X38-DQ6 Problems

Thorne

Thorne

Thorne

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3 Jun 2005
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130
Ok I know this is a very new release and not many people may have one yet but I receved mine today and straight away having problems booting.

I installed the new board moving over all the components from my P35-DQ6 , this being a QX6850 and 4x1 gig of 8500 Geil Black Dragon Ram and the BFG 8800 GTX.

All I get is a loop of power up for about 21 seconds the it powers down and then a repeating loop of the same.

The motherboard only contains the about components with no drives connected.

Has anyone else purchased a X38-DQ6 yet and had any problems
 
Try with inly 1 set of ram in, or failing that, 1 stick of ram, worth a try for a new board...
 
I tried with just one stick and still the same, tried a different processor now as well and still the same

its similar to a fault I had on the P35-DQ6 when I did a bios upgrade to F5 from F4 where it did the same boot up down routine , changing the processor to an older Pentium D manged to get that to boot and did a downgrade to F4 bios stabilised that problem, I guess that was a bios problem as F6 Bios came out soon after and that been stable so far.

I am going to try out some different memory later I just wanted to know if anyone else have tried out a X38 yet and if theirs booted ok and what processor/memory are they using
 
gary996 said:
can you not even get into the bios?
Click to expand...

Doesnt get that far, just powers up for about 21 seconds and then powers down followed by the same thing repeated until i kill the power.

I did see something similar on my P35 when I did a bios upgrade from f4 to f5 but finally managed to get it to boot and downgrade back to f4 bios which then returned stability, so I am guessing this may be a simlar issue athough havent tried alternative ram yet which i will do tomorrow.
 
Thorne said:
Doesnt get that far, just powers up for about 21 seconds and then powers down followed by the same thing repeated until i kill the power.

I did see something similar on my P35 when I did a bios upgrade from f4 to f5 but finally managed to get it to boot and downgrade back to f4 bios which then returned stability, so I am guessing this may be a simlar issue athough havent tried alternative ram yet which i will do tomorrow.
Click to expand...

The powering issue i have the same on my rig, i think thats down to my psu, anyways just a thought !
 
musx64 said:
The powering issue i have the same on my rig, i think thats down to my psu, anyways just a thought !
Click to expand...

I am using an 850 Watt PSU and will try another PSU tomorrow along with different CPU and RAM

The PSU i used today is the one thats been running my P35 without a problem.

Gigabyte response to my support question has been to try it out of the case and if that fails to RMA it, not very helpful really.
 
I am now guessing this is a memory problem not being compatible with the 4x1Gig Geil Black Dragon

On power up I am getting 3 beeps followed by a gap and the 3 more beeps on a continued cycle, I believe this means the memory is at fault

The manual doesnt actually list what 3 beeps means

Can anyone please confirm what the beeps mean on the gigabyte bios
 
In the case of the BIOS update issue on your old motherboard - there was another possible solution for you.
This has worked on two of my Gigabyte motherboards now, my old 965-DS4 and my current P35-DQ6.

If the machine appears to get into this loop, first thing to try is actually let it loop a few times.
Sometimes it is simply resetting the BIOS and it takes a few cycles to do this.
If that doesn't work then power the machine down and then back up, that sometimes fixes it.
Next - the step I don't think most people try, power the system down and remove the power plug from the PSU for around 30 seconds.
You basically want to totally remove power from the system for long enough so that all components have discharged.
I'm sure many of you in the past have removed a power cord from a MB and seen that there is a coloured LED still in for a little while, so you're giving it long enough for that to go out too.
After 30 seconds plug the power cord back in and then power back up - on both my Gigabyte boards they have at this point powered back up without a problem and never shown another problem during operation.

Next step after that of course is the BIOS reset jumpers on the motherboard.
As the symptoms are similar it might be worth trying the last two options on your new X38-DQ6.
 
stoofa said:
In the case of the BIOS update issue on your old motherboard - there was another possible solution for you.
This has worked on two of my Gigabyte motherboards now, my old 965-DS4 and my current P35-DQ6.

If the machine appears to get into this loop, first thing to try is actually let it loop a few times.
Sometimes it is simply resetting the BIOS and it takes a few cycles to do this.
If that doesn't work then power the machine down and then back up, that sometimes fixes it.
Next - the step I don't think most people try, power the system down and remove the power plug from the PSU for around 30 seconds.
You basically want to totally remove power from the system for long enough so that all components have discharged.
I'm sure many of you in the past have removed a power cord from a MB and seen that there is a coloured LED still in for a little while, so you're giving it long enough for that to go out too.
After 30 seconds plug the power cord back in and then power back up - on both my Gigabyte boards they have at this point powered back up without a problem and never shown another problem during operation.

Next step after that of course is the BIOS reset jumpers on the motherboard.
As the symptoms are similar it might be worth trying the last two options on your new X38-DQ6.
Click to expand...


Thanks, I tried all that but still no luck in getting it to boot, tried a further set of memory and yet another processor, memory and PSU and it still does that same, out of desperation since I need this thing up and running for a project I have ordered another X38 Board and will see if that boots or if it shows the same problem, hopefully that one will boot and I will RMA the first one.
 
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It could be the same problem I had on my P35 with my Q6600 until I put a later bios on that supported G0 stepping. Not sure whether the other CPU's you have tried are also G0's though.

Do gigabyte have a similar feature to Asus where it if fails to post it will auto flash the bios from a floppy/pen drive/CD ? If there is a later bios that is.
 
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Devious said:
It could be the same problem I had on my P35 with my Q6600 until I put a later bios on that supported G0 stepping. Not sure whether the other CPU's you have tried are also G0's though.

Do gigabyte have a similar feature to Asus where it if fails to post it will auto flash the bios from a floppy/pen drive/CD ? If there is a later bios that is.
Click to expand...

I have tried an older P4 D and still the same thing happens. I am curious over the bios version since the gigabyte website now has a new bios revision F4 released saying it add more voltage controls.

I now have a new board coming tomorrow so will see if I get the same problem on that one
 
New board came today and work straight away although I am not sure the Bios was stable, I changed a few settings and it then failed to boot , I had to wipe the Cmos which isnt an easy task on these boards since they have chosen to place the battery and jumper pins in possible the worst place, I am going to attach a permanant switch on wires to the cmos wipe jumper to make it easier.

I then chose to update the bios only to then be met with the same power up and down routine as the previous faulty board, I left this for a dozen cycles and there was no change so then pull the battery out again, luckily the next boot worked.
 
These new chipsets Intel have made dont seem very reliable tbh I myself am on my third P35 I dont think the memory controllers are very good :(
 
Finding a problem now on the new board, I have 4x1 gig 8500 Black dragon Memory but when I try to run it at the 1066 speed I end up with a boot problem similar to what the first board was doing and only a cmos clear back to default clears that problem. It also can cause a corrupted bios which then means that iit goes into award recovery mode copying a backup of the bios from the harddrive.

So at the moment I am only able to run my memory at 800 rather than 1066, this is another issue I will raise with gigabyte tec support.
 
Cob said:
Have you tried giving the chipset voltages and vdimm a nudge?
Click to expand...

I have tried adjusting the voltages as the Geil require 2.2 to 2.4 volt and the default setting is 1.8 and doesnt auto adjust for the dimms but I am concerned over the bios corruption issue caused when altering the setting, if I change any of the memory/voltage settings in the bios then I get a corrupted bios image which require the cmos to be wiped and then it has to reload bios from hardisk backup.

I am reluctant to experiment too much in case I lose the bios completely
 
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