Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 boot problems.

fizzy · 6 Nov 2012 at 19:49

Hi,

Bought a gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 and I7 3770K which arrived today, upgrading from an AMD system.

Was going to reuse my True 120 but found out the intel fitting kit is 775 only, and is too small for 1155.

That's first set back.

I had bought the retail cpu pack so can at least test the system with stock heatsink. Fitted that and 2 x 8 GB geil dragon ram. Initial testing is with on board GFX.

Switch on PSU and power light/button on board lights up. Press it and I get a brief burst of fan and lights and then it stops. Power light on board stays on but pressing it then has no effect.

No beeps from speaker or anything, and no codes displayed on the supposedly handy two digit debug panel either....

Have to switch off psu, and back on again to get the same response.

Does this sound like a duff board or am I just missing something obvious? Tried bios switch in both positions in case of a bad bios setting but no effect.

Spent a lot of money on this and was looking forward to setting things up tonight too.

Update - Tried another psu (a 420w matx one) and it boots up, does a few reboot cycles then stops on a beep and code on the debug display - A9 I think. Probably just needs configuring. Don't know why it doesn't like my original psu (an FSP Blue 700w psu) that has been powering my other system quite happily... odd. Some progress at least...

stulid · 6 Nov 2012 at 20:01

Have you plugged the extra 8pin ATX connector in?

fizzy · 6 Nov 2012 at 21:09

stulid said:
Have you plugged the extra 8pin ATX connector in?

Yup - first thing I checked. All power cables seated ok.

Remembered I had a corsair HX psu around which I fitted. Powered up and it was a bit odd. Fans/lights came on for a brief time - then stopped. Then a few seconds again, for a little longer. Then another boot attempt. Did this on it's own a fair few times but then booted up fine.

I'm actually using it now and seems ok - does this board have some odd/fancy detection routine on fresh installs that involves a lot of auto power cycles - or is it just my board playing up?

I'll monitor it and see if it shows any power issues later...

stulid · 6 Nov 2012 at 21:28

On the first go it can do.

Also when you ask for a restart, it does a hard off (seems like its actually powered off completely) but thats normal and then it kicks back into life.

fizzy · 7 Nov 2012 at 02:28

Ok - had a look on gigabytes site and found a lot of bios downloads for the board. I thought it was a pretty new board - so surprised to find mine was on version F3 when F11 is the latest.

Their supported cpu list had "since F8" on just about all the cpus listed.

Updated to F11 and things seem to be running a lot better - boot times have definitely improved. Drivers next...

DVD that came with the board is quite out of date.

spoony77 · 7 Nov 2012 at 08:32

My gigabyte ud3h did this first boot as well.
Took a lot of tweaking to get clean cold boots I think not using xmp profile but manual ram timings and bclk at 100.10 helped the most.

stulid · 7 Nov 2012 at 08:33

Yeah, using the disk supplied out of the box is for rookies.

It's like GFX cards, never use the disk supplied and get the latest from the manufacturer.

Pabl0 · 7 Nov 2012 at 10:10

Mine was acting abit odd before I updated the latest bios, big improvement and awesome boot times.

fizzy · 7 Nov 2012 at 10:34

stulid said:
Yeah, using the disk supplied out of the box is for rookies.

It's like GFX cards, never use the disk supplied and get the latest from the manufacturer.

Yeah - but it's a chicken/egg scenario.... need network drivers to get onto the internet, but need updated drivers from the net.....

Was just trying to get working first... updating/tweaking later. Just needed a bit earlier than expected.

wazza300 · 7 Nov 2012 at 11:08

fizzy said:
Yeah - but it's a chicken/egg scenario.... need network drivers to get onto the internet, but need updated drivers from the net.....

Was just trying to get working first... updating/tweaking later. Just needed a bit earlier than expected.

you can install the lan drivers off the motherboard disk,those wont cause you any issues,then once on the web update them to the newest version

fizzy · 7 Nov 2012 at 11:39

wazza300 said:
you can install the lan drivers off the motherboard disk,those wont cause you any issues,then once on the web update them to the newest version

Indeed - which is what I did.

Obviously this wouldn't have resolved the initial odd power/booting issues though. All I can think of is that even though the psu is 750 it has 4 x 12v power rails - so perhaps a single 12v rail isn't powerful enough for this board/cpu combo, or some psu safety feature not liking the new style power regulators on the board.

Still - seems ok now on corsair psu and booted up fine this morning, so got there eventually. I've built a fair few pcs and servers in my time, and this was one of the more "quirky" (i.e. frustrating) ones.

wazza300 · 7 Nov 2012 at 11:55

did you flash to the latest bios? that might help

fizzy · 7 Nov 2012 at 13:02

wazza300 said:
did you flash to the latest bios? that might help

See post #5.

wazza300 · 7 Nov 2012 at 13:13

f12a is the latest up5 th beta bios

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/upload/files/z77x-up5-th_F12a.zip

might help,using a beta bios myself much better memory clocking and usb mouse works in bios now,flashing the back up chip with the main bios version might help,spam alt and f10 at splash screen