Which board?

Nix

Nix

Nix

Soldato
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26 Dec 2005
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Currently thinking about getting a new z77 motherboard to upgrade my Gigabyte Z77-d3h.

Any opinions on which I should go for?

Budget ~£150.
 
You don't want to replace a good Z77 board with another, it's a dead platform - I'd wait until you want to upgrade your CPU too.
 
That's a fair point teppic. I'm just concerned I've got conflicts with my mobo at the moment although there's every chance it's actually my SSD boot causing it. It definitely makes more sense to get a 1150 CPU & board in a year or so, though.
 
I'd rule everything else out first, make sure the BIOS is at the latest, reset it to optimised defaults, etc. Booting problems can sometimes be solved by disconnecting all your drives before you reset and save it.
 
Firmware and drivers are all up-to-date.

I have an 128Gb OCZ Vertex 4 SSD for boot, running Win 7 64bit and a secondary 500Gb WD Blue HD for games.

When the WD arrived, I installed a temporary OS on that to test and didn't have any drops/resets/BSODs.

I then disabled TRIM on my SSD (see here) which seemed to initially fix the problem, however I've been once again getting a few black-screen resets and a few idle-drops (looks like it goes into sleep-mode but hasn't and cannot be roused) so it's something I wish to look to fix.

The two common problems I have are:

1. After an initial start-up, at some point after about 5-10 minutes the computer will just die but once it has been reset, it is happy for the rest of the evening.

2. I've been playing a few games (booted via SSD, loaded via WD) recently and been having my games randomly crash on me, needing to reset the computer. A reset doesn't always fix for the evening. On one occasion with HL2, I had to reset a couple of times.

The only thing I haven't tried are different ports on the mobo and/or different cables.

However, my gut feeling is that it was either the board or the SSD causing the problem.
 
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Is the SSD's controller a Sandforce one? A lot of them have had problems causing resets and BSODs. It's very likely the SSD either way. Can you borrow another to try? If not, there are plenty of £70ish deals on 128GB SSDs now.
 
I'm not sure. Is there a way I can find out? I checked again last night and the SSD's firmware is still up-to-date.
 
The OCZ website says it uses 'Indilinx Everest 2'. But the problems you describe sound like SSD issues that have been reported a lot. Are you running the Intel RST drivers rather than the stock Microsoft SATA drivers?

I'd also try connecting the SSD to one of the SATA 2 ports. It'll obviously be slower, but if the problem goes away that'd suggest the SSD as well (or possibly a faulty cable).
 
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I'm not sure. I installed all the drivers for the board, and chipset, etc. and then did Windows Update on top.

Device Manager > Properties says it's provided by Microsoft, though.
 
You should definitely install the Intel drivers, either from the motherboard page at Gigabyte's site or from Intel. I don't think Windows update picks them up.
 
I definitely installed them from GB's website before the window's update, but I found GB a slight pain in the backside.

I'll retry from Intel direct and get back to you.
 
teppic said:
Is the SSD's controller a Sandforce one? A lot of them have had problems causing resets and BSODs. It's very likely the SSD either way. Can you borrow another to try? If not, there are plenty of £70ish deals on 128GB SSDs now.
Click to expand...

OCZ vertex 4 uses Indilinx Everest 2 & not sandforce SF-2281. OCZ vertex 3 uses sandforce controller & is very good. Had you purchased Vertex 3 you would not had this issue. This very clearly indicates sandforce's reliability always stands high!
 
I just got home from work to find my computer refusing to boot and post.

I cleared the CMOS which fixed the issue.

Is it likely that the SSD could cause such a problem?
 
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