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ECS RS480-M woes...

P

PC-HAngover

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 2, 2003
Messages
2,010
Okay.. so I got my system together about 3 weeks ago, stats in my sig.

I figure out that whenever I play 3D intensive things the system will randomly lock up. At first I thought it was my XFX 6800 Ultra, so I RMA'ed that. While that was being shipped I was using my onboard video, then one day it suddenly stopped working, no video, nothing. Soooo I RMA'ed the motherboard. I FINALLY get the motherboard back and everything seems JIFFY, with onboard video of course.

I then find out that ZZF doesn't have anymore XFX 6800 Ultras in stock, so they give me a refund, which I then proceed to spend on an EVGA 7800 GTX from newegg. :)

I wait and wait and finally I get my beautiful EVGA 7800 GTX in the mail. I install all of the drivers, blah, blah, driver cleaner, etc, etc. I then launch BF2, single player, all settings maxxed out! It plays beautifully, a few skips here and there but I think that is my cpu.... THEN BAM! LOCK UP!

So I am really starting to get frustrated here. As you can see I have gone through 2 motherboards and 2 graphics cards, and I am starting to think that the ATI chipset is playa hating on my 7800 GTX... lol

I e-mailed ECS about this and have yet to receive a response. I really want to just get a refund from this motherboard and get another mATX skt 939 mobo, BUT there aren't any really good ones out yet.... argh

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
 
just making sure that you've taken the more obvious troubleshooting steps ;):

I know it's a pain but have you:

- Installed 2 different video drivers to test and compare.

- installed 2 different mobo chipset drivers to test and compare

- installed two different soundcard drivers to test and compare (couldn't hurt, might help)

- totally wiped windows clean upon your very last re-build or hardware installation.

- tweak/relax different bios settings such as cas timings and video related options

- tried different memory sticks, or swap banks etc.

- tried a different psu.

What error messages are you getting btw?
 
SJetski71 said:
just making sure that you've taken the more obvious troubleshooting steps ;):

I know it's a pain but have you:

- Installed 2 different video drivers to test and compare.

- installed 2 different mobo chipset drivers to test and compare

- installed two different soundcard drivers to test and compare (couldn't hurt, might help)

- totally wiped windows clean upon your very last re-build or hardware installation.

- tweak/relax different bios settings such as cas timings and video related options

- tried different memory sticks, or swap banks etc.

- tried a different psu.

What error messages are you getting btw?
Click to expand...

1. Yes, mucho times! argh

2. Here is the thing, the drivers on the ECS cd have it for an ATI MM or something, I thought this was just the video driver, so it doesn't appear to have a chipset driver???

3. Nope, didn't think it was important

4. Yes, I did a complete format, and re-install of Win XP Pro

5. Not really, I haven't really played with any of the BIOS options yet.

6. There are only 2 banks, and I have both filled with XMS PRO PC4000

7. Yes, I have used both the PSU that came with the case (Some cheap Aspire one) and my Antec NeoPower 480, which is what I am using right now.

There is no error message thrown, unfortunately. It just locks up and I am forced to restart.

Thanks
 
1. My best guess would be heat related. Have you run Rivatuner to check your temps? Aspire X-Qpack has slightly better cooling than an ARIA, but it's still not great and I don't think there are any intakes?

I had a 6800GT for about a week to play with and those skips/pauses I was fairly sure were heat related, even though the card was only doing maybe 65° max and had an NV Silencer on it. Trying to remember but I think the problem went away when I underclocked. See if you stop having issues if you do that. Those pauses are definitely an nVidia card related issue.

2. What timings are you running?

3. The ECS does not seem to keep very good power rails. Check your health status and find out what they are. +/- 5% starts causing instability. With my TTGI, the 3.3v was way out out of spec and the 5v was not very good either. With a Neopower, the 5v was even worse, up around 5.58v! At least that was what it was reporting in bios.

Even if you don't overclock, try running Prime95 to figure out if the CPU or mem is a problem.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
1. My best guess would be heat related. Have you run Rivatuner to check your temps? Aspire X-Qpack has slightly better cooling than an ARIA, but it's still not great and I don't think there are any intakes?

I had a 6800GT for about a week to play with and those skips/pauses I was fairly sure were heat related, even though the card was only doing maybe 65° max and had an NV Silencer on it. Trying to remember but I think the problem went away when I underclocked. See if you stop having issues if you do that. Those pauses are definitely an nVidia card related issue.

2. What timings are you running?

3. The ECS does not seem to keep very good power rails. Check your health status and find out what they are. +/- 5% starts causing instability. With my TTGI, the 3.3v was way out out of spec and the 5v was not very good either. With a Neopower, the 5v was even worse, up around 5.58v! At least that was what it was reporting in bios.

Even if you don't overclock, try running Prime95 to figure out if the CPU or mem is a problem.
Click to expand...

1. I originally thought it was heat related, but it continues to happen whenever I have everything assembled in the open air on my desk. Plus the card itself doesn't seem to be all that hot.

2. I actually have no idea.

3. I will check this whenever I get home, but I am pretty sure that they are ok.

I did run Prime95 for 10 hours on the first ECS board/ 6800 Ultra combo and it went without a hiccup. I will run another batch of tests tonigth though.
 
Here is what I found for memory:
200 MHz
Cas 2.5
2.6V (stock)

I couldn't tell the other stuff.. couldn't find it ...

As for voltages:

+2.5V - 2.52V
+3.3 - 3.46V
+5 - 4.97V
+12 - 11.64V


How does that look? I will run prime95 tonight and let you know.
 
I think I have a pretty good idea what you are going through... I had almost exactly the same problem with my system, which has the MSI board with the ATI chipset in it. I also swapped the video card, ram, power supply, sound, hard drives, fresh install of XP and just about everything else. I even had a friend build the exact same system (out of new parts) and had the same problem. I finally (Think!) I've fixed it (2 weeks without a lockup, so far) by getting an ATI video card. When my was locking up, most of the time it would just hard lock, but every once in a while I would get a BSOD with an error referring to nvdisp.dll. I tried about 4 or 5 differnt permutations of drivers, all to no avail. Switching to an ATI video card seems to have solved the problem. I suspect that there is some sort of incompatability between the ATI motherboard chipset and the Nvidia video cards. Try getting a non-Nvidia card and see how things go. I'd love to find out if it fixes your problem as well.
 
Doesn't seem to be all that hot... Was that the touch test or the boiling egg test you ran? :D Well like I said, try underclocking and see if it fixes your problem. Even at "stock" on the BFG 6800GT OC I was getting pauses every few seconds. Underclocking seemed to solve it.

spade, when your system crashes and it points to the graphic driver, it can also mean a driver issue or a heat issue. In my case, I was on an nForce3, tried around 3 or 4 different drivers and was still having problems. Go look on nvnews.net and it turns out there are a ton of people with that pause issue. I really think these cards are either having problems running moderately hot or something in the drivers is not working right. http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=32759&highlight=lag

Maybe your cards were trying to throttle and the lower voltage caused them to lock up? Sounds reasonable on a mATX system.
 
Well.. I guess I will try to underclock it tonight.. but if that is the problem then I will be extremely pissed off... I should get what I paid my $550 for!
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Doesn't seem to be all that hot... Was that the touch test or the boiling egg test you ran? :D Well like I said, try underclocking and see if it fixes your problem. Even at "stock" on the BFG 6800GT OC I was getting pauses every few seconds. Underclocking seemed to solve it.

spade, when your system crashes and it points to the graphic driver, it can also mean a driver issue or a heat issue. In my case, I was on an nForce3, tried around 3 or 4 different drivers and was still having problems. Go look on nvnews.net and it turns out there are a ton of people with that pause issue. I really think these cards are either having problems running moderately hot or something in the drivers is not working right. http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=32759&highlight=lag

Maybe your cards were trying to throttle and the lower voltage caused them to lock up? Sounds reasonable on a mATX system.
Click to expand...

Nah, it wasn't a heat problem... I ran the system with a high-volume floor fan strapped to the top of the chassis for a while with no effect on the lockups. I never had "pauses", only lockups or BSOD's. I was using XFX 6800gt's with no overclocking at all. My new 850xt-pe doesn't have these problems at all, and I'm not sure that it would run any cooler than a 6800gt.
 
Ok.. now tell me how weird this is. Last night I benched Doom3 for well over 2 hours, solid loops of 3dmark01, 3dmark03, and 3dmark05 without a hitch. It seems like BF2 is the only game that causes my system to lock-up? Maybe BF2 hates me?
 
Driver issue... I would say it is crashing, because it's more demanding, but there is no way. BF2 just uses a ton of memory. D3 really smokes your card.
 
My experience was that sometimes my system would go a couple of days without locking up, then it would lock up 3 or 4 times in one evening. Sometimes even just while I was browsing the web or something that didn't even use the 3d part of the card. I don't know that what you are experienceing is the same as the problems I had, but it sounds mighty familiar.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Doesn't seem to be all that hot... Was that the touch test or the boiling egg test you ran? :D Well like I said, try underclocking and see if it fixes your problem. Even at "stock" on the BFG 6800GT OC I was getting pauses every few seconds. Underclocking seemed to solve it.

spade, when your system crashes and it points to the graphic driver, it can also mean a driver issue or a heat issue. In my case, I was on an nForce3, tried around 3 or 4 different drivers and was still having problems. Go look on nvnews.net and it turns out there are a ton of people with that pause issue. I really think these cards are either having problems running moderately hot or something in the drivers is not working right. http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=32759&highlight=lag

Maybe your cards were trying to throttle and the lower voltage caused them to lock up? Sounds reasonable on a mATX system.
Click to expand...

Yes it is very odd. It is annoying to say the least (lockups and pauses). However I think that these pauses and lockups are power related. Not psu, but a design flaw. I think this because I did the capacitor mod to my 6800 and all the problems went away.
 
Hmm weak caps? That's interesting... I have seen alot of people talk about this issue, but I'm wondering how many are just living with it? "Pauses" are not normal guys!
 
What do you mean LOCK-UP,

i have BFOD when i open soldier of fortune 2 mp demo.
but not with BF2.

same mainboard like you :)
may-b try to upgrade your mainboard bios - that should help.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Hmm weak caps? That's interesting... I have seen alot of people talk about this issue, but I'm wondering how many are just living with it? "Pauses" are not normal guys!
Click to expand...

Yes I know. I mean yes these cards get more fps but if the gameplay sucks ass (pauses suck ass...), well then, I was better off with my old, SMOOTH ti4600. It is very annoying. I think my next video card will be an ati. I mean, I like nvidia and all but these instability problems are annoying as hell.
 
this freaking sucks. Mine locks up everytime i download a file. Any file!.

i didnt have this issue before i installed the Audigy drivers for my sound card. maybe this board has an issue with a sound card?
 
I have an ecs rs480 and after i installed an audigy 2 it kept locking up when I'd browse another computer's share or try download something. I removed the card and the computer worked perfect again. I wouldve done some troubleshooting with it first but I just wanted to hurry up and do some gaming at the time. There is probably some conflict between the audigy and another device, video card maybe (?).
 
I know you said you went over the checklist, but which power supply is running:
+12 - 11.64V
Click to expand...
That's fairly low for the +12V line, and it would certainly explain lock-ups in 3D mode. Your card probably doesn't have enough juice to run its 3D frequencies. You said you'd already tried a NeoPower, but were the problems as persistent with it, and was the voltage as low?
 
o8ford said:
I have an ecs rs480 and after i installed an audigy 2 it kept locking up when I'd browse another computer's share or try download something. I removed the card and the computer worked perfect again. I wouldve done some troubleshooting with it first but I just wanted to hurry up and do some gaming at the time. There is probably some conflict between the audigy and another device, video card maybe (?).
Click to expand...

I thought my problems were done with whenever I reformatted and installed Windows.. again. But then someone was copying some files from my comp at a lan and it just decided to start making a very high pitch noise through the headphones and lock up. I thought about the sound card being a culprit, but now this might just confirm it. I really don't like the idea of giving up the sound quality of my Audigy 2 ZS though... :(
 
Tried running with just the onboard sound, to confirm the A2 is the problem?

Switch to an A2 Value and save some money.
 
I will pull the A2 ZS whenever I get some time to see if its the problem... but ECS has scared me away from EVER purchasing a motherboard again. I e-mailed them last month about the problem, and have yet to get a response.
 
PC-HAngover said:
I will pull the A2 ZS whenever I get some time to see if its the problem... but ECS has scared me away from EVER purchasing a motherboard again. I e-mailed them last month about the problem, and have yet to get a response.
Click to expand...


you arent the only one. i get the same problem and i have called ECS and guess what they said. "Creative might have some issues with ATI southbridge" WTF!!!!! they repeatedly keep saying that and the emailing creative didnt yeald any results. all they kept saying is reinstalling drivers.

wow

it would be nice if someone can try a x-fi on this ecs board.
 
Holy Shit! (Sorry for language). I have the same motherboard and the SAME PROBLEMS. Horrible crackling noise/high pictched noise from headphones then the mouse gets all choppy, and then I have to do a hard restart and I lose all the stuff that I had changed. It happens constantly, I end up hard restarting about 6-8 times a day. I feel for you man. Here was my setup

Falcon Northwest Fragbox II
Silverstone 520W Fragbox PSU
2GB PQI RAM
X800XL
ESC RS480-M
FX-55
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
PC-150
Zalman 80mm

The motherboard and CPU were also really hot, my FX was idling at 60 C and hit 69-70 at load. This is what I did to fix it. I sold the case, PSU, HSF and motherboard and bought the following parts, Zalman 7700Cu, DFI LanParty Ultra, Lian Li PC60B Plus, Antec 550W Gold. It runs like a charm, I suggest you do the same. If you are loooking for a guy to do it, I know one that will buy your parts, buy the new parts, and install and ship it back 2 day air. Hit me up with a PM if you want. I am so fucking glad I got rid of that piece of garbage, I suggest you do the same.

P.S. I am sorry for the language but ECS is the worst company ever and their products are pieces of rubbish, it really annoys me that much.
 
what temps are you guys getting with the motherboard? i am actually waiting for DFI to release a mATX version.
 
Only problem Ive had with the RS480 boards is the NB cooling. It honestly needs to be active, because whenever I have 2-3 fans pointed directly at it (my computer is just laying on my desk) its rock stable. the second I turn off my a/c and my fans though, I crash in 5-10 minutes. Im using the onboard graphics (for now) on the Jetway 210GDMS
 
Oh, heres another problem, the BIOS, Sucks. There are not enough options to work with.
 
I am happy with everything in my case... except this crappy ECS POS.. I CANNOT WAIT! until DFI, or someone else releases a mATX skt 939 mobo... argh... come on DFI.. be my HERO!!!!!!!!
 
I feel for you man, I really do. I already cursed out ECS several times lol. But I don't have a lot of patience for bad computer parts and that is why I did a complete switch and I even made some money doing it, I mean, after sales and buying the new parts.
 
what temps did you guys get with the ECS ? no matter what i modify.. the case temp still remains at 37C and cpu at 48C . i am beggining to suspect the sensors on the mobo are fucked up
 
swatX said:
what temps did you guys get with the ECS ? no matter what i modify.. the case temp still remains at 37C and cpu at 48C . i am beggining to suspect the sensors on the mobo are fucked up
Click to expand...

I haven't even looked because I am pretty sure everything on this motherboard is complete crap.
 
PC-HAngover said:
I haven't even looked because I am pretty sure everything on this motherboard is complete crap.
Click to expand...

The truth hurts
:(

Is it even possible to attain 100% stability with this chipset?
 
audigy 2 nor ZS doesnt work
no matter what i do cpu is still hot
ECS support is crap.

never buying another ECS product again.
 
swatX said:
audigy 2 nor ZS doesnt work
no matter what i do cpu is still hot
ECS support is crap.

never buying another ECS product again.
Click to expand...

same thing here, except I haven't really looked at the temps. I even installed the new X-Fi drivers for my ZS that were suppose to fix the crash issue, but it didn't. And I refuse to give up my Audigy 2 ZS, because I have 7.1 speakers, and on-board audio with this shitty motherboard is out of the question.

ECS----- Every Chipset (we build) Sucks!
 
Same here. My temps were really high too.

60C + for the CPU (FX-55)
48 for the MB.
 
i wonder if changing the mobo would fix the temp issue. Anyone know when DFI or biostar is releasing the mATX mobo to the US market.?
 
swatX said:
i wonder if changing the mobo would fix the temp issue. Anyone know when DFI or biostar is releasing the mATX mobo to the US market.?
Click to expand...

I am absolutely positive that switching the mobo for a BETTER one would solve our issues with shitty ECS.

It is still unkown as to when another decent mATX motherboard will be released, but hopefully soon.
 
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