GA-X48-DS5 Can't get stable even at stock

[NimrodAUS]

Hi All this is my first post, I have search for answers but noone is having the same dramas as me.

Just got a brand new set up and put it together (see my sig) and the only time it booted fine was the first time, loaded bindows vista on it and started testing, then the BSOD's started. I have later duscovered that there is infact 1 dead ram stick, so I ditched both XMS and put in some known good ram 2 X 1gb kingston 533mhz DDR2, and it wont even boot windows. I put the one good stick of XMS2 in and it boots but then randomly will switch off suddenly with no BSOD and or resets with no BSOD. Temps apper to be normal, 40ish on MB and CPU is 30ish IDLE 44 under Prime 95. I have tried all BIOS versions as obviously F5 Doesnt support Wolfdale, however it seemed to run the most stable?? First post was @ 2.66Ghz.

Now getting even deeper, Ive tried a fresh install with the known good ram, and it will stop while expanding the files sometimes @ 20% sometimes 90%, and most recently I have noticed that the HDD seems to spool down and back up again serveral times before the error comes up. I cant remember exactly what it says but its something along the lines of cant find files. Tried multiply HDD's Cables and SATA ports. Sometimes even in the BIOS it doesnt detect my Drives and has even showed my DVD at a different port than what it is in. The most worrying thing that has happened is it has even switched off while I was in the BIOS checking settings, not changing just looking

I have Tried Multiply PSU, and another key point is that the First PSU I was using with this system was a Thermaltake 550watt and it was good and going strong until I had it in and on one of the random switch off's it umm never turned back on, I have tried it in another pc and yeah its pretty much dead, it will flick on for a split second and off again. Anyway thats RMA'd anyway.

I really just need to know, A) Have I got a dead board? B) Have I just got a plain crap board?? I have read a lot of problems with this board C) Is there any settings like maybe uppin the FBS V's a bit or something, I just wanna get this darn thing to work Stock, let along worry about overclocking.

Oh By the way my Motherboard Revision is 1.3

Thanks In Advance for any Help and comments. I know this is the place where I will find some answers.

[NimrodAUS]

Well I have just experemented with some other things, changed a few voltage settings and what not to see if it would work. It didnt, but i did notice that the North Bridge gets pretty bloody hot. Even when I put it back to stock everything, its getting up in the mid to high 40's, and I cant hold my fingure on the "Silent Pipe" Heat sink very long. Is it possible that this heat issue would cause the MB to just switch off without warning like it did just before?

[VorLonUK]

You really need to sort the ram issue. When you run the kingston, is the board actually trying to run it as low as it's stock at 533Mhz? You can check this in the bios.
I'm wondering if you simply didn't setup your xms correctly, or it was faulty and shifting to the Kingston 533 has compounded the problem, because the board may (i haven't checked) support a frequency as low as that. Therefore it could be running the kingtston at 667Mhz.

You need to start somewhere, so ideally with 1 or 2 sticks of 800mhz ddr2 memory, that you know to be ok.

[NimrodAUS]

Well Its not ram, The Kingston is running @ 533 in the Bios, 1 XMS2 Stick is DOA for sure it wont run in my dell but the other will run fine, I memtested the good one for 11 hours it was sweet. Ive just been fooling around with it as we speak, I put a rather loud and effective fan on top of the NB heatpipe heat sink and it well feels cold now and the temps are way down below 40 even while running prime. Theres something going on with the SATA, While running prime givin it was only for about 10 minutes, the HDD powered down and then back up again, then BSOD with some Kernal . .. couldnt read the rest it reset. The HDD does it in the BIOS to it will be shown in the first screen then you go out and back in and its gone again, im currently running it from 4 pin molex to sata power adapter from another psu to Isolate the new PSU as the problem but its still doing it. Ive reflashed F7 BIOS Ive tried F8A, all the stuff, Settings on failsafe, optimized, manual IDK WTF is going on with this junk board. Its very upsetting. Ive tried ram settings on manual and auto, the Kingston ram did work fine in the computer thats what was in there when I installed the OS and now it just freezes on the loading screen, but if i put the good XMS2 in it will load windows and do all the stuff, Even if i only have 1 Kingston in it still wont load. Its a SATA MB problem people. Im gunna try the purple SATA again but it didnt work last time so im not ever excited.

[Darkpark7]

I have the same board, but I'm not 100 percent sure about the revision of my board. I have either revision 1.2 or 1.3 Additionally, I am using a pair of 2GB Corsair Dominators PC2-8500. The only issue that I have had is that the board doesn't correctly detect the memory timings so I manually entered in 5-5-5-15 and 2.1 volts. According to CoreTemp v0.993 my cores idle between 33C and 39C. (by the way, why is there such a difference in temperatures between the different cores?) I'm using an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. My whole setup is housed in a Cooler Maser Cosmos 1000 with 4 120mm case fans.

By the way, I have turned off all "performance enhancement" settings such as:
PCI Express is manually set to 100mhz
CIA2 is disabled
Performance Enhance is set to standard
Dram settings/timings are set manually as stated above.
Everything else in the MIT section is the default for "Load Optimized Defaults"

[NimrodAUS]

I dont know why the core temps are different, but i have noticed some funny stuff in prime 95 as we speak core 0 is 39 and core 1 is 36, they are usually at least that far different in real temp, and the funny thing is Worker #1 is usually the fastest, but earlier Worker 2 was kickin ass So i dont know how anything like that works.

[NimrodAUS]

Ok People Update.

I have now reinstalled Vista Ultimate X64 on fresh format using the Purple Gigabyte SATA A Plugs and well bugger me dead everything seeeeems to be running as it should, its been running Prime 95 now for a few hours without fault, Ive never got this far it normally would have shut off by now. Now there is one thing to mention I am still running that fan on the NB so my next step is to remove it and see if all is well still. But I did try to run prime with it before I formatted and it switched off when i was using SATA 0. Hmmm Interesting. Anyway Ill keep you posted. If there is any Gigabyte guys out there that may be able to tell me why the Purple SATA works and why the Yellow doesnt that would be good. My DVD is in SATA 3

[NimrodAUS]

Na Its still being stupid, I re boot after some windows update and it takes like 5 resets for the hdd to spin up and be detected again, does it on 2 different known good hdd. why o why gigabyte.

[NimrodAUS]

I have turned off all power options in windows that would cause it to turn off, and it still will turn off even while prime is running and you click on the start menu and nothing happens for about 20 seconds untill the HDD spins up again?? Any Ideas?

[Darkpark7]

It sounds like it's overheating. Perhaps that copper heat sink that runs along the north and south bridges isn't making good contact with those chips? You could try taking it off, clean the old thermal grease, apply some AS5 then re-fasten the heat sink back on.

As for the yellow and the purple SATA ports: The yellow sata ports are controlled by the Intel motherboard chipset and the purple sata ports are controlled by a seperate Gigabyte sata controller chip.