Dead X38-DQ6

Thorne

Thorne

Thorne

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While trying to get my X38 to work with the Geil 8500 Black dragon at 1600 and following advice from Giga byte tec support I set the DDR memory to the 2.4V as required by the memory, the subsequent boot has failed and it appears that the Bios is now corrupt, the unit just enters a power up / down loop .

Another board to be returned so not looking good for the X38-DQ6's so far.
 
Reset the CMOS, take out the battery for 10 minutes and put it back in and you should be up and running again. 2.4v sounds really high for DDR2, and also 1600Mhz?! Also the DQ6 is the flagship model, I think that thing comes with Quad BIOS to protect from BIOS corruptions or dodgy flashing of the BIOS but I'm not sure how it works.
 
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flibby said:
Reset the CMOS, take out the battery for 10 minutes and put it back in and you should be up and running again. 2.4v sounds really high for DDR2, and also 1600Mhz?! Also the DQ6 is the flagship model, I think that thing comes with Quad BIOS to protect from BIOS corruptions or dodgy flashing of the BIOS but I'm not sure how it works.
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Sorry I meant to put 1066 not 1600, the Geil 8500 Black Dragon runs between 2.2 and 2.4v, I raised this problem with Giga-byte tec support and they said to set the DDR Voltage to 2.5v. I had tried taking the cmos battery out for an hour with the power disconnected and still the same problem

The DQ6 does come with Quad Bios but its looking like the DDR voltage increase has completely corrupted all the Bios and although its quoted as a quad Bios there are only two copies of the Bios on the motherboard and both of these are in the same Flash memory, the other copies of the bios are stored on the harddrive.
 
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Fixed !!!

Not sure why it worked but it did, I was going to remove the motherboard to RMA it this morning after putting the CMOs battery back in and trying it only to get the same power up/down loop which I let run for several cycles just to make sure I got the same problem , the on board speaker made no sound and each time the unit power up for a few seconds the powered down again. I started stripping down the machine and as I removed each component I tried a further power up , so no harddrives and still the same, no graphics card and still the same but I let it run a few power up down cycles anyway and still the same results.

Finally Removed some of the memory down to one stick on slot 1 and still the same, then removed all memory and let it boot, first cycle was the same but then on the second power up down cycle I got bios beeps indicating a memory fault, replaced the first memory stick and a graphics card and its booted and working fine although now only at 800, not risking setting it to 1066 again until i get some different gigabyte recommended memory. Luckily it turned out the Bios suffered no corruption.

I am not sure why this has worked since the voltage settings should have been in the cmos which had been wiped but I can only think its been a DDR2 Voltage problem.

Anyone any ideas as to why this worked ?
 
frustin said:
I think you answered your own questions: "until i get some different gigabyte recommended memory"
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What I dont understand is why the removal of all memory resoved this issue, I will only get gigabyte approved memory for taking it up to 1066 even though Gigabyte have already told me that there should be no problem With the Geil memory.

I increased the DDR2 voltage to 2.4V and that caused the problem , surely wiping the cmos should clear this setting but it didnt appear to , I want to know why does making the board boot with no memory clear the problem ?
 
Why would memory need to go through any kind of apporval process?
The OcUK RAM would do just as fine for the purposes you need it for?
It's not like Gigabyte looking at the RAM and saying "fine" will make it work any different?
 
Talrinys said:
Why would memory need to go through any kind of apporval process?
The OcUK RAM would do just as fine for the purposes you need it for?
It's not like Gigabyte looking at the RAM and saying "fine" will make it work any different?
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Seems very inconsistant that the Geil 8500 memory worked fine in my P35-DQ6 at 1066 but then fails in my X38-DQ6 at 1066. Gigabyte said there should be no issue but all they could offer was that they had no problem on there test system running 2.4v but using different memory so not really a vaild comparison.
 
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Thorne said:
While trying to get my X38 to work with the Geil 8500 Black dragon at 1600 and following advice from Giga byte tec support I set the DDR memory to the 2.4V as required by the memory, the subsequent boot has failed and it appears that the Bios is now corrupt, the unit just enters a power up / down loop .

Another board to be returned so not looking good for the X38-DQ6's so far.
Click to expand...

Same as. It starts to power up for about seven seconds then powers down every time.
 
Rezident said:
Same as. It starts to power up for about seven seconds then powers down every time.
Click to expand...

The first board I bought has that problem and it going to be sent back , it was faulty on arrival and I tried different processors and memory , it powers up and then down and then up and repeats the same loop,I tried the same trick that fix the new one after the memory config change but the first one still doesnt boot.
 
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musx64 said:
Is that a PSU or Motherboard Issue as I have the same Problem with My Gigabyte DS2R Setup ?
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I think this may be a bios issue since I have seen this sort of problem on both my P35-DQ6 and my X38-DQ6, on the P35 I did a bios upgrade from F4 to F5 to then find after a few working boots that the unit then enter the power up down loop, after letting this run for serveral loops and also several manual reboots I was force to strip the machine down and only managed to get a boot after changing the processor and memory, I am not sure why this let the machine boot but I then installed F6 Bios and then replaced the original processor and memory and its work without a fault since.

The X38 showed a similar power up / down problem after trying to up the DDR voltage for 1066 memory. On the reboot all I get was the up / down loop and nothing was fixing it. Removing and wiping CMOS did nothing and that was all the advice I got from Giga-Byte. I wasnt even getting any bios beeps to indicate what the error might be.

This was another Machine strip down and with just a processor and one stick of memory I still got the same problem, only when I removed all memory and tried a boot, this did cause the Bios to beep finally indicating a base memory error, I replace the memory and it came back to life.

This does seem to me to be a Bios related problem and clearing the CMOS dosent seem to clear all the issues, Giga Byte tec support have been unable to provide any explaination for what these issues
 
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