me the same exact board...just so I can experience the same exact problem again. Sweet deal. I'm not even going to open the box for the replacement, so if you're in the market for a DFI Ultra-D, hit me up. I'm picking up an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum.

[MaxxxRacer]

man that sucks hard.. whats the diff between the DR and the D. I would look it up but im much to darn lazy.

[tictac]

sorry to hear that

[naelq]

what a crap!
tell bud, are you using any USB mouse/keyboard? maybe the info in of the threads here will help you, though i'm not that sure since you've have it running, but who knows...

more to add, how about investigating your other hardware? maybe you have a kamikaze one over there, that misses the MoBo, eh?

again, sorry to hear about that.

[HARDCORECLOCKER]

Unbelievable - send OPB a PM that he can report to OSKAR. 1 time O.K. - but 2 times the same issue should not happen. So I'm looking forward anxious what will happen to my RMA'd bord when comming back to me..........

Sure - there is the MSI NEO4, but I need 1,8 Vcore for my FX and I read about the NEO4 is not able to deliver that voltage even with the 20% + trick.

We will see....., good luck to You.

[GRAFiZ]

Dont want to sound like a jerk, but, I dont think it's the motherboards creating this problem.

Being that this has happened twice, and in the exact same manor, one has to start thinking there is an outside influence.

Could it be your power supply? I also wonder if the voltage mod on your video card isn't killing these motherboards?

I mean, it's not beyond possible in any way, but to go through two boards and get the same end result is more then just poor QC.

Good luck with it bro, hopefully the third times the charm on this one.

[conrad.maranan]

The difference between the D and DR is four SATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil3114 chip.

I can guarantee that the other threads regarding USB voltage jumpers, bent capacitors, and what have you will have no effect on my board. The problem is much deeper than that. Again, the mods on DFI-Street are not sharing something that the rest of the community should be aware of. Why? I do not know.

The hardware I used is the same hardware others are using with success. A Newcastle processor, TCCD memory, PowerStream 520W PSU, and a Raptor hard drive. I tested with VX on my first Ultra-D, so I decided to give my TCCD a shot this time around.

I don't mind the lack of options on the Neo4. I'm sure I'll find a few VMODS that can easily be implemented to give me close to what I'll need. I just need a board that will last longer than a few hours and the DFI is just not a lucky board for me right now.

[conrad.maranan]

Could it be your power supply?

I doubt it. A lot of people are running the same exact PSU on the same board without grief. I have also tested my Zippy PSU with the same result.

I also wonder if the voltage mod on your video card isn't killing these motherboards?

Absolutely not. I did not have a VMODed card for my first board. I only performed the VMOD on my card last night, and that was over 12 hours prior to the arrival of my replacement board.

I mean, it's not beyond possible in any way, but to go through two boards and get the same end result is more then just poor QC.

I know. And this is why I believe that there is something more to it than just the basics. With this board, I didn't even get to flash the BIOS or modify any setting in BIOS. It was completely stock and untouched. Not even the date in BIOS was changed.

Good luck with it bro, hopefully the third times the charm on this one.

Thanks, bro. But when the 3rd board comes in, I'm selling it to avoid the same hassles.

[Rabbi_NZ]

Really sorry to hear this Conrad, I know how much you have prepared for this rig.

Jus for shts and giggles have you tried unplugging the PSU from the board completely and leaving it, then plugging it in again and powering up?
The Zippy has a known issue with the DFI, but I mean putting the OCZ back in again...
Sounds like after a restart something real dodgy is happening... something not initialising properly or jus plain corrupting itself.

Good luck with the Neo4, let us know how that goes bro.... and good luck in dominating the 6600 class!

[eclypse]

What is the known prob with the zippy P/S with the DFI boards? I have the same setup with the 700 WATT zip..

[conrad.maranan]

Alex - I've tried everything, bro. The first board was even allowed to sit inside of its box overnight. I never got anything more than a bunch of fans whirling and a few LEDs. I can accept bad luck when it comes to hardware not overclocking to my satisfaction. But bad luck with hardware just randomly having a stroke is completely unacceptable to me.

eclypse - There are several of us here that are not able to boot our systems with the 4.0VDIMM jumper enabled while using the 700W Zippy. It works fine, though, with the jumper in the default position.

[bito]

Have you tried removing the battery from the board, with no power connected m8?
Real bad luck, with two boards

[conrad.maranan]

Yes. I've removed the battery, set the jumper to clear CMOS, set the jumper to safe boot, unplugged everything. Nothing works.

[Zebo]

Man that's fusked up. :| I may have to stop recommend this board. She's built but I've been hearing to much BS.http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...&enterthread=y

[conrad.maranan]

Don't get me wrong. I've had 2 DFI 754 boards. They were excellent. The new DFI 939 boards are just as good (for other people). They're just not good for me and it's starting to hurt me feelings.

[Zebo]

250GB is good or god. But I dunno about this one. I was doing some searching and found about 14 threads at AT and serveral here with same GD issue. Just won't boot. I'm not going to start rumor but poor QC at minimum.

[mdzcpa]

Boy that sucks! Sorry to hear of the troubles.

That said, given the thousands of DFI NF4 boards that sold in the span of a few days, and the fact that there is only a handful of dead mobo reports around the net (even a report of 20 dead boards is nothing when compared to what sold), its hard to say there is any "issue". In fact, given the huge number of boards that sold in such a short period, I would have expected to see more reports. If there was a real issue, you'd see DFI Street full of dead mobo reports....not just a handful like we are seeing.

I dunno what others might think, but two boards going down the exact same way seems to indicate something you are doing, or something in your hardware config, that is the common denominator. There just isn't a large enough percentage of bad boards out there to support the theory that you happen to receive two bad boards as a practical explanation.

Not ragging, just suggesting you double check your whole system. Good Luck!

[soundx98]

Excuse me, I had to go change my underwear after reading your 1st post.

My replacement board arrives today.
I bought another rather than wait on an RMA.
Let's hope this one is without issues and the RMA board is repaired/replaced.

My 1st setup went without a hitch and was smooth sailing until it went down. Still not sure it was the board or me that caused it.

Whatever has caused the problem is made completely frustrating by the fact you CANNOT enter the bios. You're screwed, blued, and tatooed. Would a bios savior solve the issue? I didn't use one. Most of us still have it in our NF2! But even with a newly flashed bios chip I was unable to enter bios.

I don't think DFI-street mods or anyone else know positively what is happening. Otherwise there would definately be a fix out. DFI has been through this before. I have to believe it is some type of Bios corruption.

conrad, I want you to know, I really feel bad for ya. Hoping the re-built rig is problem free. For both of us. good luck brutha.

[Unrealcpu]

His motherboard isnt grounding properly.
Change out all the motherboad screws and use smaller ones.

this has happened to me alot. the board is fine

[cantankerous]

I don't believe this. Conrad, you of all people are the one I was anxiously waiting for a response from on your new board. Now you tell me its dead again in a couple hours? This is getting really hectic. It seems more and more that this is happening. Poor QC is right. I heard of other people getting their boards only to have the onboard power and reset buttons broken off floating around the box.

The more I hear this the more I am staying away from the DFI as I have heard many others are doing. I really don't feel like these hassles. Let me know how the MSI goes as I may go that route too. I have most of the stuff for my new setup except the board as I was leary to get the DFI after these stories. I am going cpu hunting today and then getting myself a new gpu and im done.

[Poki]

I glanced through your previous thread also and have to ask if you've tried a PCI video card in there?
I certainly would try everything possible to get this figured out, normally something reoccuring like this is not a coincidence.
Try:
no mouse/only a ps2 keyboard/no hdd/cdrom/floppy with only one vidcard pci or pci-e.
When using USB mouse/kb try all USB ports as on most boards no all of them initialize properly on boot. If you are using the sound module thingy try disconnecting that too.
GL with whatever you do but i would really like to see your problem fixed or found.

[Wolf]

Bummer man. I setup my board last night and it went the smoothest an upgrade has gone in quite a while for me. No problems what so ever and I was expecting quite a few.. Are you using the 5v rail for ram on both of these boards? Just curious. It does sound kinda fishy two boards dead same symptoms .That's whats so aggravating about DFI is it the board or the user.

[JDizzle]

Sorry to hear about your board conrad. It does seem like DFI is having some CQ issue just as they did back in the nf2 days. Some people would get really great overclocking boards and others would get board that would not even post.

I was one of those people that got a bad nf2 board back in the day but decided to give DFI another try after I heard the nf3 were alot better. Now it seems as though they are having the same issue as they did back then so for now I would stay away from DFI. I think I've seen over 20 threads on various forums about DFI sudden death.

[HARDCORECLOCKER]

Hm, think it's time for the ultimate solution:



What's good for ASUS should also work on DFI..............

[Mtemel]

"The difference between the D and DR is four SATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil3114 chip."

but what does this mean or do
??