ASRock Fatality - Bad Board?

[nwidesigns]

Just purchased the ASRock X79 Fatality Champion board and I have had nothing but problems with this board. For starters I had to shield the board with carbon washers because it was grounding out which is the first indication this board is not a top of the line board! Once I got everything setup in the UEFI which all looked good I booted and loaded Windows 7. I ran into error after error trying to get the system to recognize and identify anything that was USB. I Have the Bose Champion 5 USB speakers and they flat would not work, I also had issues with my Logitech cordless mouse but managed to make that work in the USB 2 slots. Note on that, it seems the only USB that currently works right is the USB 2.0.

I have three monitors and they worked great until I updated the BIOS in hopes I could get the USB 3.0 slots to work. In which they did start working and my speakers worked for a short time before failing again. However after the BIOS update to 1.9.0 now my second video card is gone, I cannot even see it in the UEFI and shows that slot 5 is empty when in fact I can see it in the case. I have tested and ensured everything is seated correctly, everything has power including the additional SLI power on the board. Yet nothing is working correctly and there seems to be nothing I can find wrong with the system. Another thing, I cannot get my USB Printer to work which is a plug and play device and tells me that there is something very wrong with this board and the way it controls USB devices.

If anyone has any input or ideas I would be grateful. I have been banging my head against the wall for three days on this and I am at the point to say the ASRock is not a high end board manufacturer, return this brick and go back to Gigabyte, MSI and EVGA boards as they have NEVER been this big of a pain to get setup! I would also like to mention to anyone here that is a representative of ASRock, that when someone submits a support request that references help needed like I do. Not to tell me after I post the support request that I should somehow contact the dealer. This is an ASRock problem NOT a dealer problem and I expect support from the manufacturer when I pay as much as I did for this board that claims such high praise as you do this board.

Here are my specs:
ASRock X79 Fatality Champion
Intel Core i7 - 3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 2011 130W Six-Core
32Gb GSkill DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200)
2- ASUS GTX660 DC2 2GD5 GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP
Crucial M4 512GB SATA III MLC SSD
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

[- wardog -]

Sorry to hear your problems with this board.

Grounding out? Carbon washers? Carbon, in most forms/states, is conductive. Carbon fiber is too. I trust you meant something other than carbon there.

The standoffs to mount the mb, they were placed correctly to employ all the mounting holes of the mb? No extra standoffs residing under the mb that may be causing a short?

Also, not knowing what the I/O Shield looks like for this mb, but is there the off chance that one of the tabs of the shield didn't somehow find its way into one of the mbs rear ports did it?

To me, it appears you have an unwelcome and deleterious power or ground issue going on here.

How did it test when you benched it outside the case with the minimum attached?

[parsec]

wardog is correct, I can't agree that it is not a top of the line board due to the grounding issue. Is that a new build or replacement board? Either way, you MUST match the mobo standoffs to the holes in the board, extras can and will short the board.

[nwidesigns]

I have been building power user systems for 18 years and in that time I have not had a grounding issue for the last 10. If you have had a high end board that had grounding issues with the standoffs in the last say 5 years, then you have not been using a high end board. I only installed standoffs to match the board, I only use top of the line power supplies and cases and there is no other reason the board should be grounding out. While New Egg was great and replaced the defective board it still grounded out without fiber washers. My mistake on calling the fiber washers carbon, they are not carbon although I do have some that I use that are coated with a polymer binder and they are not conductive I did not use them in this application.

My out of case bench test was a failure and was the reason I RMA'ed the board. I did manage to work out most of the issues but running two video cards showed that the board was DOA as the second card could not be recognized. The only other issue is the crap Marvell drivers that are about as sound as Realtek drivers and have no business in a high end board. The new board other than the grounding issue is a great board and has restored my faith that ASRock is a contender. Their support came through and helped me and that too makes this board one I will be using more in future builds.

[WilliamM2]

The motherboard mounting screws are supposed to ground the board. That's why there are silver rings around the mounting holes for the screws to contact. Not sure what was causing your issue, but it wasn't a grounding issue, unless you had an extra standoff somewhere.

[nwidesigns]

@WilliamM2 - I assure you it is a grounding issue and as I already stated there are no standoffs on the board that are not being used to mount to the board. The fact that I had to put fiber washers on each of the mounting screws in order to start the board are conclusive that the board is indeed grounding out to the case.