So i was in DFI's new irc support and ....

Guillaume - no offense, please. I am simply trying to point out that the use of this jumper is still mystifying with some people. Don't take my comment as a personal attack

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Not a chance man You are right about illustrating how little the end user is aware of. You know, this 4V thing should be a sticky...
FYI though I can't boot into windows with the bios set at 3.2V without the 4V jumper enabled. When I enable the jumper, select 3.2V, then I boot and everything is stable.

Let's not forget one of the most irritating aspects of DFI street ("Them" signifying a large portion of the unhelpful people, as a few at least gave me ideas):

Me: I'm not sure how to set this memory just right, but I know it's TCCD and other people are using it to get great results. I'm having a problem rebooting and did everything the prior forum posts said.
Them: Learn about timings, then post
Me: That's what I'm trying to do. Where have you had the best luck on timings?
Them: You just have to figure it out for your individual board. You can't expect it to work out of the box.
Me: Why not? And here's the 1451068409654056 things I've tried on my RAM, CPU, etc. in the BIOS and I'm having the same problem.
Them: It's not the board, it's more that you're dumb. The board is for enthusiasts only.
Me: But I AM an enthusiast, have OC'd many a machine, and am just new to 64 work. And I'm having these problems with the system on stock speeds as well as OC. Even when running things at Auto.
Them: You can't hold DFI responsible for what Auto settings are on a DFI board.
Me: Aren't they supposed to detect the best setting for my RAM on the board?
Them: Yes
Me: So shouldn't it work on Auto?
Them: No.
Me: What if I increase the voltage?
Them: Yeah, do that.
Me: I did that, still no help.
Them: The DFI board is for enthusiasts only.
Me: So what should I try next?
Them: The DFI board is for enthusiasts only.
Me: Yes, and it's marketed alongside Asus, Abit, and Gigabyte, boards commonly used by enthusiasts. Like me. And they don't cause these problems.
Them: Asus, Abit, and Gigabyte SUXORZ, DFI RULEZ! Pwnd.
Me: So why am I having these problems?
Them: It's either the RAM or you.
Me: Here's how I tested the RAM, stable in Memtest to 290MHZ 1:1. <list>
Them: Well the RAM is fine. Must be you.
Me: Possibly, which is why I'm asking you.
Them: The DFI boards are for enthusiasts only.
Me: But, for an enthusiast, it's not restarting and remaining stable.
Them: Well, you can't expect it to restart EVERY time! But you might get 2.9GHZ when it does.
Me: So what can you tell me that will help me get it stable?
Them: Good luck!


needless to say, my Asus is on the way....

DarkPurity, your post has user error written all over it.

I hate to break it to you, but there are plenty of forums on which you can find and/or ask for timings advice. Hell, OCForums has a pretty large 'stable settings thread' that is available to you, and there's even more information over at XtremeSystems.org and other places like OCZ's BleedingEdge forums.

It is true that DFI products are for enthusiasts only; the point is that it is up to the individual to the his/her own research as no two systems will behave the same. AG nor RGone should be responsible for providing every single person with timings for their individual system.

deception``

About DFI-Street... I'm going to go a head and agree with you guys, it's not a very helpful place. I've had more than my share of problems getting a solid answer there. When I registered you had to make a sig with certain things in it. I posted my question (which was left unsolved there, btw) and then didn't use it for a while. A few monthes later, I posted a new problem, and Angry_Games peaked out on my for not having a NEW piece of information in my sig. There was no way I would have known unless I scouted everybodies sig and tried to find some sort of pattern for this new info. You're best off to stick here.

Now, about DFI's boards, they're not perfect. They are some of the best overclockers at one hell of a price. The figurative price to pay for this? Sub par components in certain areas. The bottom line? Any enthusiast with decent knowledge will be aware of these shortcomings and design their system around them. I know I did. After the NF3, DFI has not produced anything that has struck me as amazing. It seems Asus and Abit have boards that can handle overclocking almost as well.

Actually, I spent quite some time trying the settings, etc. In the end, I ran into a separate issue that would necessitate a different board involving my SLI.

My point is that a product that is boxed and sold alongside stable products with the knowledge that it will be unstable without the end-user doing half the work just to bring it online, not OC it, is an incomplete product. If other products were the same way, that would be one thing, but they aren't. They're sold just as any other board.

Taking it further, support from DFI-Street sucks on the whole. It's a few knowledgable people mixed within a bunch of hotheads. It was from them I was inspired to write my post, not from those who actually tried to support.

And the problem with my SLI, as you might be curious to know, involves the crappy positioning of the two PCI-E 16x slots and the far-too-close SB position on such a tiny board. I was playing SW Battlefront II last night and the hot air between the two cards got sucked into the chipset cooler, largely I'm sure because the vent for the top card expels directly above the SB. The 60c+ air was sucked onto the chipset and forced a thermal throttle restart (BIOS showed 71c on the SB at reboot). That's with no OC on my video....

DarkPurity said:

Actually, I spent quite some time trying the settings, etc. In the end, I ran into a separate issue that would necessitate a different board involving my SLI.

My point is that a product that is boxed and sold alongside stable products with the knowledge that it will be unstable without the end-user doing half the work just to bring it online, not OC it, is an incomplete product. If other products were the same way, that would be one thing, but they aren't. They're sold just as any other board.

Taking it further, support from DFI-Street sucks on the whole. It's a few knowledgable people mixed within a bunch of hotheads. It was from them I was inspired to write my post, not from those who actually tried to support.

And the problem with my SLI, as you might be curious to know, involves the crappy positioning of the two PCI-E 16x slots and the far-too-close SB position on such a tiny board. I was playing SW Battlefront II last night and the hot air between the two cards got sucked into the chipset cooler, largely I'm sure because the vent for the top card expels directly above the SB. The 60c+ air was sucked onto the chipset and forced a thermal throttle restart (BIOS showed 71c on the SB at reboot). That's with no OC on my video....

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Sorry about the SLI issue, but it has been well known for some time that the DFI NF4 boards have very close PCI-E slots that could possibly inhibit airflow.

Additionally, the DFI NF4 boards are no different than the NF3 and NF2 platforms in that they require a bit if know-how, patience, and tweaking to get them up and running. I hate to sound so negative, but the NF4 carries this same trend, so there should be no surprises here. I still think that you did not do as much research as you could have/should have in order to understand just what you could be getting yourself into. Had you have looked further, you would have known that working with DFI boards can be quite arduous, yet fulfilling at the same time.

deception``

deception`` said:

Sorry about the SLI issue, but it has been well known for some time that the DFI NF4 boards have very close PCI-E slots that could possibly inhibit airflow.

Additionally, the DFI NF4 boards are no different than the NF3 and NF2 platforms in that they require a bit if know-how, patience, and tweaking to get them up and running. I hate to sound so negative, but the NF4 carries this same trend, so there should be no surprises here. I still think that you did not do as much research as you could have/should have in order to understand just what you could be getting yourself into. Had you have looked further, you would have known that working with DFI boards can be quite arduous, yet fulfilling at the same time.

deception``

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I'd researched for a couple months first, and expected arduous, as I'm experience with both NF2 and NF3 OC's. However, I never ran into an issue where I couldn't get the thing stable in 2 hours or less, and most of the time didn't have to mess with settings at all when running stock.

So I expected arduous, and got unreasonable. Not sure what the use SLI is when it's too close to use, anyway. At least F.E.A.R. didn't crash.

i agree with most of your points deception but the fact remains that the mods at dfi-street are NOT helpful in the least.

it seems to me that they cannot cope with the amount of posts and instead of providing decent support they will almost always call the user a noob, blame other hardware instead of the dfi board (because hey it's just perfect right ) or just flat out avoid posting when topics are 'touchy'. i think the board should have been recalled in terms of the 4v issue....just bring it up in a thread and watch them hunt you down

i like my SLI-D but it has cold boot issues with all type of memory not just high voltage sticks ...it's my first DFI board and i agree the quality of FETS leaves a bit to be desired. i can bring this board crashing to earth with my x2 running 2 x Prime High FFT's within 30 mins ....it just can't handle the load. An d not it's not a PSU issue heh.

deception`` said:

Like I said, I am not trying to make excuses here, but try to recognize that people like AG and RGone are doing all of us a favor by even having DFI-Street and IRC channels, which are not funded by DFI themselves. Remember, you can more bees with honey

deception``

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somehow i don't believe this ....is this true?

/rant_on
deception`` - i dont know why your going out of your way to be a fanboy and support DFIs mistakes. Yes, DFI pays Angry_Games and also R_Gone, therefore, DFI-Street is funded by DFI themselfs. Next, you see that ag himself said that you need active cooling on the 4V jumper. Why not include some sort of active cooling? the motherboard design is a joke. This 4V jumper not only has problems with (and also kills) the ram, but has also been known to kill the following things. PSU, CPU, And the motherboard itself. It is a lack of care and buisness ethics IMO to include such a thing that not only kills computer parts, but it kills them frequently. and frankly im kinda sick of the elitism. Sometimes Motherboard manufacturers can make mistakes. I talked to angry games for a few hours on the phone and he said to me himself that it was a mistake to implement the 4V jumper on this motherboard.

In DFIs defence - I havnt ever been more pleased with the options and stability of this motherboard. However, just because i dont have problems doesnt mean others do not. It also doesnt mean THEY are doing something wrong. And the generalization that everyone having problems with the 4V mod is a "newbie" is downright offensive to me. Lots of people know what they are doing, and still have problems.

/Rant_off

Well since DFI totally avoided me and zebbo saw almost the whole convo on irc with me, they said they are gonna help me out and get me some sticks that will play nice with this board. Atleast somebody's customer support cares

I gotta admit, nobody has as much of an optimistic value as deception, and I respect that, D.

In any case, I have to agree that the DFI board is extremely flaky, and if it was a little flaky I could bare with it... but it really is too many problems for a mass production. You see how they came out with this "expert" model? Well, they shouldn't have used CUSTOMERS as guinea pigs for the 'better' model. Now, they've caused stress, aggrivation, wasted time, unhappy customers, broken/dead parts, and worst of all... they come out with another revision to eat up more of your money.

They still make money out of all of this aggrivation... b/c now people are going to start buying the "expert" version. I'm not saying I won't buy another one of their boards again... b/c no other can compete with its performance.

You win some, you lose some... there are extreme pros and extreme cons with the DFI board... that is why it is NOT "king"... just another average board to me that I'd rather have.

g0dM@n said:

I gotta admit, nobody has as much of an optimistic value as deception, and I respect that, D.

In any case, I have to agree that the DFI board is extremely flaky, and if it was a little flaky I could bare with it... but it really is too many problems for a mass production. You see how they came out with this "expert" model? Well, they shouldn't have used CUSTOMERS as guinea pigs for the 'better' model. Now, they've caused stress, aggrivation, wasted time, unhappy customers, broken/dead parts, and worst of all... they come out with another revision to eat up more of your money.

They still make money out of all of this aggrivation... b/c now people are going to start buying the "expert" version. I'm not saying I won't buy another one of their boards again... b/c no other can compete with its performance.

You win some, you lose some... there are extreme pros and extreme cons with the DFI board... that is why it is NOT "king"... just another average board to me that I'd rather have.

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It's not about optimism....it's about me having realistic expectations from my hardware.

I am thankful that DFI boards come with so many overclocking options, which we are now seeing in other products such as the Sapphire Grouper. On the other hand, I also understand that significantly user control can also lead to user error. Because I understand this trade off exists, I don't sweat bullets everytime something strange happens to my system.

What most people don't know is that I have had to swap out hardware just like other people - I have gone through 4-5 NF2 boards, 2 NF3 boards, and I am on my second NF4 board. Some of my returns have not been my fault, but I also realize that a handful of my NF2 issues were largely due to user error.

The bottom line is that I recognize that I bear some personally responsibility for how well and/or poor my system runs. It's really that simple.

If people want the most stable board, they should buy Asus and not expect a glorious overclock. If you want the best overclocking board out there, look at a DFI but have realisitic goals about what these boards can and/or cannot do.

deception``

Well, yeah... you should go ASUS or ABIT for a stable board, but us overclockers always take chances, and I guess DFI is a chance, and sometimes it doesn't work out perfectly... gotta work for it I guess. I just hate how my OCZ 600W died... dunno who to blame still, but it's okay cuz I got my brand new SLI one right now.

Meathead said:

Well since DFI totally avoided me and zebbo saw almost the whole convo on irc with me, they said they are gonna help me out and get me some sticks that will play nice with this board. Atleast somebody's customer support cares

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Angry's behaviour was very rude. What excuse you can use if you call your customers "f-king dumbasses?".

Meathead, did you get PM from me? I sent it yesterday.

I am a member at DFI street,,,And there was a thread about ram and how it performed and what ram to use.I am sure it is the thread refered to in the thread starters opening post.

In it Angry Games clearly made conflicting statments, As most know I am quick to point out such double talk and when I did this the thread was closed and removed so fast ya would have thought Intel or AMD released a 10 GIG processor ! ! !

Personally if you manufacture a MAIN board that can use only certain power supplies and memory IT NEEDS to be posted on the BOX and USER MANUAL not in some forum where an employee can play god and pretend to know all about everything..

I have gripes with my DFI board i wont get into , And lets just say when you make what you claim is the highest performance main board it would be wise to include a specific USER MANUAL with it ...

If this expert board turns out to have a lot less bugs and a lot more stability, then they should offer a trade-in plan to those who've had problems with the regular nf4 boards, like eVGA does with their step-up program.

Angry_Games told me that he created DFI-Street because retards like me were posting on forums like these and ran him out of here so he made DFI-Street so he could have full control.

Yea I got your pm zebbo. I'll contact them on monday.

lol now thats hilarious

this is one of the only idiot free forums in the universe. if not the only

Rattle said:

lol now thats hilarious

this is one of the only idiot free forums in the universe. if not the only

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im an idiot...


ohh yeah, and diehrd is right on the ball here. i agree 100% with him.

crap I knew it was to good to be true !!!