tips and tricks for the Abit IC7-MAX3

G

Greenfire84

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 7, 2004
Messages
66
Hey all, I just wanted to see if any of you out there have any tips or tricks that you could let the rest of us know about for this particular board. I am a nOObie so pls anything would help me, over clocking, general cooling, tuneing, good programs, anything. Thanks
 
I put a couple of these together a while ago, the only thing that I had problems with was pushing the memory. The memory that we started out with was the Muskin '222' special PC 3200 and no matter what this memory would not work in the board higher than like 5-5-5-8 timings or something crazy. Finally we ended up with Corsair XMS 3200 PRO memory and you could push that memory all over the place and the board never had a problem.
 
If you're overclocking your RAM, if you need to take the Vdimm over 2.8V, you'll probably need to loosen up the timings, because the board has a VTT tracking problem. This applies to all IC7 mobos actually. Also, if you need to take the Vdimm over 2.8V, check to see if MC64 is present. Abit had a problem with voltage fluctation above 2.8V that they fixed by removing a little cap. If you have a newer board it was probably done already. I have an earlier one and I have yet to do it because I'm going to be doing that and a VTT tracking mod at the same time in the near future. If it's still under warranty and the cap is there and the voltage fluctuation is there and affects you, you can RMA it to Abit and have them do it for you. If it was made any time after November 2003 though it's already done.

However Abit has not and will not fixed the VTT problem, that's up to the enthusiast.
 
is there a link to see a walkthrough on how to do the VTT mod? Also, what do you think about running 2 512 500mhz corsairs chips as memory?
 
VTT Mod Construction Guide

VTT Mod Installation Guide

I'm going to recommend you not perform this mod. It's quite involved and irreversible. If you screw up you can kill your mobo or ram. I am an electrical engineering student with extensive experience with soldering in general, as well as multilayer PCBs and surface mount components, and a high quality ESD safe solder station with fine tips, so I consider myself qualified to attempt this, but it still makes me nervous.

My recommendation to you is to loosen up the timings if you have stability issues. If you have a board manufactured after november or so you won't have vdimm fluctuation issues. Corsair is a great brand, I don't see a problem with your memory.
 
k well how about how to make a sata and ide ata drive work together? I put everything on my 120 sata drive. And was working with that. I took a western digital ide ata drive out of my old case to move some info music movies etc. And it tried to boot to the wd drive and came up with a no os found error. I messed with the bios and then it booted but didn't see the extra HD? I put the bios back to default and came up with the same error? What do i need to do. Jumpers and everything are set correctly.
 
Try turning on Bus Mastering. Saw someone suggest it on some other board and say it was kind of unique to the IC7-Max3, I'm having troubles of my own with a SATA drive on this mobo, but it'll boot now, for whatever reason.
 
To enable hardrives for both the SATA and ATA connections,.....

1. (not a critical step but one that should be done) download the FlashMenu from Abit
HERE
run it and it will automatically download the new bios and update the board.
BUT BEWARE it will reset all motherboard setting to default!!!!!

2. Open the bios (tap "delete" once the power is turned on until the bios comes up)and go to....
Integrated Peripherals
OnChip IDE Device
IDE Bus Master.....[Enabled]
OnChip Serial ATA.......[Enhanced Mode]

now go back to.....
Advanced Bios Features
Hard Disk Boot Priority - choose the drive that has the OS on it to boot 1st

F10 to save the changes and enter to restart
 
Thanks for all the help. Ill try it all when I get home and let you guys know how it turns out.
 
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