EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

[Chike]

Re: EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

For instance, this poor guy has trying to get this thing working since SEPTEMBER. How many more suggestions are people going to give him before someone finally suggests that just maybe it's the MOBO?

You have a pint there. I tend to do it rater quickly if I feel most reasonable and or possible options have been exhusted.
Some tweaks, even to compensate on BIOS or minor hardware faults are acceptable, but that's about it.
I am in the oppinion people deserve to get what they paid for, and in the case of this particular board, a top quality hassle free motherboard.

I disagree with your first post though. You have a faulty board, RMA it, it's what RMA is for.

[b33cux]

Re: EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

I disagree with your first post though. You have a faulty board, RMA it, it's what RMA is for.

LOL! I hear you - and I should confess: In a way, I AM being silly: Although I think that board is totally undependable, I've only given up on USING it - not fixing it .

Plus, I have my doubts that a replacement board would make a difference: My guess is that a firmware or driver update would best resolve this, and since there seems to be:

• a large # of BSODs associated with this board, and
• a low % of those seem to be getting resolved ,

I'm going to wait a bit and see if Gigabyte releases a working BIOS version/driver update/patch/whatever in the near future. If not, I may exchange...

Speaking of BIOS/driver versions: does anyone know how to get hold of PREVIOUS versions of same for this board? I don't see them on Gigabyte page nor on their FTP. With the versions immediately prior to the current ones, my board was much more stable: it only Blue Screened once a week or so - not 2x/day...

[wibujo]

Re: EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

I'm a Noob - Had never been inside a computer until I built this Rig(8/1/09).It's not by accident that I picked the EP45-UD3P - I researched Mobo's for 3 months before I made the decision.The Good to Bad ratio is probably 70/30.Ithink 50% of the 30 just didn't know how to work or setup the Board.I know people get bad parts sometimes but that's no reason to put down a good product.I've had issues with this board - Only to find out I had some settings wrong in the BIOS.I am OCing this board - If it Burned up today - I'd be online tomorrow ordering another.I would "NOT" RMA it.If you Hotrod a car you break parts.If you OC a computer you break parts.It's not a matter if - It's a matter when.Thanks to the People of this Forum and the EP45-UD3P - You have made OCing a pleasure - Not a fear.

[b33cux]

Re: EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

I wasn't OCing it - who the heck would try to OC it when it didn't work in the first place? I just wanted it to WORK. I happened to notice that in this thread, one of the possiblities that HADN'T been considered was the MOBO, I brought up the suggestion that it be considered, ESPECIALLY after reading more suggestions that yet more time/money be thrown at the problem. I didn't instantly consider my MOBO to be at fault; it didn't become prime suspect UNTIL I tried other known good components - simple Occam's Razor. As far as the ep45-ud3p being a piece of crap: I was expressing my opinion here, and, I'd like to point out: I'M over it. I got a better MOBO (from ASUS, thenkyewverymuch), and it works just fine. Badabing, badaboom. It was a solution that worked for me, and upon discovering another person with similar problems with the same board, I passed along what worked for me. As far as I can see, no other solution that has been presented in this thread has worked. Mine did and does. I still say after a certain amount of time, it's better to cut one's losses and find a solution that WORKS. And I would think that in a technical forum my or anyone's opinion would be INCIDENTAL to that.

[Chike]

Re: EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

I would not consider buying a new board as cutting losses, RMA is the more economical solution (most of the time,( much more when it is known that bad luck may come in 3s.
Although all 3 boards in this example are GBs does not mean ASUS is free of hickups (just recently got the replacement to a defective ASUS board.)

[b33cux]

Re: EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

I would not consider buying a new board as cutting losses, RMA is the more economical solution (most of the time,( much more when it is known that bad luck may come in 3s.
Although all 3 boards in this example are GBs does not mean ASUS is free of hickups (just recently got the replacement to a defective ASUS board.)

Generally I agree with you. And yes, bad boards come in all brands.

However, in this particular case, in my experience, this board will BS from as often as several X/day, AND/OR run just fine for a month between BSs - which, to me, is actually WORSE than several Xs/day, because at Week 5, 6, etc, who knows? Will it or won't it? Also, what happens if I want to upgrade a card, RAM, or HD? Tweaking is fine as long as it is an option, NOT a necessity. Not to mention that this board was marketed SPECIFICALLY as a dependable, stable board: "Three-inch copper bulkheads!" "Exotic Japanese capacitors!" Yeah, well...

I will give it this: - it's definitely one of the prettiest boards I've ever seen...

[redhead65]

Re: EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

Thanks to all who've contributed to this thread. Well for the record I RMAed the motherboard. After installing the replacement (new) EP45-UD3LR motherboard with the original Case, PSU, RAM (one stick only), Graphics Card, and Q9400 CPU I found that I had the same problem as before - i.e. the PC would not POST and would switch itself off and then back on every two seconds. I then replaced the CPU with another new Q9400 CPU and when switched on it immediately POSTed.

As before I loaded the Optimized Defaults, saved the setup, restarted the PC, and then reentered the BIOS. I then set the System Memory Multiplier to 2.40B to manually set the Memory Frequency at 800 Mhz and then changed the standard timings to 6-6-6-18. I then gradually added back in the RAM sticks until they were all error free after 4-6 Memtest+ Passes each and 3 hours of OCCT testing. I then successfully repeated the Memtest+ testing overnight on all 8GB RAM.

I have since had the PC up and running the original installation of Windows 7 (64 Bit) for 5 days so far without any problems. I did have to reactivate Windows after a couple of days.

In hindsight it appears that cause of the problem was the original Q9400 CPU and not the EP45-UD3P motherboard. I'm now in the process of RMAing the CPU and intend using the replacement in another PC... most probably with another EP45-UD3LR motherboard as the other EP45 motherboard models are getting harder to find in Australia.

[profJim]

Re: EP45-UD3P - Downward Spiral - Now does not POST

Glad to hear that the new cpu has solved your problem.

Cpu failures are rare, but it shows that sometimes you need to test with other components to find out where the problem is.