Sabertooth 990fx Rev 2.0 - ethernet totally gone & other weirdness

mikelkite · 15 Mar 2018 at 15:40

Sabertooth 990fx Rev 2.0 motherboard, the onboard ethernet NIC has totally broken. As in, when I install the driver (realtek) it says its in deep sleep mode possibly.

Nothing in device manager for it at all, but thats not where the weirdness stops.

So I have used several PCI/PCIe gigabit network cards, now I cant as I have all the slots populated with RAID cards and 2x1080ti's so literally have no room to put one.

I bought a gigabit > usb 3.0 connector, but it seems to give me some of the most shocking speeds through it. Its plugged into a USB 3.0 port but for the life of me cannot work out why - CAT6e cable too.

Has anyone got a clue as to why :

- Onboard ethernet is not working (I head about taking the cmos and RAM out of the mobo to reset it)
- Why my usb 3.0 to gig NIC runs like poo?

mikelkite · 15 Mar 2018 at 15:49

I should add - I've tried 2 different usb 3.0 to Gigabit connectors and in different usb ports

Vince · 15 Mar 2018 at 15:54

mikelkite said:
I should add - I've tried 2 different usb 3.0 to Gigabit connectors and in different usb ports

Mate had very similar problems, could you be hitting the limits of the chipset in terms of PCI-E lanes? Way to check, remove 1 gpu, if everything starts working then your at the limits of your chipset.

bremen1874 · 15 Mar 2018 at 16:03

mikelkite said:
CAT6e cable too.

Typo? If it really is labelled as Cat6e junk it.

mikelkite · 15 Mar 2018 at 16:17

Typo lol, its CAT6 but my brain farted and thought CAT5e.

I thought it could be PCI lanes being used, the AC1900 dongle I have in there gives me fairly decent speeds over wifi, but I need to get a new wifi AP in my office, the linksys/cisco one I have is old a hell.

I have a TP link archer C7 but when I tried it last it was giving me the most rubbish speeds to test with!

mikelkite · 15 Mar 2018 at 16:28

What I really want is an answer why the onboard one has dropped off! Never had a NIC die on me before!

bremen1874 · 15 Mar 2018 at 16:38

They do occasionally die.

Is it still dead if you boot into a Linux Live environment?

How slow is the USB 3.0 adapter? I just tried copying a couple of 10GB files to/from my server using my laptop's (Dell) USB adapter and it managed to average 70MBps and was up over 100MBps for a while. It was busy installing updates at the time so was a bit up and down.

mikelkite · 15 Mar 2018 at 16:47

I'll try a linux boot and see what happens - didnt think of doing that!

The USB adapter was giving me like 30mbps down but 21mbps up (300mb virgin line - hardwired is 300 down and 21up)