that would really piss me off, evga should give you something for free for having to replace the mobo and GPU
It did piss me off no end. Especially when they wanted to charge me for cross-shipment. When I told them that I would not pay they said that "they will only replace the motherboard after testing to prove that the fsb will not go above 1333 Mhz".......whats wrong with this picture. They package a product, send it out across Europe. I purchase the new revision on a website which advertises the new revision, I recieve said package only to find it's the old revision, despite the package saying otherwise. I contacted the reseller, who contacted the distributor and they now realise that for over 2 weeks they have sent out hundreds of motherboards claiming to be the new revision, when in fact its the old revision known to have overclocking trouble with Quad Core cpu's. What happens to my upgrade path if I accept the wrong motherboard....I dont have one if I intend to overclock on quad core. It's like EVGA saying: "OK we have sent out a motherboard with known issues, we will replace it only if you can prove that it does not OC well on your Quad Core cpu. We dont care about your upgrade path, and so long as you have a dual core CPU and can overclock reasonably it's good enough for us. We might replace it but you will have to pay for delivery of the correct motherboard, we also might replace it if we cant test that the FBS will not go above 1333 Mhz" So much of this is wrong since their repackaging means that hundreds of customers now have the wrong motherboard. Their attitude towards replacement is horrific since this should be a straight swap (no questions asked). They are making customers jump through loop holes to replace a faulty, incorrectly packaged, wrongly advertised product
Quick question zr_ox, does your stacker have wholes on the bottom for the castors that the EVO has?! I ordered an EVO but the link back goes to the standard stacker BUT I have the evo's casters inside (although no fan panel). I wanted to know if the standard stacker has the holes for the castors because if it does they have just sent me a standard stacker, minus the fan panel with the dust filters but included the castors lol Obviously if it doesn't then they have sent me an evo and its missing a fan panel.
Just read this post and its depressing. I've had my fair share of hardware issues but most were with my first skt939 setup. My C2D build was almost painless but I really hate the way things are going these days. The majority of us are patient and understanding of DOA parts etc but when the supplier makes blatantly obvious mistakes and try to brush over them and still make you pay extra to fix them its enough to try anyone's patience.
No I dont have holes for castors, I got the first revision of the Stacker which OCUK received (in black). Shortly after there was another revison released which had a mesh bottom. I think castors become possible in revision 3 ???? But dont quote me on that. Weird that you bought the EVO and got no door panel, or castor mounting holes? Did you get castors? Its just mental Archie, since I'm by nature very patient but this has been a test.
Ah zr_ox maybe I didn't make that clear, I do have the castor holes AND castors, and the mesh at the bottom which is right for the EVO model, I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't a standard thing and I had been sent a stock Stacker rather than the EVO version. OCUK have said they are going to ship the fan panel to me ASAP EDIT: I was just wondering, we hear problems left, right and centre with the striker, but I never hear of issues with the Abit IN9 32X-MAX or anyone who buys it for that matter....?!
Great I'm glad to hear all is well, especially since your getting the Door frame sent. I have seen some good review's of Abit's 680i boards, but I had an abit board 5 years ago and whilst it truly rocked OCing, it was the bios which wound me up. Since then I have not looked at Abit. Add to that the price is very high, and the trouble is a hitting the MAX OC wall very early compared to other boards. The temps are also supposed to be insane on the NB and mosfets....apart from those minor details it should be good Looking forward to Monday to see if EVGA come up with the goods. Please let me know how you get on Mother-Gooser. Have a great weekend all
The IN9 32X-MAX has really suffered in the labs... we had two bad 'uns. First didn't allow us to install windows and also wouldn't allow us to flash the BIOS (very early board), second wouldn't let us run SLI... the third we're still testing. 680i seems to be a bit of a minefield at best -- some great individual boards, and some outstandingly poor ones too.
Thats interesting to hear Tim that you have had trouble. Are there any 680i that you know of which appear to be more reliable?
I've only ever had one 680i that refused to outright work, the others were sent back due to the revision. (customer request, one was even able to hit over 400mhz fsb, so I don't know why he wanted it changed for a 1.3 )
Nope only some of the stuff came from OCUK, the mobo's have all been bought in Denmark. I took the Striker back to the shop today and agreed on exchange for a P5N32-E SLI Plus & cash. It boots but during Windows Installation I have had 3 BSOD's.... I can do nothing but laugh as I begin more testing.
got to love this, its an insight into what you really get when spend the muts nuts on a computer. £200 for a nvidia 680i to enjoy the process of RMA 4 or 5 times... Another £200 odd on 4GB of RAM not to work in any of the 4 or 5 boards purchased and RMA'd not to mention the rest that goes wrong.... its depressing, top end gear should be the best at everything, yet a £30 asrock board can clock up like a nutter and be stable 24/7. shouldn't it be the cheap stuff that has issues....... hard luck i guess! lol!
Well, we've had the Asus Striker, the EVGA, the Inno3D (same as the EVGA), the Foxconn (review coming shortly), the Abit IN9 and I don't think there's one that *someone* hasn't had some problems with somewhere along the line. The best two that we've certainly had has been the Striker and the Inno/EVGA is good too (but it took us over three months to get one that worked!). We've had the IN9 for approaching four months now, AFAIK -- the hardware is superb, but the BIOS is the problem.
I think this is just a prelude to the type of problems that will happen with the major changes in the switchover to the nehalem architecture.. with such a major change (switch to a hyper transport style system) there are bound to be problems.
It's amazing that it's also taken you so ling to get boards that worked though, I mean 3 months is too much. I'm just shocked to read just how many people are having major issue's of recent. It's not just a few either, it's many. The IN9 was on my short list but the price and issues reported regarding the low OC wall (and stupid fear I have of the Abit Bios crippled it for me) I hope that's not true, with the 680i troubles the last thing we need On an up note, after swapping memory around I got XP installed with 1 memory module. Ran 3 hours of Orthos, memtest, SuperPI & 3DMark 01/03 without any trouble. Bios updated to newest 0602 and now running stable (in Windows & 3D Mark) with 2 modules. Will run Memtest again & Orthos. One issue is the reported Memory voltages in PC Probe II, It's reporting 2.42 when they are set to 2.35V 5-5-5-18 timings? (will check with OCZ since it's probably software related) Another thing which has come to my attention are the default temps on the NB & Mosfets. Since I got the motherboard running stable yesterday I have been running without additional cooling (No Stacker Side Panel). This morning I fired up my Fluke 62 IR temp rature thermometer: Ambient Room temp 20.2C (not using Fluke thermometer), and running stock everything. Without additional cooling: Mosfets (above CPU) 94C Mosfets (left of CPU) 46C North Bridge 83C South Bridge 39C With CM Stacker 830 Door Panel (4 X Nocturna NF-S12 1200) Mosfets (above CPU) 32C Mosfets (left of CPU) 28C North Bridge 28C South Bridge 36C If there is no direct airflow over any of the heatsinks, the temps rise very quickly. On a number of forums people question the use of after market heatsinks, especially on H20 systems. I think this proves that for maximum silence it's a must since quiet fans when you have enough of them are noticable. Well better get back to those benchmarks
zr_ox, I am scared of OC'ing mine lol I am gonna run 3D mark 06 at stock in a bit though. Asus have put a software induced OC'ing utility into there tools on my striker, is yours the same?
There is nothing to be scared of well OK there is if you dont do some research. You can start by making sure that your memory is running it's stated speed. Did you set the timings manually? I dont want to act like to much of an expert since I had one faulty board and one DOA although I recommend looking here (Extreme Tweaker setting in Bios, Set overclocking to Manual) Disable SLI-Ready memory, Disable Linkboost. Set the FSB to 1066, the ram to 1150 in Unlinked mode. Make sure the DDR2 Voltage is 2.35V 5-5-5-18 for the main 4 (CAS-Trcd-Trp-Tras) That should get your memory running at it's rated speed, otherwise EVA2000 in the link knows his stuff Most/all Asus motherboards now come with AI Booster to OC within Windows. Be careful using it though since it can lead to stability issues, and data corruption....I learned this after 3 re-install's. OCing via the bios is by far the best way. Always take it slow and benchmark/stree test after each bump. There is a great thread here Of course you assume responsibility for your overclocking efforts
oooooooooook it DID NOT like that!!! lol wouldn't boot with those timings at all. Would flashing it to 1002 fix it?
