Any ASRock issues I should know?

D

Dennis Gordon

Gawd
Joined
Sep 13, 2005
Messages
590
I just bought the ASRock dual SATA board, refurbed from Newegg for $40. I'm taking the gamble that it won't be some piece 'o junk, but for the price I had to give it a shot. I'm going to pull the 3800 X2 from my machine and out it into the new board for a new build (I'm getting an opty 170 today).
Presuming the board isn't a lemon, are there any issues regarding BIOS versions or setup I should be aware of? Having just gone through the double RMA of my last Epox board, I'm looking for a nice uneventful build...;-)
 
The only thing i can tell you is to completely forget about the chipset drivers on the CD and to install the newest drivers from the uli website, then install the videocard drivers. If you don't do it in this order, your video performance will be severely subpar.
 
I just made the same jump last week. Still trying to work out the kinks. I haven't read the above mentioned link, but will do so now. I will say that I'm experiencing intermittent BSOD's, and hardlocks. I'll give it to the end of the week, and if I can't get it fixed ( re-build for the 4th time ) the mobo is going up for sale.
 
Gh()st said:
I just made the same jump last week. Still trying to work out the kinks. I haven't read the above mentioned link, but will do so now. I will say that I'm experiencing intermittent BSOD's, and hardlocks. I'll give it to the end of the week, and if I can't get it fixed ( re-build for the 4th time ) the mobo is going up for sale.
Click to expand...
What are your specs? How much O/C?
 
Still playing with things. This is the hardware I have:

Asrock mobo
Venice 3200+ with Hyper 6 HSF
2GB ( 2x1GB ) Mushkin High Performance PC3200 (linky )
2 Maxtor 60GB SATA ( currently non-raid 0, but may go back )
PNY 6800 AGP unlocked 16x6 OC'ed 375/790
Audigy 2
802.11g Wifi PCI card
NEC DVDR/RW
Ultra X2 XConnect PSU

After reading through the above mentioned forum linkage, I'm feeling confident I can get everything stabilized. I may be being bitten by the ULi chipset driver bug. ( was using the supplied CDROM drivers ) Going to go home, and rebuild tonight. I'm hoping the drivers will fix the intermittent hardlock/BSOD bug. Only seems to happen when the screensaver kicks in, and sits idle for awhile.
 
Gh()st said:
I just made the same jump last week. Still trying to work out the kinks. I haven't read the above mentioned link, but will do so now. I will say that I'm experiencing intermittent BSOD's, and hardlocks. I'll give it to the end of the week, and if I can't get it fixed ( re-build for the 4th time ) the mobo is going up for sale.
Click to expand...

Setting ram at 2T cures almost every problem Ive ever heard of with this board. I have one myself. Its rock solid at 2T.\, and of course 2T is NOT the performance killer people make it out to be. If you have an X2 make sure you throw at least 2 gig in there and youll be more than satisfied.
 
Dennis Gordon said:
Good luck with it. I'm gonna go through these messages as well and see what to avoid...
Click to expand...

*SIGH* :( :mad:

Board is going back to the egg . Hopefully I can just get a credit, and get a completely different 939 board. I spent 4 hrs last night trying every little tip/trick/doo-dad that was mentioned in all of the FAQ/forum posts.

3 complete reloads (and CMOS clearings) later, and it's still doing the same thing. The ULi driver didn't help. The 2T setting didn't help. Manual settings on all the "Auto" in the bios didn't help. Reflashing the bios to 1.5. Flashing to 1.6.

Nope, nada, big fat ZER0

The system still hardlocks, BSOD's, or reboots itself randomly. I seriously doubt it's the RAM or PSU. My prior IC7-G/3c combo with the same equipment was ROCK solid. I could leave that system on for 24x7x365 and it would never show an issue. I leave this system on overnight, and come back to find it hardlocked and unresponsive. It's a shame too, because I had such high hopes for this board. Maybe I got one of the "lemons", but after spending this much time on trying to make it work I'm just going to move onto something with a better track record. The only thing that makes me the most unhappy is that to do so means I'll have to make the move over to PCIe for the graphics. I really don't want to sell my PNY 6800 that fully unlocks to 16x6, and runs OC'ed at 375/780 on stock HSF, but I don't seem to have much of a choice now.
:(


Good luck on your setup Dennis. Hopefully you'll be more fortunate than I was. :cool:
 
SOOOO tempting at 40 bucks refurb! i was just looking into this, and cant decide whether i should do this or the retail :confused:
 
Well kick me in the britches...

I'm a @#$% idiot. :rolleyes:

I guess it would've helped to pay attention to what the BSOD was freaking out about.

SOOOoooo... I have a couple days to process the newegg RMA. I decided to give it 1 more go. ( either that, or watch Sci-Fi re-runs ) :p

Sat down and noticed the BSOD was about a n3ab.sys file. Did a quick search. It's the driver for my WLAN PCI card. ( Cheap-o Fry's Airlink 101 )

LOOooong story short: I was running WLAN because it helped cable management. Wife needs it for her comp ( across the room ), but I was doing it for less clutter. I D/L the newest driver from the mfg. 30 mins later, BSOD. !@@# :mad:

OK..... Time to pull the card.

Hmmm..loaded the mobo LAN drivers, and hardwired to the switch. Interesting..4+ hrs now, and no BSOD/hardlock.

:eek:

Going to let it run over night. Will be interesting to see if it has "issues." Maybe run Prime95 for a while to check stability?
 
well, my first reaction was that prime95 couldnt hurt, but it an unstable clock/overclock will get in the way of basic motherboard stability. i say wait on the prime test, give it a go after you just let the system idle for a while
 
anything you should know? hmm well lets see...

had one of these boards for a while. agp worked fine, but yesterday i went to put in a x1900xt card and the board would not post at all. also the board has a cold boot issue with high levels of 'fsb'. also that boot failure guard only works with ps/2 keyboards and not usb keyboards. oh and the usb ports just decided to one day crap out on me and then the lan port did the same. next day i bought an abit motherboard and i havent looked back.
 
don't "expect" it to be anything more than a $60 mb and you will be ok. Set the mem to 2T, and stay far away from the driver cd.

Mine has been solid other than that.

(I don't know if I would buy one refurb though.. since they are already pretty cheap)
 
Well *that* gives me confidence...;-)

I'm not gonna be doing any sort of massive OC since this machine isn't for me. I won't take the 3800x2 past 2.4. I have a gigLAN card for it to take advantage of our highspeed network switch, so I don't care if the LAN fails. I'll see how it goes when it arrives next week...
 
Happy enough with it.

It got my 3700+ up to 2816mhz (I love my "budget fx-57"), Prime 95 stable 24 hrs+, runs 4x512 crucial ballistix (at 2.5 cas 2T only though), runs my 6600GT agp well enough to score an Aquamark3 score of 8,880 gfx, 12,319 cpu = 65K. I run a pair of sata drives in mirror (sata I), a couple of pata devices.

It was a heck of a budget upgrade.
 
Price/performance on this board is fantastic. I wouldn't hesitate picking one up.
 
Well my $40 refurb arrived from the Egg this morning. I hooked it up outside the case and it POSTed, so at least it's not DOA. No manual, drivers or cables, but that's no problem. I'll try the build tonight...
 
Okay, Windows is in and I took it to a mild O/C of 2.2. I didn't bother with the manual, so I'm a little confused at the CPU freq. adjustment vs. the multiplier for achieving the optimum results. Can anyone suggest the easiest BIOS settings? I'm only gonna take this 3800x2 to about 2.4, since this isn't for me.

Man, for a $40 budget board that I had middling confidence in, this is a helluva mobo. Everything seems to be running okay. Certainly not fancy; takes a little longer to boot than my 9NPA+ Ultra, but with 3800x2s coming down to $275 you can really do a significant upgrade to dual core for relatively cheap with this board.

I think the recipient will be very happy with this, especially with the Aspire case and its blue neon lights in front and big honkin' temp gauge. This looks pretty sci-fi for the office...;-)
 
Im running my 3200+ Venice on it @ 2.5 right now, 1T on the ram, going to try to get it to 2.6 tomorrow.
 
markintosh13 said:
Happy enough with it.

It got my 3700+ up to 2816mhz (I love my "budget fx-57"), Prime 95 stable 24 hrs+, runs 4x512 crucial ballistix (at 2.5 cas 2T only though), runs my 6600GT agp well enough to score an Aquamark3 score of 8,880 gfx, 12,319 cpu = 65K. I run a pair of sata drives in mirror (sata I), a couple of pata devices.

It was a heck of a budget upgrade.
Click to expand...

I have my 3400+ at 2.5 GHz now, my 4 x 512 Ballistix is happy at 235 Mhz at 2.5 with a 2T... 6800GT, no issues at all.

The 'only' complaint is the location of the IDE connectors but I was aware of this when I bought the board.

Update the BIOS to 1.6 - use drivers you download, the cd is old. Other than that, it's not a super overclocker, but it will overclock. Don't even thing about 1T on for the RAM (I've tried....), and don't expect 300 MHz either. But as a budget board, it's a good one.

Peace,
Tim

 
Yeah, After tweaking for a couple of days I've had to settle on the following settings.

3200+@ 2300 @ 1.45V
RAM : 230 @ 2.5.3.2.6 2T

The board will go to 287FSB, but the RAM won't budge past 230. I got the CPU to run at 2.5 before RAM testing, but now I can't seem to get it past 2.3. :(

Oh well, still over-all for the $$ it's a pretty good option that has current and future hardware support capability.
 
diehard said:
Why am i the only one that is able to run 1t just fine?
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Lucky?

Try these sites and see if they reboot your machine at 1T (you've been warned)

http://iso50.com/iso50.html

http://www.kimble.org/ <-- click on "Kim's Flash Site"

If it doesn't reboot your machine, what RAM do you have, what BIOS and what settings for the RAM, and did you do any A64 tweaker changes?

I haven't really noticed any difference running 2T instead of 1T except in Sandra. Games play the same.
 
MasterOfNone said:
Lucky?

Try these sites and see if they reboot your machine at 1T (you've been warned)

http://iso50.com/iso50.html

http://www.kimble.org/ <-- click on "Kim's Flash Site"

If it doesn't reboot your machine, what RAM do you have, what BIOS and what settings for the RAM, and did you do any A64 tweaker changes?

I haven't really noticed any difference running 2T instead of 1T except in Sandra. Games play the same.
Click to expand...

I hit both sites, and didn't experience any issues. Not sure if it's something in particular at each site, but I poked around, watched a couple of the flash animations, turned the music off/on. Ran smooth and creamy.

Ram is this Mushkin :

here

BIOS is 1.5, and RAM is running at 230@ 2.5-3-2-6 2T I couldn't get it to run any higher, no matter what settings. I think it needs more juice, but since the mobo only goes to 2.7 ( without the Vmod ) then I'll just have to take what I can get. Only A64 settings I changed were when I was testing the mobo and CPU's max FSB. I don't have it running, or make any other changes than how I have the BIOS config set.

CPU FSB: 230
CPU multi: 10x
NB: 800 ( 4 multi )
RAM: 200 1:1
 
MasterOfNone said:
Lucky?

Try these sites and see if they reboot your machine at 1T (you've been warned)

http://iso50.com/iso50.html

http://www.kimble.org/ <-- click on "Kim's Flash Site"

If it doesn't reboot your machine, what RAM do you have, what BIOS and what settings for the RAM, and did you do any A64 tweaker changes?

I haven't really noticed any difference running 2T instead of 1T except in Sandra. Games play the same.
Click to expand...
They run fine. Ram is OCZ Gold PC3700 Rev. 3, stock bios (just barely got it so its probably a newer bios) running 2.5-4-4-11, 1T and Ram at 1:1, FSB at 250.
 
I had flash reboots under 1T. moving to 2T completely fixed it. the difference in 1T and 2T in almost everything is so negligable its nearly meaningless (2 or 3 percent generally). Itll show a lot in artifical benchmarks like sandra, but apparently no real world programs hit ram the way sandra does in benches.
I'm running 4x512 corsair value 2.5 3 3 8 pc3200 at 2T on an X2 3800. I get more performance than I have real uses for.

I think a great many people, especially on sites like this sit and worry about that 2 degrees celcius difference, that slightly lower cas setting, that slight overclock, the 2% performance differential from 1T vs 2T that they rarely ever think "will I notice a difference?". Scientists, engineers, artists, people who produce a lot of important things were using cas 3 on their macs for years and I didnt see them worried about it. You should use your computer, dont let your computer use you.
 
lw3d said:
Does anyone have an issue running a Saa2 HD in Sata2 mode?
Click to expand...

I am not using it as my boot drive but I have a 500gb hitachi sata2 drive in sata2 mode w/out any problems.
 
Tutelary said:
I think a great many people, especially on sites like this sit and worry about that 2 degrees celcius difference, that slightly lower cas setting, that slight overclock, the 2% performance differential from 1T vs 2T that they rarely ever think "will I notice a difference?". Scientists, engineers, artists, people who produce a lot of important things were using cas 3 on their macs for years and I didnt see them worried about it. You should use your computer, dont let your computer use you.
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This oughta be a sticky at the beginning of every forum...
 
Does anyone know if using this board with an eVGA 7800 CO SE card causes any clearance issues? that NB HS is quite tall...

It's this card btw: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1696711&CatId=1560

PS. What's the difference between the CO SE and the CO cards? From what I gather, the SE only has a 10mhz lower gpu clock than the non SE card, but I can get it for close to $50 less? What gives?

**edit** It seems to do with the SE Not having HDTV compatibility, not something I really need anyways, am I right?
 
as a reply to Arcygenical I`m using a leadtek 7800gtx 512mb card on my ASROCK with no problems.
 
Good luck to you guys who have the time and patience....as i have given up on this whole thing with trying to fix a board that will never ever play all my games like it should with the X23800CPU.
I bought it to stall having to buy another graphics card..but after all i've been through..for owell over three weeks or more.., I do not have the time nor patience any longer to fiddle with somethng that reboots....randomly at will in any game...does not appear to be stable even though...and for the record... yes..I have read and done all the right drivers in the right sequence more than once.. settings are fine.. I know..becuase all else works fantastic.. Nice to know if playing games is NOT your thing.

Have decide upon a good Asus Nforce SLI board that runs X2's ..and will pick up a mid range high end graphics card like the 6800GS..which is still a heck of a step up from what i had before.

Anybody know of a good place to sell this board??? EBay or what?? RMA is past time.
 
Rabbitrunner51 said:
Good luck to you guys who have the time and patience....as i have given up on this whole thing with trying to fix a board that will never ever play all my games like it should with the X23800CPU.
I bought it to stall having to buy another graphics card..but after all i've been through..for owell over three weeks or more.., I do not have the time nor patience any longer to fiddle with somethng that reboots....randomly at will in any game...does not appear to be stable even though...and for the record... yes..I have read and done all the right drivers in the right sequence more than once.. settings are fine.. I know..becuase all else works fantastic.. Nice to know if playing games is NOT your thing.

Have decide upon a good Asus Nforce SLI board that runs X2's ..and will pick up a mid range high end graphics card like the 6800GS..which is still a heck of a step up from what i had before.

Anybody know of a good place to sell this board??? EBay or what?? RMA is past time.
Click to expand...

Sorry you had such a bad experience. All I do with mine is play games and surf, with no problems at all.

I would seriously look at your problem being either a bad board (I wouldn't sell it unless you could prove it was fine) or some other piece of hardware incompatibility/malfunction.

Really, if the board is fine then you have some other weak link causing your problems. Power supply weak? Bad RAM?
 
fatboy32 said:
as a reply to Arcygenical I`m using a leadtek 7800gtx 512mb card on my ASROCK with no problems.
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I just replaced my AGP 6800GT with a shiney new BFG 7800GT and the system is still solid. I'm going to play with speeding things up and see what happens, alothout I'm at at 2.585 GHz now (11 x 235).

I think the main reason I can't get my RAM at 1T is I'm runing 4 x 512 MB sticks. If I pulled two out I know my Ballistix can do it but I'm spoiled with 2 GB.

Peace,
Tim

 
MasterofNone... Yeah..just nothing but hassles... so many things it could be i just have to go by feel and whtever troubleshooting...considering i'm not an expert at things...

I keep thinking there is either a driver conflict or driver HW conflict.... The main thing i am getting for instance is when I try and play CSS ( as that sometimes works for awhile) is that about half the time it might load right ...look good start playing just fine for awhile...then out of nowhere....enormous graphic glitches....stoppage and reboot.
One night i play for five hours .. the next time ( no changes in settings or programs ) i enter and get like mutiple reboots or graahic glitches....
Something has to cause the reboots... power?? versus the graphics engine..?? drivers conflicting??? I did the exact reinsall op. of the poster here for the right AGP and controller...;total reinstall and then reloaded the Nvidia drivers..and actually at first it was worse than before. I have looked at all my sytem processes and wonder if the possilby the lan drivers are messed up or the AGP to ULI controller is not right. Loaded versions 2.13 and 2.30.... bios is OK....
I saw your bios settings finally in the other workbench post..but are'nt you OC'ing it..
There are alot of people who have my issues and seems like only about half have no problems... I wonder why that is?
Turns out i will not have the money to get the previous purchases i mentioned for a long while..so i am reloading my old system ( P4 2.8C on my solid no frills P4P800 Deluxe board ) again ..and know that will play every single game out today and yesterday without hickups... even if its a bit slower on loading..
The new Vista OP. system will have handy interface menus and controls for figuring out alot of this stuff and looks impressive from the screenies...more ystem inofo and control for seeing just what might be wrong...
Also, i will be going back to the NTFS file system as i believe that hs things already configured and more updated for anlysis of troubleshooting..
What i need is someone like you to look at my sytem in person ..so maybe you or somebody else could get it right if necessary.. But.. i know that is not possible..
Thanks for the input M.O.N..... LOL :rolleyes: :( :)
 
I got mine same reason as most, to use my 6800GT (AGP) for as long as possible. I got a Opty 170 in it, running at opty 180 (2.4) speed. Dual raided raptors and a 250GB 16MB chache Sata2 WD HD.

The main reason I bought it: Anandtech said it was an overclocking beast, and it may be, with initial 1.0 bios. But I'm dual core and can't use that bios, so I don't get a crazy overclock (400Mhz prob below avg for an Opteron) and I can't get my ram stable at cas 2@200, but overall I can't complain. Yeah I have mine at 2T cas 2.5 w/240 FSB ram divider for 200Mhz, but the board was so cheap ~$65 one really can't complain. I KNOW there are people with the ~$160+ MBs with the same or more problems, so I'll keep my Asrock. Not perfect, but then, what MB is when overclocking?
 
Here's mine... I haven't done a Prime test yet but I'm going to. :) Opty 144 clocked @ 2.8 MHz maybe more if I had better cooling and volt mod


1.bmp


2.bmp
 
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