680i = crap ?

B

BrainEater

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 21, 2004
Messages
1,212
2 days ago my rig decided to not boot.

Intel e6600
Asus Striker Extreme
Muskin redline pc8000
etc

After a reboot , Bios beeps indicated memory error.
I took the machine apart , reseated ram etc , finally it decided to work.

It worked for 3 more days.

Then same error.....I had to remove 1 stick of ram to get it to boot.
Windows lasted for 10 mins , then it bluescreened "unmountable boot volume"

It then went to not posting and giving memory error.(again with the only remaining stick)

At the point I decided to take it to the place I bought the parts from for warantee info , it wasnt even beeping bios codes anymore.

----------------

From what I'm currently seeing as far as '680i chipset failure' posts on the web, this chipset is utter garbage.....

:mad:
 
I've heard quite a few stories of unhappy customers also. It's a shame because people spend SO much damn money on the 680i, especially that Striker Extreme, whooo. I think half of it though is just RAM being volted so high it's not good for it unless they are kept REALLY cool. Usually not a huge problem in an enthusiasts case though.

Anyways... that sucks man. Hope you get it fixed.
 
Test the ram in another board if you can.

I feel your pain, I've had a couple striker disasters as well.

Most recently to where it won't even post and the LCD poster just blinks, dead.
 
I've seen issues like this on a number of 680i SLI chipset based boards. Really your best bet is to try different memory in the board and see if that helps. Go through the normal troubleshooting steps including testing the memory and other components on another board if you can.

The fact is that many 680i SLI chipset based boards die premature deaths. The memory issues can usually be traced back to the MCH not staying cool enough and or being over-volted on top of lacking proper cooling. These deaths can be expedited in any case where the user is using any of the auto settings where the board does alot of the overclocking work for you. The boards simply set themselves at unsafe settings and run until they can't run anymore. That's how many people end up with overvolted VDIMM settings and dead ram modules.
 
Dan_D said:
I've seen issues like this on a number of 680i SLI chipset based boards. Really your best bet is to try different memory in the board and see if that helps. Go through the normal troubleshooting steps including testing the memory and other components on another board if you can.

The fact is that many 680i SLI chipset based boards die premature deaths. The memory issues can usually be traced back to the MCH not staying cool enough and or being over-volted on top of lacking proper cooling. These deaths can be expedited in any case where the user is using any of the auto settings where the board does alot of the overclocking work for you. The boards simply set themselves at unsafe settings and run until they can't run anymore. That's how many people end up with overvolted VDIMM settings and dead ram modules.
Click to expand...

I agree. I believe that was the cause of my FIRST Abit IN9 32x-max 680i board. After really evaluating what I was trying to accomplish, I realized the 680i LT boards were a much better "bang for the buck" for me. I probably have the "way too much" syndrome going when it comes to keeping this cool, but it is better to have more than not enough. A simple solution for me was to point (2) 89cfm each 120mm Aerocool fans directly at my PWM, RAM, CPU area..

I currently have a medium overclock going at the moment (and intend on settling around 3.8ghz on my QX6700).. My case temps and board temps are WAY low. Maybe a setup like mine might help you in the future? It was all fabricated by me and VERY easy to do. If you have a jig saw with a metal blade, it can be done (or rotozip, dremel, etc).. Take a look at my case where I mounted those two 120mm fans.. They really help. My MCP temps are nice and cool (see Everest Ultimate screen shot).. I am pushing the volts pretty substantially (1.5 volts on almost every setting. My Vdimm is running my ram at its rated 2.2v).



Temps36ghz.jpg



DSCN8897.jpg
 
Are you guys overclocking? Personally, I love my Striker Extreme. Havent had a major problem yet.
 
Too bad.....my 680i has been very good to me, had it since 11/2006 and not a single problem.
It has OC'd an e6700 and now a Quad 6600. It unfortunately doesnt work the Quad quite as well as the dual cores......I can get to 3.05--->3.1 GHz and that's about tops.

My Vcore is 1.4, RAM 1.94V.

I agree with OfficerMartinez.....I have fans directing air to the NB and the CPU zone, and I watercool the CPU.
 
Well I'm now watercooling the NB and the CPU as well as my video cards. Things are fine in my box, but I've had plenty of other 680i boards that had issues and I read enough of these horror stories online to know that a significant portion of people have bad experiences with them.
 
officermartinez said:
I agree. I believe that was the cause of my FIRST Abit IN9 32x-max 680i board. After really evaluating what I was trying to accomplish, I realized the 680i LT boards were a much better "bang for the buck" for me. I probably have the "way too much" syndrome going when it comes to keeping this cool, but it is better to have more than not enough. A simple solution for me was to point (2) 89cfm each 120mm Aerocool fans directly at my PWM, RAM, CPU area..

I currently have a medium overclock going at the moment (and intend on settling around 3.8ghz on my QX6700).. My case temps and board temps are WAY low. Maybe a setup like mine might help you in the future? It was all fabricated by me and VERY easy to do. If you have a jig saw with a metal blade, it can be done (or rotozip, dremel, etc).. Take a look at my case where I mounted those two 120mm fans.. They really help. My MCP temps are nice and cool (see Everest Ultimate screen shot).. I am pushing the volts pretty substantially (1.5 volts on almost every setting. My Vdimm is running my ram at its rated 2.2v).



Temps36ghz.jpg



DSCN8897.jpg
Click to expand...

Beautiful. :eek:
 
Wow that case is pretty, I like that steel textured stuff. Can someone tell me what a MCP is and where it is located on an evga 680i mobo? I want to make sure mine is well cooled. Also, what does MCP and MCH stand for? Where is the MCH.

I plan on doing this "mod" to my mobo when my paste gets in. I heard that the heat build up on these mosfets could be part of the problem with the dead RAM:
mosfets680i.jpg

mosfets680i-1.jpg

mosfets680i-2.jpg


Think that could be part of the problem with all the dead boards?

This is where I found the thread: http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=78381&mpage=1&key=&#78381
Turns out that that the thermal transfer stock is pretty poor.
 
Did you run memtest on memory? Memory errors can be taking place unawares until they add up to a critical mass and then corrupt the OS and data progressively. Save any vitals on your hdd just to cya.
 
My rig was not overclocked.Stock everything.(I did some OC tests for a few hours back when I put it together)

Cooling isn't an issue either : I have about 65 cfm airflow through my case.

----------------------

I used to love my Striker too.It ran flawlessly for 9 months and 11 days......now . I'm just angry...I'm sorry but a $400 motherboard should last forever.EVERY single other ASUS board I own (waaay back to my p5a-b) still works perfectly.My p4g8x , which ran submerged for several months and has been bathed in hot isopropanol about 10 times, still runs flawlessly.I am typing this on it.

Until the striker.

You can bet i'll be sending asus an email.

--------------------

I have taken the mobo/cpu/ram to the place I purchased the parts.They are going to individually test everything.I should know just how much died/was killed later today.

I guess I am going to learn all about ASUS' customer support. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to it. :(
 
flip3d said:
Are you guys overclocking? Personally, I love my Striker Extreme. Havent had a major problem yet.
Click to expand...

I've seen strikers die at stock speeds with no OC's or tweaking.

My second striker up and died with liquid cooling on both the mosfets and the NB/SB.

I'll note that the striker takes the cake in 680i screw ups, it's really a crap shoot. Google "striker cpu init" and watch the insanity ;)

IMG_0514.jpg

IMG_0513.jpg

IMG_0512.jpg


The chipset runs hot and tends to kill itself. Even if you really know what you're doing and have been building your own PC's for over a decade you can't really protect yourself when it takes a turn for the stupid and over volts things or just flat out fails.

The only solid advise you can give on the 680i and what version to buy is that evga is the fastest and easiest to deal with if (or in many cases simply when) it fails.
 
I've had ASUS issues at times.
I emailed [email protected], she's very nice and helped me cut through all the crap.
Be nice to her and patient and she'll help you as much as she can.

I had a bad BIOS chip, she hooked me up with the BIOS department and bang, I was good to go. The BIOS guys still email me once in a while.......:D
 
Ack.

Got my rig back from the tech today.

Cpu=ok.......both sticks of ram are toast.

The mobo is apparently ok.(using it now)......haha.

Looks like I got a 'ram-eater' 680i rather than one that outright fails.(/me knocks wood)

Good news I guess , it'll give me some time to migrate to a diff board....it's sad tho really , I love how the striker looks , I kinda made my wiring match :

newrig25.jpg


--------------------

Anybody know of any steps I can take to help the ram last ? I've seen people who have lost 3-5 sets of ram on 680i's.......

:(
 
BrainEater said:
Ack.

Got my rig back from the tech today.

Cpu=ok.......both sticks of ram are toast.

The mobo is apparently ok.(using it now)......haha.

Looks like I got a 'ram-eater' 680i rather than one that outright fails.(/me knocks wood)

Good news I guess , it'll give me some time to migrate to a diff board....it's sad tho really , I love how the striker looks , I kinda made my wiring match :

newrig25.jpg


--------------------

Anybody know of any steps I can take to help the ram last ? I've seen people who have lost 3-5 sets of ram on 680i's.......

:(
Click to expand...

I've personally owned 11 680i SLI boards (no I am not kidding) and I've reviewed tons of them. Never lost a single stick of RAM yet. Lock in your voltages at safe levels. It is as simple as that. Never take memory modules over 2.3v and the closer to 2.0v or less you can go the better.
 
The Striker Extreme seems to take the cake for highest death rate among the 680i lineup. With that said, my eVGA 680i board is working perfectly. The only real complaint I have is the fact I had to redo the thermal compounds on the NB/SB and the mosfet.
 
MooMooCow said:
The Striker Extreme seems to take the cake for highest death rate among the 680i lineup. With that said, my eVGA 680i board is working perfectly. The only real complaint I have is the fact I had to redo the thermal compounds on the NB/SB and the mosfet.
Click to expand...

I used AS Ceramique on my NB/SB.. I never got the chance to use the "stock" coolers that came on my EVGA 680i LT. When my 680i LT arrived, I removed the stock cooling solution and went with Swiftech water cooling chipset blocks. I've never experienced any issues with them.
 
My Striker Extreme is not that bad, so not all 680i boards are cr*p. It's almost a year old now and I've had only minor issues. I had to switch my RAM sticks to the B slots instead of the A slots or it wouldn't boot without pushing the reset button once or twice. The only thing is dislike is the FSB problems. At 400 MHz FSB the board won't boot, but it will boot at 430 FSB but at that point I had to lower the cpu multiplier or it wouldn't boot either :rolleyes:
I'm hoping that the 45nm cpu's will work on my Striker with a decent overclock ofcourse. It is such a nice board for me.
 
roflcopter said:
My Striker Extreme is not that bad, so not all 680i boards are cr*p. It's almost a year old now and I've had only minor issues. I had to switch my RAM sticks to the B slots instead of the A slots or it wouldn't boot without pushing the reset button once or twice. The only thing is dislike is the FSB problems. At 400 MHz FSB the board won't boot, but it will boot at 430 FSB but at that point I had to lower the cpu multiplier or it wouldn't boot either :rolleyes:
I'm hoping that the 45nm cpu's will work on my Striker with a decent overclock ofcourse. It is such a nice board for me.
Click to expand...

That business with the DIMM slots isn't normal. Your board is hardly working correctly. Also don't get your hopes up on 45nm CPUs working worth a damn on any 680i SLI board.
 
Dan_D said:
That business with the DIMM slots isn't normal. Your board is hardly working correctly. Also don't get your hopes up on 45nm CPUs working worth a damn on any 680i SLI board.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I went through two 680i boards because it couldn't run dual channel mode.....

Make me happier with my Maxium Formula SE :)
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Yeah, I went through two 680i boards because it couldn't run dual channel mode.....

Make me happier with my Maxium Formula SE :)
Click to expand...

I had the dual channel issue once as well. I think that the NB got baked by running too hot. In my opinion the 680i SLI chipset and the reference designs that use it are flawed. I think that the upcomming 780i SLI chipset based reference boards may in fact end up being little more than a corrected version of the 680i SLI boards we have now. As others have pointed out the P35 and X38 boards will out perform them any day of the week, SLI performance not withstanding.
 
hahahaha.....I only laugh to keep from cryin.

'flawed design' indeed.

I have lost another stick of ram ! :mad:

This stick lasted mebbie 6 days.No overclock,stock everything.Machine was barely used in those six days......turned it on this morning...bam....dead ram.
 
BrainEater said:
hahahaha.....I only laugh to keep from cryin.

'flawed design' indeed.

I have lost another stick of ram ! :mad:

This stick lasted mebbie 6 days.No overclock,stock everything.Machine was barely used in those six days......turned it on this morning...bam....dead ram.
Click to expand...

Even if you aren't overclocking... are you setting the RAM volts to auto?
 
'Auto' is the default setting.The bios is running defaults.

The voltage on the ram is 1.88 volts.
 
BrainEater said:
hahahaha.....I only laugh to keep from cryin.

'flawed design' indeed.

I have lost another stick of ram ! :mad:

This stick lasted mebbie 6 days.No overclock,stock everything.Machine was barely used in those six days......turned it on this morning...bam....dead ram.
Click to expand...

Well now that you have a little "down time", I would take this opportunity to RMA the BOARD and the RAM. Fresh RAM and a Fresh Motherboard would help you in this situation. The downside to that is.. I've owned Mushkin redlines.. The company is good about their customer service. Asus.. Not so much. An earlier poster mentioned Betty. I'm sure she could help.

Also, as mentioned above, I would NOT set anything to "auto". Just for future reference, do you actively cool your RAM and mosfets? A single decent cfm 120mm fan would do wonders. These boards run way warm.
 
It ran for 9 months perfectly with ram voltage on auto.I've never seen the ram voltage go above 1.9 volts.

So all of a sudden the mobo has decided to start overvolting the ram ?
I don't think I buy that for a second , but im willing to try anything..

I have quite the airflow through my case , I doubt cooling is the issue......never know though I guess.
 
BrainEater said:
'Auto' is the default setting.The bios is running defaults.

The voltage on the ram is 1.88 volts.
Click to expand...

That might be an issue.. If you have the XP2 8000 redline series Mushkin Ram, those things are rated 2.2v - 2.35 ( http://www.mushkin.com/doc/products/memory_detail.asp?id=361 ) ..I would ONLY run this ram at 2.2v. 2.3 or higher, you are just asking for future issues.. ( http://forum.geilusa.com/redirect.php?tid=1&goto=lastpost ) ..I could not find the exact article, but MANY 680i board owners from different manufacturers are reporting failures when the vdimm is @ 2.4v. I also believe that I read 2.2v should not be an issue (acceptable level). That was one of the MAIN reasons I went with Corsair Dominators (1066) rated at 2.2v.
 
BrainEater said:
newrig25.jpg
Click to expand...

d00d. That looks clean as hell.

btw on the memory thing, go with some ballistix. you cant go wrong with crucial. On my Striker, I got mine running stock speeds at 2.0V with some pretty good timings. 4-4-3-12-23 2T
 
Thanks ! :D

-------------------------------------

I am currently running some pc6400 cheep stuff.It is rated for 1.86 volts....it's running @ 1.88 volts.

It lasted 6 days.
 
BrainEater said:
'Auto' is the default setting.The bios is running defaults.

The voltage on the ram is 1.88 volts.
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean it always stays at 1.88 volts. You must set the voltage on your ram manually. I can not stress this enough. All RAM is different. My OCZ PC9200 modules default to 2.3v while my Patriot RAM defaults to 1.9v or 2.0v. (I can't remember the exact values.)

BrainEater said:
It ran for 9 months perfectly with ram voltage on auto.I've never seen the ram voltage go above 1.9 volts.

So all of a sudden the mobo has decided to start overvolting the ram ?
I don't think I buy that for a second , but im willing to try anything..

I have quite the airflow through my case , I doubt cooling is the issue......never know though I guess.
Click to expand...

Again, you can't be sure the board hasn't been over volting the RAM due to the fact that you probably aren't monitoring the system 100% of the time. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out your ram was being pushed past 2.0v while you were gaming.
 
my first 680i killed a set of Buffalo Firestix PC2-8000 2x1GB set, RAM'd them. Then the board killed itself on July 4th. I RMA'd it and got the replcement, which was exhibiting cold boot problems, have to hold the power until C1 displayed on LED POST indicator. I ended up having to sell off my rig to buy a new house, and am in the process of rebuilding.

If I had had a few things to say, it would be this:

Chipset runs very hot
Chipset colling solution, by any manufacturer is not adequate, IMO
Overclocks like a mofo
kills RAM dead
fries itself
Love the board layout, and the features
reminds me of Ferarri - great when it's running, but you can never keep it out of the shop long enough to justify the ownership
 
Hmmmm.. Bro, I really feel for ya.. I know how much of a pain this is. A general rule of thumb for me is.. If I go through sets of constant ram failures, the first place I am going to look at is the motherboard. I have had my fair share of boards coughing up ram (my ex Abit 680i coughed up 4 gigs of dominator ram like it was cool). I know you really like your striker board, but I would consider RMA'ing it or just going with a different board for "test purposes"..I am down to my last "test" board (XFX 680i LT). I will probably sell it off when the 780i boards arrive.
 
Just my experience/2 cents....

I've had major issues with my EVGA 680i from corrupted drives to bad RAM to crashes and freezes. I am majorly disappointed.....:(
 
I have manually set the ram voltage to 1.9 volts.I hope it helps.

-----------

[rant]

I should not need to manually set the voltage in bios....If the motherboard adjusts voltages to unsafe levels , then it's defective by design.The very Idea of 'reset to default' in bios is to provide safe , stable values.If reset to default doesnt do this , once again , it's defective by design.......

If this is the root problem here , I can only image how many thousands upon thousands of sticks of ram have died because of this.I know how to set ram voltage.95% of computer users don't know jack about bios.Their computers are just dying and they have no clue.

Seems to me the RAM companies are getting screwed by this defect.

[/endrant]

------------------

Thanks for the insight and help everyone , I appreciate it.
I'll keep you informed as this saga continues.........
:rolleyes:
 
BrainEater said:
this is the root problem here , I can only image how many thousands upon thousands of sticks of ram have died because of this.I know how to set ram voltage.95% of computer users don't know jack about bios.Their computers are just dying and they have no clue
Click to expand...

I'm just hoping that the 95% you're citing that doesn't know BIOS isn't running out to buy a high end board! I wonder if my grandmother has a 680i I could use?
 
sabregen said:
I'm just hoping that the 95% you're citing that doesn't know BIOS isn't running out to buy a high end board! I wonder if my grandmother has a 680i I could use?
Click to expand...

LOL this is what I was thinking... if someone doesn't know how to use the BIOS, then they have absolutely NO business owning a Striker Extreme :eek:
 
Citizen86 said:
LOL this is what I was thinking... if someone doesn't know how to use the BIOS, then they have absolutely NO business owning a Striker Extreme :eek:
Click to expand...

I can't agree with that. Those people that don't know jack about BIOS' should go and have the machine purchased. The Striker is also a viable option for OEM use. Remember enthusiasts like ourselves are in the miniority.
 
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