P8Z68-V,anyone else with a similar issue?

BarBrawllin · 26 Feb 2012 at 16:10

Im just about to send my motherboard back tomorrow for RMA(should have done it last week but i've been busy) and im hoping to god thats whats faulty because i already spent £31 sending back a working graphics card which i had no way of knowing worked or not due to not having another PC to test it in.

To add to the confusion 3 other graphics cards i've tested work in the motherboard perfectly but my 9800GT will not work even though its passed all tests that OcUK performed on it.

I found a few other people on the ASUS forums and some other forums with exactly the same problem im having....1 card will not work(even though its fine) whilst other cards tested work perfectly.....it's as if the motherboard just decides not to play anymore with one specific graphics card,its madness!

I already ruled out PSU by buying a new one(in sig) and the graphics card was sent back to OcUK for testing and passed all the tests. Cleared the CMOS multiple times,even did it overnight,took all components out etc multiple times and rebuilt and it just wont work with my 9800GT.

Has anyone else had this happen or saw other people with this issue before? It's the first time i've ever come across such odd behaviour with a motherboard...... it actualy boots up with the card in one of the other slots but will crash when playing games or anything at all stressfull. It's not a broken slot because i tested 3 different models of ATI cards and all of them worked for hours worth of gaming! The 9800GT isnt even detected in the main x16 PCIe slot......

Am i just one of a very few unlucky people who got a defective board? And can anyone even explain why it would behave in such a manner? Im just annoyed and confused and want answers that will hopefully put my mind at rest whilst i RMA the board.

BarBrawllin · 26 Feb 2012 at 16:28

wazza300 said:
could simply be a bios/incompatibility issue with that model/make of graphic card,you would be worthwhile emailing asus support and telling them your problem,maybe they will send you a beta bios to test

I see other people with the same issue as me having it resolved by getting a new motherboard so doesn't that kind of rule out the BIOS as being an issue? The thing i find strange is that they all had a working machine at the start then it "broke" later as if something physicly changed on the board or in some part of the BIOS that isnt wiped when the CMOS is cleared. All the people i saw with this issue bought their board between October and December,thats the only pattern i've noticed to this. At first i was blaming myself for buying a cheap(£20) PSU thinking maybe there was a voltage spike or something that wrecked it but after reading other people posting on other forums with the exact same issue and all of them having good PSU's i've ruled this out as far as im concerned.

My only concern now is how long the RMA process will take? Anyone got any estimates? If anyone says 2 weeks or longer then i want a refund tbh.I mean its not my fault that ASUS cost me £31 in fee's for testing a fully working graphics card. If i buy a kettle from currys and it breaks,they dont send it away to the manufacturer and then give me a new one back 28 days later,its either replaced on the spot or refunded and i want the same respect as a customer of PC equipment considering the amount of money it costs to buy it compared to a cheap kettle!

BarBrawllin · 26 Feb 2012 at 16:48

wazza300 said:
your lucky asus will even replace it considering there shoddy rma policies but good luck on things

Can you elaborate further on this? If they have shoddy RMA policies then im never buying anything made by them EVER again. :mad:

BarBrawllin · 26 Feb 2012 at 17:02

wazza300 said:
it depends on what the problem is,for example asus wont go anywhere near cpu socket damage fix/replacement whereas gigabyte fix/replace usually free of charge

you might be fine with your rma i was just speaking from experience,asus boards are great boards but there support isnt as great as other manufacturers imo

I checked all the pins with a x20 jewellers magnifier and each one of them looked identical to the others and theres no physical damage to the board so im ok there,the only thing im worried about is them getting the thing back and plugging in some random graphics card and saying "it works" then sending it back to me.

I tested 3 other graphics cards(ATI 3650/4850/6770) and each of them worked fine!.The 9800GT is not detected by the motherboard but overclockers.co.uk said that they tested the GPU and it was 100% working. I knew this was gonna take a large amount of my time when it first "broke" i just had that gut feeling...i even said to the overclockers support guy "i hope its just not some weird glitch with my motherboard not liking my card" before i sent it away for RMA lol....i should have sent back the whole bundle of parts tbh and let overclockers sort it out,at least that would have been worth the £31 testing fee(7 quid postage and £23.50 for the actual testing + postage back)

BarBrawllin · 26 Feb 2012 at 17:18

Yeah its definetly not a windows/driver issue. I ruled that out 100% by doing a fresh install etc,i've actualy tried everything you can think of around 5 times or more and nothing will make it work. As far as this motherboard is concerned,the 9800GT doesn't exist.

I considered buying an ATI 6770 or 6580 but i also have another 480 GTX in storage that i want to use when i get all my property back out of the temporary storage unit that the council arranged for me and my family(they wont let me take anything out untill they find us a permanent place to stay,"only" been waiting 8 months already lol)

I dont want to waste money on another graphics card just to make life easy for a few months only to find out later on that my 480 GTX doesn't work in my motherboard because i didnt do the right thing and RMA it to begin with.

I've been reading other forums inbetween replying back to here and i can find many many people with bad experiences with these motherboards and it all seems to be related to graphics cards not working. I think ASUS needs to re-evaluate their Q.C procedure.

EDIT- Im still reading threads on other forums related to this motherboard and its relatives(P8Z68-V pro, etc) and its plain to see they have a huge amount of unhappy customers! The thing really worrying me is the amount of people who have had to send their board back more than once because the same fault appears again (no VGA). I even seen more than one person stating that doing something as simple as changing the order of the boot devices is bricking their motherboards with no recovery! This isnt just a coincidence,the Z68 chipset motherboards from asus seem to be junk( i know MOST people will have a good experience with them but i've found a lot of people having nothing but trouble with this board and even having to RMA more than once). Now i feel glad about all the other computers i had that didnt have any weird problems like this,id read threads from other people moaning about their problems and always wonder why the hell are they having an issue?lol Now i know why....sometimes u just get really bad luck. I wont ever be buying a motherboard again without checking the forums first for stuff like this,lesson learned.

BarBrawllin · 6 Mar 2012 at 13:40

Another update,i bought a 460 GTX 1GB on the offchance that maybe its just a weird compatability issue with the graphics card/motherboard combination since all the other ATI cards i tested worked. I plugged it in installed the drivers,restarted the PC and played crysis 2. I was instantly treated to major graphical artifacts! I will be testing the card in another PC within a couple of days and returning the motherboard back to overclockers and i will update this again with the results after i complete those 2 tasks. I hope its just the otherboard lol. Im getting a bad feeling im now stuck with a broken 460 GTX and a duff motherboard but we wont know untill i test the card and send the motherboard back so wish me luck and thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to give their opinions advice over the last couple of months its helped to keep me sane lol.

BarBrawllin · 10 Mar 2012 at 12:48

shankly1985 said:
has said above see if they a bios update, when I got my asrock z68 extreme4, my 7950 wouldn't work I had to update bios for it to work.

Thanks for the suggestion ,i just found a new BIOS that was released yesterday so i will try that,but i know it wont work.Why? Because the PCIe slots are broken. How do i know? Because both my GTX 460 and 9800GT work in the x4 slot with no graphics glitches so the cards are not faulty. 3 other ATI cards i tested work in the board,even in the PCIe x16 slots but the Nvidia cards wont!. (wich i dont understand)

Another thing,when i apply pressure to the cards in the x16 slot so that im pushing the card into the slot,not much pressure just a bit,the nvidia cards will work in that slot. As soon as i take my hand off the card,i get weird glitches on screen. if i keep my hand on it i can play games(one handed lol)
What i dont get,is why i dont have to do with with the ATI graphics cards i've tested? I just plug them in and they work,even in the x16 and x8 slots! but with the nvidia cards i have to keep pushing down on them so they are being pushed into the slot the whole time,wtf? Can somebody please explain how that sort of behaviour is even possable?

All i know is that the motherboard is a total mess and not working and will be getting sent back.

Its not my PC case because im using the PC out of the case sitting on my table so i can see the cards fully inserted etc lol.

This is one confusing motherboard

BarBrawllin · 12 Mar 2012 at 14:16

I fixed it,but im not going to explain how because anything i do say may, and will, be given in evidence.

Lets just say i didnt have to wait very long for my replacement motherboard in the end hehe.

EDIT* i guess i was wrong the replacement i bought still doesnt work so im back to square 1

BarBrawllin · 12 Mar 2012 at 14:37

colinmcr said:
Please explain I have the same motherboard and had issue with gfx card not working as soon as I started a game. But it wasn't the motherboard that was at fault it was the gfx card see here for explanation http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18363570

Would just like to know as I have the same mobo.

Let me have a read over it m8 and see if i see any similarity!

**Rant time lol.Well,i just looked over it and i see you seemed to have the same problem as me at the start......graphics card not working right. I found that the 9800GT wasn't "refurbished" quite as well as it should have been and had to re-apply thermal paste to the GPU to cool the temperatures. Everything worked fine for a couple of weeks (i think it was a couple of weeks,tbh my heads pickled from herbs and chemicals so timeframes dont work for me lol) then i decided to update my z68 chipset driver......all went well and the PC restarted......and the screen stayed black! :eek:

I could see/hear the hard disk was "doing stuff" so i plugged the moniter cable into the onboard VGA port and i saw the windows logon screen :confused:

So i took the card out,cleaned the gold connector pins on the card just incase they were greasy or something and carefully reseated the card into the PCIe slot and it still wouldnt work,but it worked on the other 2 slots. So i thought "hmm,my motherboards PCIe x16 slot is broken".......so to test that theory i installed 3 other ATI cards and used them for hours with no issues! I was like wtf the slots working! So im sat here thinking its the 9800GT lol.

I sent the 9800GT back and got told its working perfect passed all tests just like you got told by overclockers! i was gutted i had to pay for the testing fee but thats life lol. So i was like meh i'll use the x8 slot and then that stopped working too with the 9800GT!

People on this forum kindly suggested to me that it could be a "compatability" problem with this specific GPU and motherboard so i bought a brand new 460 GTX 1GB just to test that theory because i didnt want to be sitting with no PC for weeks whilst waiting for a new motherboard from ASUS.

So...i plug the 460 GTX into the PCIe x16 slot and it boots up! no black screen! Im like "YESSS!!!!" LOL

I go to play a game and get treated to a large gride of weird coloured squares :eek:

I try the PCIe x8 slot and its the same story! I done a couple of tests....somebody sugested maybe the cards not seated properly (i have everything out of the case so it was seated just fine but i thought meh,i'll try anyway) ......i kept my hand on the PCB of the 460 GTX pushing it down gently into the slot as the pc started up and loaded up some games.....they all worked fine...as soon as i removed my hand,BOOM! Artifacts all over the place. I tried this in the PCIe x16 slot and found that the same thing would happen and i had to push down a little harder for the card to work compared to the x16 slot. As soon as the pressure was taken away the machine would crash with artifacts on screen :mad:

So i tried it in my PCIe x4 slot and it works perfectly. I Ran some VRAM tests and it passed them all. Same with the 9800GT. This leads me to beleive that the ATI and NVIDIA cards use different pins for different things and that the loose connections that messed up the nvidia cards didnt effect the ATI cards.

So in the end for me it was faulty PCIe slots and i just got the motherboard swapped over for an identical one