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So, I bought one of the worst add-in cards on the planet, the Gigabyte Thunderbolt add-in card for their X99 series of motherboards. It was an awful experience, and the card never worked. I tried to get support from Gigabyte but nothing happened UNTIL I posted a strong review on Newegg. Then I contacted by Newegg from a Gigabyte Tech.
I thought that at least they were going to try, plus I had been a solid customer of theirs for years, and owned three of their motherboards, several of their graphics cards, etc. So, I responded to their request and referenced their ticket number, 121908.
Boy, was that a mistake....
They asked me to move the card around in this motherboard to different slots to test it's response. To do that I had to remove and move some other boards, and that I think was my downfall.
Shortly after moving the cards around, I experienced that the motherboard wouldn't boot. The bios wouldn't respond at all. Nothing, not even crickets.......Frantic, I called them and I really was upset. First of all, you don't expect to ruin your system by following what you think is an experience technical support reps instructions. But more importantly, I had work to do that I couldn't! The Tech that I talked with on the phone did seem to have a clue what was going on - at first I just thought he was inexperienced, now I'm not so sure.
I reset the bios, and even pulled out the battery on the motherboard in desperation, and it still didn't work. After several tries, I got back into the bios, but each time I saved a configuration, I couldn't reboot successfully, it would just hang. Usually after power cycling the board and rebooting several times (and I do mean several), sometimes I would get in.
Even worse, even though I had 32 GB of ram installed the system was only seeing 16 GB. The ram had NOT been touched at all during the troubleshooting. Nothing was done to the ram settings in the bios either during all the time I was on the phone with them, or after. Long after the event, once I realized I had a problem with the ram, I tried reseating the ram, moving it around, nothing worked, and even now it only sees 16 GB of ram. Just so you know, I did reflash the bios, just in case, and that didn't work either.
In the middle of this event, I had no idea what was going on, but once I got off the phone, I hit the web and forums. Lo and behold, others who had the same board were experiencing the same problem. Not all, of course, but more than a few and more than I expected to find. Then on Tom's Hardware, I found what I think is the main problem with the board: PCI enumeration.
I believe this board has significant issues with PCI enumeration, and will fail because of it's inability to manage PCI enumeration if that inability is exposed by a group of cards being moved on the board at roughly the same time. Therefore, if someone never moves a card after building a system with the board, nothing happens. But if some reason, either because you're prompted to move cards around, as I was, or because you've decided to move cards around for some other reason or need, you are going to be in trouble.
But of course, I don't believe Gigabyte has any intention of admitting this severe design flaw.
As is stands as of today, the system still fails to boot on a regular basis, and goes into bois never-neverland on a regular basis. But after a while it loads. Frustrating, and extremely unpleasant, and a bad kluge. But it will not recognize the second bank of ram, and the bios has never registered the second bank of ram since the troubleshooting event. Before the event, it had 32 GB of ram, and after, it only recognizes 16 GB of ram, even though 32 GB is installed. Either the second bank of ram is just toast and the board is flawed and nearly dead (which it probably is), or???
Are there any technical wizards out there that understand PCI enumeration and how I could possibly reset it?
And finally, I just have to ask. Given that Gigabyte Techs work with this board every day, does anyone think they knew that moving the cards around would do this? I mean I understand, I may have a lemon on my hands, but I would think they would know that this might cause trouble.
I thought that at least they were going to try, plus I had been a solid customer of theirs for years, and owned three of their motherboards, several of their graphics cards, etc. So, I responded to their request and referenced their ticket number, 121908.
Boy, was that a mistake....
They asked me to move the card around in this motherboard to different slots to test it's response. To do that I had to remove and move some other boards, and that I think was my downfall.
Shortly after moving the cards around, I experienced that the motherboard wouldn't boot. The bios wouldn't respond at all. Nothing, not even crickets.......Frantic, I called them and I really was upset. First of all, you don't expect to ruin your system by following what you think is an experience technical support reps instructions. But more importantly, I had work to do that I couldn't! The Tech that I talked with on the phone did seem to have a clue what was going on - at first I just thought he was inexperienced, now I'm not so sure.
I reset the bios, and even pulled out the battery on the motherboard in desperation, and it still didn't work. After several tries, I got back into the bios, but each time I saved a configuration, I couldn't reboot successfully, it would just hang. Usually after power cycling the board and rebooting several times (and I do mean several), sometimes I would get in.
Even worse, even though I had 32 GB of ram installed the system was only seeing 16 GB. The ram had NOT been touched at all during the troubleshooting. Nothing was done to the ram settings in the bios either during all the time I was on the phone with them, or after. Long after the event, once I realized I had a problem with the ram, I tried reseating the ram, moving it around, nothing worked, and even now it only sees 16 GB of ram. Just so you know, I did reflash the bios, just in case, and that didn't work either.
In the middle of this event, I had no idea what was going on, but once I got off the phone, I hit the web and forums. Lo and behold, others who had the same board were experiencing the same problem. Not all, of course, but more than a few and more than I expected to find. Then on Tom's Hardware, I found what I think is the main problem with the board: PCI enumeration.
I believe this board has significant issues with PCI enumeration, and will fail because of it's inability to manage PCI enumeration if that inability is exposed by a group of cards being moved on the board at roughly the same time. Therefore, if someone never moves a card after building a system with the board, nothing happens. But if some reason, either because you're prompted to move cards around, as I was, or because you've decided to move cards around for some other reason or need, you are going to be in trouble.
But of course, I don't believe Gigabyte has any intention of admitting this severe design flaw.
As is stands as of today, the system still fails to boot on a regular basis, and goes into bois never-neverland on a regular basis. But after a while it loads. Frustrating, and extremely unpleasant, and a bad kluge. But it will not recognize the second bank of ram, and the bios has never registered the second bank of ram since the troubleshooting event. Before the event, it had 32 GB of ram, and after, it only recognizes 16 GB of ram, even though 32 GB is installed. Either the second bank of ram is just toast and the board is flawed and nearly dead (which it probably is), or???
Are there any technical wizards out there that understand PCI enumeration and how I could possibly reset it?
And finally, I just have to ask. Given that Gigabyte Techs work with this board every day, does anyone think they knew that moving the cards around would do this? I mean I understand, I may have a lemon on my hands, but I would think they would know that this might cause trouble.