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Typed this up for a different forums, overclocker.net but hey since people ask here is the entire story





So got my board in Friday and had the system together that night, as of today 2 hrs ago I have RMA the board. Basically first time I started it Friday it seamed to work fine, never shut it down just restarted it a lot when installing updates and games and such, even upgraded the bios just to be safe. Played games and man it was impressive, sli GTS 8800 EVGA cards (G92) was amazing, considering my old system is 5 years old its a huge upgrade. But on Saturday actuality had to turn off the system fully for whatever reasons. So power down hit the power button and all the fans and leds came to life for 1/2 a second then it all shut down. The motherboard would go form just the stand buy power led on to the stand buy power and the memory power led's being light up. After this to do anything have to power down the board from the power supply, let the board drain then try again. Took several attempts before it would start and post but once it did there where no issues except for video playback.

So spend most of sat night gaming and trying to work on the video playback issue. Basically start a video and 10 seconds to several minutes, the video would play but all of a sudden the system would freeze completely, even the lcd display on the keyboard would not even change, would have to reboot the system. Figured it was codec issues, never figured it out but with the rebooting I would also just turn off the pc as well for whatever reason and when powered down I get to really see the full extent of the issue with the board, it took up to 10 times to get the thing to start.

Today got up and called EVGA they suggested pulling parts from the board something I was already in the middle of doing. So continued on that, found out thta just taking the SLI bridge out, but leaving the 2 boards installed would reduce the occurrences from 90% to about 5% chance of happening but it still occurred. Removing one board, swapping boards int he primary slot, and trying both PCIE power rails on my power supply on the board made no difference. Called EVGA again, and they suggested pullig the motherboard out of the case hooking it up and trying that to see if the board had a short ont he case, did that nothign called again, they suggested running memtest and orthos to confirm the memory and the cpu where fine, no issues there at all.

So can't rule out the power supply but considering the load is a hell of a lot greater ing ames then on general startup it points more at the motherboard, EVGA suggested it could be a bad capacitor or something smiler. I am not sure if its related to the video playback issue, if it is great as it dose seam video card related if not then ok deal with that later.

Now I have already done the RMA paperwork as suggested by tech support and hell its already been approved for cross shipping, should get a new board this week hopping by wed if they ship tomorrow as I went with the higher end rma process that was 12$ which is almost as cheep as me just shipping to them the old board.

As for EVGA on a Sunday they took several tech calls, no wait times over 1 min, everyone had a clue there, gave suggestions ides and whatever else. And they where even happy I will willing to problem solve and work with them instead of yelling t them, very please with the support so far, these video cards and board are my first EVGA products but because of the response so far I would easily buy there product in the future.

sounds a lot like power supply veg...

LOL well about 50% of people say they think its Power Supply the other 50% think its motherboard related including the EVGA tech support guys. I think motherboard as just seams odd that its only on startup only, yet the power supply can deal with everything after that except this video issue which may not be related. Also note its related to the video cards yet there are 2 separate rails for the video cards and both give same issues. Like I said all I have to do is remove the SLI bridge to brin the occurance down to 5% yet both cards can still be plugged in and on straight startup would pull power still. So its just odd.

But since motherboard already on the way guess we will find out. Figured out after completion the RMA that I have the connectors to make this pc's power supply PCIE card connector computable, so worst case I can try that after but requires stripping this thing do.

Well, in a few of my classes and in my experience, I learned that the power supply is the source of most power related issues 99% of the time. Maybe your MB is in the other 1%? Lol.

And as far as your video cards not being in SLI and the problem occuring 5% of the time, maybe that's because there is less of a draw on the PSU?

well thats just it even when it fails the motherboard still has leds and such on, there is power, no idea how much. I agree it could be power supply but again it seams off and passable its either or to me. I am betting SLI requires a little more juce but nothing huge right, and even with 1 card trying between 2 seperate rails the issue still occures so reduing power requirements by a LOT dose not matter it occurs 5% of the time. SLI 90% so its either somthing with the pcie slots how the power is done bad capacitor or something like that or a bad PSU. since I have a motherboard on the way we will find out soon enough.

I'll be running SLI soon, real soon.

found out that the GTS only supports 2 way sli lol, O well lol that was a pipe dream I know I would have 1 chance in 50 doing anyway lol.

inrush current far outweighs any in operation current...

You need the 9800 GTX for 3-SLI and the 9800 GX3 for quad.

well finelay got the replacement motherboard in today and guess what it has more issues then the first lol C1 error IE ram. It did not like my memory. Called up EVGA again we figured go back to original board (they shipped to me first so have both) and we play with settings for a while. Guy tells me go check voltage on system in a program called SpeedFan, since I had that program already installed went and took a look. 10.45 volts, o little low. So ok maybe it was power supply on the rail that power the motherboard only, and at this point did not seam to matter about video cards, go figure.

so went out to microcenter (equivlent to Frys ) and picked up a CoolMaster 850 watt supply, the guy highly recommended them over the thermaltake ones, and it has more total amps over the 1000watt I had already and 6 rails not 4, so hell why not. Also was cheaper by about 70$, 1000watt jump in price a lot form 750/850 range. also pick up a nice power supply tester that has a lcd readout to tell me voltages and everything.

Get home test original power supply the tester says the power supply giving 12 volts and that its output is about perfect WTF. Ok try the new one again output is about perfect. Plug new one onto board, get into windows and find out that the speedfan program also says this power supply giving 1.45votls to motherboard, ok that number wrong lol. So anything I have says the original power supply giving the proper voltage. But this new supply fixed the issue. So at this point best I can figure is that the first powersupply had issues dealing with the surge of power on initial startup, but after that was 100% fine. So well system running great now and o ya just to make me even more happy with the coolmaster power supply it comes with a Beer opener

As for the video playback issue, tweaked the ram and re installed the video card drivers and so far seams to be fine. So no issues any more. Sending the new board and the power supply back the week sometime and all is good.

But again kind of a odd issue in a power supply, really tossed me for a lope as it could just as easily been motherboard related, and even EVGA techs figured it was there board as they also figured snce once system gets going it runs stable so its most lielay a capacitor on the board dealing with video card. Most lilelay is something like a slow capacitor but its basically imposable to test the thing and its funny a piece of fatly info from software made me get a new supply.a

Alls well that ends well.

So now you just need to give us the low down on whst all your games look like maxed out. Let us know what FPS you get in Lomac with awhole load of vehicles and Plane about. Lomac still has the ability to push PC's to the max.

Glad it's all running now though.

um crysis a game known to not be playable on max settings on a 8800 Ultra I can max out with 2 sli cards, and all I can say is OMG

Dramatic action screenshot please!

Steel wrote:sounds a lot like power supply veg...

Steel wrote:inrush current far outweighs any in operation current...

none of the software t measure that kind of stuff is really accurate. maybe the voltage stuff in your BIOS, but the thermal measurements in BIOS are not accurate, plus they are at idle to useless. they give you an idea, but pertty useless.

in all honesty sounded like both motherboard and powersupply issue lol, could have been either. And even the powesuply tester ways stock supply is fine like i said must be on powerup it can't handle surge.

Softball wrote:Well, in a few of my classes and in my experience, I learned that the power supply is the source of most power related issues 99% of the time. Maybe your MB is in the other 1%? Lol.

And as far as your video cards not being in SLI and the problem occuring 5% of the time, maybe that's because there is less of a draw on the PSU?

Well well well, it seems my schooling is paying off. Lol. Glad to hear you got it working Veg.