SOLVED Possible Gigabyte GA-990FX-UD3 R5 issue.

I would buy a new board, unless it is your HDD giving you problems.

Sometime before I sent the board off for RMA I did check out the HDDs with Western Digital's Data LifeGuard and HDTune doing an extended error scan and they both passed. Now I have no way of checking since the system will freeze long before the extended scan finishes.

I can see the HDD being responsible for the freeze and possibly the fluctuating link width on the PCI-e lane(?), but what I don't see is how it would cause a power surge on the motherboard's I/O USB ports.

That is true the HDD would not cause a power surg. It's time to try a new motherboard.

Yea, I think so too and when I get the new board I'm going to do a full format - the hour long DOS format - and a clean reinstall of windows. If at any point it freezes during the reinstallation then I know it's time to RMA the hard drive.

Thanks wingman.

So I'm getting a replacement board from Gigabyte which will be sold.

I went ahead and ordered the Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z on shrimpy's advice. Let it be known to everyone if this board sucks I'm explicitly blaming him .

It should do well report back how it goes, you replace everything but the HDD.

BoundByBlood said:

So what is happening with the PC right now is I had a power surge on a USB port and I'm still getting fluctuating link width on the PCI-e lane. The lane will vary between 2.0 x16 and 2.0 x8, at one point it dropped as low as 2.0 x1.

The good news is it doesn't simply cut off leaving the power button LED lit anymore.

There are long periods of time where it just won't boot, but if I let it sit for several hours then it will boot only to freeze up within 10 minutes of operation. No noise, just a silent total freeze.

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Did your USB port get too much voltage? You may have a major utility electric service problem. This may be a bad neutral connection. This can cause 120 V devices to get up to 240 V!

Additionally, this kind of problem can cause your case to be energized! Even more likely if the same kind of thing occurs with the replacement motherboard.

Have you been getting shocks when you touch the case that don't feel like a normal static shock?

Maybe it's the following, which is less serious:

You may have your PC connected to an outlet with the hot and neutral reversed. Basic testers can detect this.

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My place has a poor neutral connection and that causes voltage asymmetry through out the house. Some outlets in the house sometimes get overvoltage (sometimes 130 V) while the others drop as low as 113 V!

A surge means overvoltage. A brownout means a voltage drop, pretty much the utility version of Vdroop!

If your getting power surges, then no matter what MB you get, it will do the same as the Gigabyte MB. Get a UPS, not so much for backup power but to clean up the surges, spikes and drop outs on your power line. Like I said before, I have 5 Gigabyte systems and no problems at all. Give that replacement MB a chance.

Have you been getting shocks when you touch the case that don't feel like a normal static shock?

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Nope.

If your getting power surges, then no matter what MB you get, it will do the same as the Gigabyte MB.

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It was a single surge and I corrected the problem by powering the machine down, disconnecting the USB devices and then hooking them back up.

To be safe I'm going to get a new surge protector.

Like I said before, I have 5 Gigabyte systems and no problems at all.

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It's only statistical that a demographic of people will be able to run Gigabyte systems just fine. I think Kia's are crap cars, but some people have them and they last a long time for them. Doesn't make them good by any standard in my mind.

Give that replacement MB a chance.

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Not a chance in the world.

UPDATE: After testing multiple outlets in my house with a multimeter I was getting AC voltage readings of 123.2~123.8 and this is within a 5% range of 120V so it should be acceptable. The NEC says 120V +/- 5%.

I've ran many systems using these same outlets without issue for years, my laptop is running just fine on an outlet which tested for 123V.

It could be just within the margin of error on this particular multimeter, everything else including the outlet grounds (0V) checked out.

All this indicates that the power surge on the USB was an issue with the I/O ports on the MB not the source.

BoundByBlood said:

UPDATE: After testing multiple outlets in my house with a multimeter I was getting AC voltage readings of 123.2~123.8 and this is within a 5% range of 120V so it should be acceptable. The NEC says 120V +/- 5%.

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Well, when a large appliance is running, check all the outlets for asymmetry, such as some being as low as 111 V and some at 128-131 V. That's a sign of a poor neutral connection!

The key symptom to look is the voltage increasing with an appliance kicking on! That includes some lights getting brighter when a big appliance kicks on!

BoundByBlood said:

Not a chance in the world.

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Ok then, sell me the MB

And you must change the Windows power options! You must set it to "High performance" (or similar).

WhitehawkEQ said:

Ok then, sell me the MB

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You want it? When I get the replacement I'll give you first dibs before attempting to sell it on ebay.

Well, the nightmare continues.

I got my formula-z board today and put everything together only to find out the mounting bracket for my triton liquid cooler doesn't fit because some of the board's vrm heatsinks are in the way.

The mounting plate fits on all sides except one since there is one section of the vrm heatsinks which has an extra layer of fins the other vrm heatsinks don't have.

Essentially I'm going to have to take the metal plate to a friend of mine who has a grinder and shave 3/4 of an inch off.

It's ridiculous that I even have to do this, but this is the fault of Asus designing it this way because this mounting kit for my cooler fits all AM3/AM3+ motherboards EXCEPT this one.

BoundByBlood said:

Well, the nightmare continues.

I got my formula-z board today and put everything together only to find out the mounting bracket for my triton liquid cooler doesn't fit because some of the board's vrm heatsinks are in the way.

The mounting plate fits on all sides except one since there is one section of the vrm heatsinks which has an extra layer of fins the other vrm heatsinks don't have.

Essentially I'm going to have to take the metal plate to a friend of mine who has a grinder and shave 3/4 of an inch off.

It's ridiculous that I even have to do this, but this is the fault of Asus designing it this way because this mounting kit for my cooler fits all AM3/AM3+ motherboards EXCEPT this one.

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I wouldn't call it a 'fault'. The ROG boards are that much better of a board. The standards are a little higher than the normal reference boards. Most items that work with every other board will not work with ROG boards.

Mr.Scott said:

I wouldn't call it a 'fault'. The ROG boards are that much better of a board. The standards are a little higher than the normal reference boards. Most items that work with every other board will not work with ROG boards.

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I had heard so much about the form-z and the ROG boards which is why I didn't mind paying a little more for it.

However, I would call this fault. All of the VRM heatsinks are the same dimensions except for the block right above the PCI-e lane which unnecessarily has an additional layer of fins.

Looking at it the extra layer of fins is completely impractical since it jutts past the VRM three quarters of an inch and there isn't any discernable reason why this heatsink has more fins and all the other blocks are the same dimensions.

If that one block didn't have those extra fins the mounting bracket for my cooler would fit so I call it a fault because there isn't a reason why those fins are even there. You can't convince me that it makes that much of a difference or drastically changes the cooling performance.

I was wondering if you could take a picture of the interference your having? Sorry to see the extra trouble your having.

I got it taken care of now, I took the metal plate to a grinding wheel and shaved both sides which had the unused alternate screw mounts. Looks ugly, but fits like a charm now.

I have the board all setup now, but the main problem I'm having is with windows unable to update. It gives me error code 0x80240fff and I've tried every reasonable internet fix and even reinstalled the OS to no avail.

All research points to a bad installation or corruption of windows files.

Previously I was trying to install from a bootable USB made with a clean ISO and rufus v2.9, now I'm doing an hour long DOS full format and going to try to install using a bootable USB made with microsoft's official media creation tool.

If this doesn't work anybody got any ideas?

Win 7? There's a bug with SP1 that causes that iirc.

I see what you were talking about that is a lot of interference. Maybe you do have a bad HDD?

Bluefalcon13 said:

Win 7? There's a bug with SP1 that causes that iirc.

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Windows 10 Home x64 build 1511.

maybe you do have a problem with your HDD?

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I figured out the update thing. Well, I didn't figure out what was wrong, I just did a full format and clean reinstall which fixed it.

The predominant problem is getting stuck on the blue prelogin screen with the spinning circles before you get to the lock screen. Once you get stuck on that screen your OS is pretty much trash.

I did figure out that the issue is created by a problem/corruption of permissions for the user account. Some updates can harm your account permissions, but this issue most likely occurs if you change the owner and advanced permissions in the security options for your logical drive.

I did change the permissions which created the problem and I was able to fix it by breaking the startup to force a safe mode and changing the permissions a second time. I could finally login again, but the UI was completely broken.

Only thing to do is commence another full format and do a complete reinstall again, but this time don't mess with the permissions and hope an update doesn't break them either.

Oh and wingman, the HDD is fine. I checked it out and it's free from bad sectors. It's the screwiness/bugginess of Win10 that is creating problems for me.