DFI Lanparty Sli-DR RevA01 Issues

[maverik-sg1]

Well guys,

I'd had enough of waiting for ASUS to release a new BIOS so I could run my A8n-Sli MOBO in 1t running 1:1 wit CPU above 240Mhz.

I lept blindly into the DFI corner after reading a cathedral of shining reviews - My mate scorchio did the same.

Words cannot describe my current level of negativity.

The problem - both boards do not post

Here's a list of part we could choose from to make sure it was not the board:

2x 3500 Winchesters

1x FX55

2x MSI 6800GT PCI-E

3x XFX6800GT PCI-E

2x 512MB Gskill LC RAM

2x 512MB OCZ PC4400 Gold LE

2x 512MB Corsair PC4400 (3-4-4-8)

2x 512MB Corsair PC4400 TCCD 2.5-4-48

1x Enermax 600w PSU

1x OCZ Powerstream PSU

2x Raptor 74GB Drives SATA

4x Maxtor Plus 9 160GB SATA

MachII

Prometeia 2

We have tried single/Sli in all configurations with all cards. Shifting pairs of ram around both boards. Shifting single sticks around each DIMM slot. Swapping CPU's and PSU's. Swapping molexs to different areas the works.

Several CMOS resets later and all of the above. Even tried running with CPU air cooled.

Nothing.

Disappointment on one level is so far as, how does the most expensive Nforce4 board get past DFI's own QC and fail not once but twice?

Disappointment as now we have to go travel 2.5hrs round trip to go get 'em tested.

Frustrated and concerned now as apart from the PSU's all other parts are brand new (although XFX and Gskill and Raptors were tested in ASUS) and the fear is that perhaps more than one component could be faulty.

The issue with all this new stuff, is it's niche (not everyone has PCI-E yet) and it's really difficult to go test some of this stuff.

Of course most parts have been purchased through different channels so what do we do? RMA the lot? we can't do that, the fact is some of the parts we knew worked prior to installation as I used some of it on my ASUS board.

I am running out of seal string fast and dont really want to go back to the A8N-Sli (unless Phil revises the price of the string ), so we will have to wait unitl monday for the verdict.

Keep you guys posted as to our progress.

I have never felt so down as I do tonight.

 

[Animal]

Yep mine always halts on post @ the AMD FX-55 part.. i then have to turn the machine off and play about with mem configurations to get it going...

Im waiting for the company that sold me the board to get more in stock so i can buy an A03 from them and send this one back for a refund..

IMHO DFI need to stop fookin about and stop selling dodgy boards...

This is my 1st DFI and soon to be my last if i get another fubar'd one...

 

[nick25]

Guys when did you buy your boards? when did the AO3 board start shipping?

 

[Wingz]

got mine at overclockers which is a rev A02 and to my knowledge there are no A03 boards? A01 and A02 are said to be the same but with different bioses.

my installation and setup went smoothly not had any problems guess i'm was lucky.

 

[maverik-sg1]

Bios date on these is 25/1/05.

I see there is a Beta BIOS out now which would probably help if I could get it to boot into BIOS!!

DFI have nmade me aware that I should perhaps use some real basic DDR400 RAM and place in and slot closest to the edge of the board.

So I am off round to me mates house to see what old stuff he has left.

If I can get qflash to load up the new BIOS - I may be in with a chance.

The A03's are the ones to have.

Careful, DFI take on most of their own RMA stuff, chances are if send it back, it will be direct to DFI.

I'll let you know how I get on, I must admit I was surprised to see an email from DFI when I got up this morning. You can't complain at that level of service form a manufacturer, although some of the stuff is a bit bizaar.

I'll post a few quotes from it later.

 

[maverik-sg1]

Quote from DFI USA:

Ok let me lay out some ground work here so you can see. The boards were released at the Chinese Lunar New Year and DFI engineering is manned with a skeleton crew until the 14th of Feb when normal business hours resume. Not far off actually. Now that out the way, let me say that Mr. Wu has released a beta 02/01 and a beta 02/09 bios thru various sources seen on the net 'even' during his off time so it is not like we have no idea what is going down by no means. 02/01 is available I think on the DFI download 'beta' side of bioses. Down to the bottom of the list for downloads.

Now you are telling me that if you take the "known" corsair tccd and put a single stick in the Orange slot closest to the "outer" edge of the board that you cannot boot either one into the bios after you have cleared the cmos for 60seconds with no power at all to the power supply? In other words any component you add or subtract from the system must have all power removed from P/s so the 5 Volt standby voltage is removed as well.

Let me know if you can boot with one known stick of Corsair tCCd in the Orange slot closest to the outer edge of mobo. If you get in the bios make sure you load optimized defaults> YES> save and reboot before adding anymore sticks of memory to the other orange slot close to the cpu. No yellow slots unless you are running four sticks of memory.

Dang man I don't mean to hopping around but make sure you are trying to get "bootup" on air with only a single video card in the system. Some users in the "hot" forums indicate Winnnies don't start well when frozen.

And yet again since you have all those pretties laying around do you have just a plain old stick of left over PC2100 DDR memory? I keep a stick of that which to me is more valuable at times than my better sticks as I keep it as a "starter" stick on problem boards. I can use it to get a board to boot and in the case of some tCCD to set Cas to 2.0 as I had two sticks of PdP that would not boot except at Cas2. So bear that in mind.



Some food for thought there for users or people looking to buy.



Enjoy

 

[maverik-sg1]

Okay,

Followed the mans instructions on board 1 (using FX55), everything boots to BIOS (or blank as no OS is installed as yet).

I doubt if you would get away with using ultra's on this board, there's not enough room the Artic Cooling rev5 cooler and that takes up two slots. If you did yor overclocking options will on ly equalt that which could be achieved with the GT's anyhow.

Innovatek are the only people to offer a water cooling solution viable for Sli, there is a post of an Sli cooler in development right now, but given the different spacing between each respective MOBO manufacturer I would guess it is not commercially viable. I may use coolermaster or thermaltake all in one solution as they both adopt a similar tube size to the innvoatek units.

Keep you informed on how thing progress.

In short I am a lot happier now than yesterday, but if you only have high performance RAM you may want to buy yourself a cheap stick of DDR333 or DDR266 just to get things up and running.

Cheers

Mav

EDIT: DFI BOARD DOES NOT LIKE WINCHESTER CPU'S AT SUB-ZERO TEMPS - OVERRIDING THE START UP HELPS BUT SOONER OR LATER THE COLD IS GONNA GET YOU.

LOOKS LIKE YOU'LL HAVE TO BE DOING SOMETHING TO GET KEEP IT GOING UNTIL THE BIOS IS UPDATED.

SO EUPHORIA AND DISAPPOINTMENT ALL WRAPPED INTO ONE - STILL I AM RE-INVIGORATED NOW SO I GUESS I'LL JUST KEEP CHIPPING AWAY.

EDIT 2: These mobo's do boot at sub zero temps with winchesters, there is an issue with USB and USB hubs, unit will not boot with hub installed, I am messing around with the BIOS to see if it is something to do with ISO Queing or the memory allocation to the USB - More to follow.

 

[Cashman]

how you getting along now Maverick?

Im just about to buy this board and need to know if Ill be ok

 

[maverik-sg1]

Running like a dream with BETA 102:

I had to use one stick of ddr266 ram for the unit to boot correctly so I could flash the BIOS - after that it was just several hours of tweaking - the results speak for themselves:

Winchester 3500+ @ 276x11 1.4v x123%

HTT 4x

Gskill LE RAM 2x 512MB 1:1 1t- 2.5-3-3-6 3.1v

2x 6800GT WC @ 450/1200

Superpi1m 27s

Superpi32m 24m16s

3dm2001SE 33400ish

3dm03 24000+

3dm05 11300ish

Custom PC Benchmark 1.77

Tried latest 310 but could not get same overclock, it's almost as though this BIOS was made for my system.

Thoroughly recommended after my initial headache, apparently revA03 is the one to have - I believe mine is revA01 although CPUZ reports A03 - troouble is the area where the revision is stamped on the board is obscured by the graphics card - I can't be a**ed to move them to see.

EDIT: THE BIOS ISSUE WITH USB AND USB HUBS IS RELATED TO THE INFRA-RED RECEIVER I HAD INSTALLED ON MY HUB, THE 201 BIOS DOES NOT LIKE INFRA RED - SWITCH TO 218 IF YOU NEED THE IR RECEIVER TO WORK.

 

[Cashman]

glad to hear its all systems go Mav.

I ordered the SLI-DR and the PowerColor X850XTPE last night and they should be here tommorrow

I really hope I get one of these new boards as I could do without all the booting problems esp as I have no cheap old ram to get it working.

What PSU you got Mav? I was thinking about simply using my PCP&C 510 DLX and not using the top 4 pins on the 24 pins connector ? You tried this?

 

[maverik-sg1]

Have not tried it as I do not have that type of PSU.

I got me an OCZ Powerstream 520w, it has 24pins as standard and supplied with 20pin adaptor for backwards compatability.

Unit is rock solid stable, but I think I might get me a dedicated Sli unit.