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Help! Xonar Essence Stx not working

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OlIv0rIolI

Gawd
Joined
Dec 2, 2005
Messages
634
I purchased the xonar essence card a week ago from zipzoomfly and got it this morning. I proceeded to install it.

Before opening the shipping box it came in, i noticed that the object inside is moving around a bit. When I opened the box. I saw that zzf did a terrible job of packing. They put a few air bags in it, and it wasn't even enough to keep the product from moving around much less the fact that one airbag flattened out . I felt a little dread, but whatever, The card is not some HDD and it is saftely tucked in the asus plastic packaging, so it shouldn't be effected in any way.

When I slide the card into PCI-E, I noticed that it isn't a tight fit like with the 16x card and you can push the card forward and backward parrell to the long axis of the pcie slot. I thought it might have something to do with pcie1x being very small. Not sure about it.

Anyway I turned on my computer into winxp64 and....nothing. I went into the device manager and I don't see anything new. I installed the cd driver anyway because I thought that might fix it. When installation is complete it saids "Please connect your sound card"?????. I realized I need to turn off onboard sound so I restarted, did that and it still doesn't work. I tried the only other pcie1x slot and no luck. And yes I did connect the molex power to the sound card. My motherboard is in my sig.

Also I have duel boot winxp64 and vista64 and none of them works. Please help.
 
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Off the top of my head: I don't think you should be able to slide the card around if it's properly inserted. I'd start with that.
 
I guess I should clarify a bit. I slide the card into the spot, but its not like when you put a graphics card into pcie16 where it is tightly fit into place. With this audio card, As hard as I push, you can still sort of jiggle it. It doesn't feel like Its properly seated, but its as far as it will go in.
 
make sure you install the latest drivers for your os from asus website to rule out any glitches that're now fixed.
 
OlIv0rIolI said:
I guess I should clarify a bit. I slide the card into the spot, but its not like when you put a graphics card into pcie16 where it is tightly fit into place. With this audio card, As hard as I push, you can still sort of jiggle it. It doesn't feel like Its properly seated, but its as far as it will go in.
Click to expand...

I have that too with my dx when the case is open, but the weight of gravity should keep it in the right position. Just make sure you have the end screwed in tightly. Also make sure you are in fact putting it into the right slot for its connector. If the slot is significantly longer, you're putting it in the wrong physical slot.
 
The driver that came with the cd is the same version as the one online. Besides even if it isn't, I should still be able to see "unkonwn hardware" in the device manager.

The screws are tight. I stated before that I tried both pcie1x slots on my motherboard. Even if I put it in the 8x slot it wouldn't make a difference because the pci express scale up. So basically a pcie card can be fit into any pcie slots regardless of what they are as long as its physically possible.
 
Onboard sound actually shouldn't make a difference with Vista (although maybe for XP). I would try unplugging your comp and popping the bios battery out for a minute, then put it back in. Maybe it's not detecting it right. Also make sure any necessary settings are there for your PCI-E to run in bios and make sure you aren't overclocking that bus.

Try other cards if you have them available in those slots to see if the slots mechanically work. Also try the card in a friends computer to narrow it down.
 
I haven't overclocked anything for years. Just wasn't worth it.

I have a 7900gs and an areca ARC-1210 PCI-Express x8 SATA II Controller Card that works flawlessly within their own respective slots. The bios is pretty much in default settings.

I will try to see if anybody nearby has a computer I can try this card with. I don't have another card to try on the pcie. This was my first and only 1x card :mad:

Worst comes worst I have to RMA it. I am not looking forward to it. ZipZoomfly is no Newegg, I doubt they will pay for the shipping. and wait another 2 to 3 weeks for a replacement.
 
Ok I found out that it has nothing to do with the sound card. I found out that my motherboard has only 22 express lanes, ---> the GPU is taking up 16, and the areca is taking up the remaining 6. I took out the areca card and the STX works. I will put the areca back and see if it works again.

edit: THe front panel audio has lots of static noise compared to back panel. Any fixes???
 
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Update: I reinstalled the areca controller card and the sound card hardware no longer appears in my device mangaer list.

This means the areca card is overriding and taking up all the 6 lanes availabe. Is there anyway for me to specify who gets how many pci lanes on the motherboard?
 
OlIv0rIolI said:
edit: THe front panel audio has lots of static noise compared to back panel. Any fixes???
Click to expand...

this is likely caused by the electrical interference from other components in the case.. you can try shielding the front panel wires, or routing the wires away from power cables to see if it helps
 
OlIv0rIolI said:
Update: I reinstalled the areca controller card and the sound card hardware no longer appears in my device mangaer list.

This means the areca card is overriding and taking up all the 6 lanes availabe. Is there anyway for me to specify who gets how many pci lanes on the motherboard?
Click to expand...

This is exactly what happend to me when I installed my sound card. I had to update my bios before I had the option to limit lanes to the 2nd PCIe slot to 1x.
 
Hi strend, could you be a little more specific.

from your sig, I don't see that you have anything else besides a graphics and sound card. Do you have another pcie card that is more than x4?

Also I checked on my mobo website with the bios update and their descriptions and none of them saids anything about pcie lane control
 
Ok I was able to find some answers. Though they are not to my liking

http://america.gigabyte.com.tw/FileL...-p35-dq6_e.pdf

(Note 2) When the second PCI Express x16 slot (PCIE_16_2) is in use, the three PCI Express x1 slots become unavailable.

When I first bought the mobo, I didn't foresee this would happen. The bios upgrade will not fix this

ok, the only solution left is to buy another mobo. I am currently looking at this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128358

Its a P45 mobo. The block diagram I read about it saids that one pciex16_1 slot is running at 16x electrically, but if the pciex16_2 slot is also used, the channel is split and both becomes x8 electrically.

Now my questions are will I be able the use x16_2 for something other than GPU like my areca raid controller card? How will that effect the x16_1 slot? I am asking because it seems this two x8 configuration is made specifically for Crossfire. I don't want to have compatibility issues.

If one of the x16_1 is running at x8 speed will I be able to upgrade my video card to something higher in the future like nvidia 9xxx or 2xx series which need x16 speed?

Also will I still be able to use the 3 pciex1 slots simultaneously as well?
 
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