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SOLVED Z170X Gaming 7

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There is always that qualifier. Between the two revisions, and new and refurb, I have no idea what's coming. The only difference in drivers I could find between revisions is the Bigfoot LAN driver, and I don't use that anyway.
 
I have a couple, the one I'm using now is doing great. It doesn't game at quite the level of the Intel rig but nothing I can't live with.
 
Well, got my replacement today. Apparently they just put my serial number on a refurb board (verified by other stickers on SATA ports and a different op amp). I'll get it put together tonight and see what happens. There are blemishes on this board (nicks, scratches) that I'm not real thrilled about, so I'm dropping the customer service score to a C. This wasn't the most expensive Z170 board, but it also was far from the cheapest. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect one in at least as good condition as the one that I sent them. Oh well. Live and learn.

update: Whole rig feels faster, "snappier". May be in my head because I've been on the old back up for a month, but I'm pretty sure windows open faster, webpages render quicker, etc.. I'll have to go in to all my settings and notes tomorrow and star the OC fun again, but I'm pretty happy now. I'll definitely have to go back in and set up my fan curves again. Right now I've got 1x200mm, 2x140mm, and 3x120mm fans maxed out and it's a tad noisy. Idle temps are 18C-21C, but the noise is way overboard. LOL

Last update: Figured I'd just plug in the numbers from the clocks I was running on the old board as a starting point, and it took right off. CPU first, no problems at all yet. I'll test it shortly. I wondered about the memory OC, since the old board seemed to do OK for a Z170 board. When I originally dialed in the mem OC the rig spent about 3-4 minutes mulling over its options before it decided that would work. It took about 10 seconds this time. After testing I'll try higher clocks. If that doesn't work, I'll try lowering voltages. If both of those fail I'm still happy because it's running very fast and smooth at the moment. :clap:
 
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The Evga ftw k has been a good board and still working just flashed it. The Gigabyte is dead agian....and the Supermicro died from the cracked block and Leak. z170/270 has been good mostly should be able to find ya something.
 
I'm glad to finally have this sorted out. This motherboard covered a pretty broad range of things I wanted from a mobo, from better than average audio quality, SLI potential, decent OC'er, and aesthetics. Other than the fact that the damn things can't keep time worth a flip, and the one RMA, it's been a great performer across the spectrum of my uses for it, which include but not limited to, streaming source on my network, music server, HTPC, television, DVR, gaming rig, some light benching, and all around daily driver for everything else. Considering the wall Intel and AMD have hit on per core performance and clock speed, this rig shouldn't be lacking in performance for a long time if I keep it alive. And it looks pretty good, to boot. :D
 
Well, no more clock speed for me, unless I want to take the voltage to the ragged edge (for me) of the spectrum. At a measured 1.452v vcore I got a Cinebench run finished at 4800 MHz, and the highest temp from that was 90C on the package, 89C on the hottest core, but it wasn't stable. New board seems more efficient than the old one. I can't go faster but voltages measure higher at the same settings, so I've been able to come down a little on VDIMM and VCORE, and VCCIO & VCCSA. Lowered the dynamic offset from .050v to .040v. Nothing radical, but enough to get a 1055 on Cinebench and not go over 88C with an AIO. Whatever was wrong with the old board doesn't seem to have hurt performance any. And I think it's safe to say that it was getting what this chip had to give with the same voltages. I'm going to play around with LLC and offset and see if I can fine tune it a little more. I know this chip will run these speeds with a lot less voltage.
 
So far so good, mostly. The Asmedia SATA ports seem to be lousy, but I usually avoid them anyway. The previously wonky fan controller in the BIOS seems to be working like a champ now. At first I couldn't figure out why the fans were running so high all the time, then I looked for what fans were making all the racket. Turns out I forgot that I have to push the OC button on the back of my graphics card to slide it in the slot, and I forgot to push it again afterward. My three HOF fans were cranking fast enough to hover the rig. LOL Now it's as silent as I want it and only ramps up the fans as much as needed while keeping the pump spinning full speed. I haven't tried going up on the memory clocks. I don't really need it, I already have a pretty solid OC on it, and with the CPU tinkering on the new board I'm doubtful there are any returns to be had by trying to push it harder. So, sure, I'll try it eventually. :rofl:

For now I'm just enjoying having it back and healthy, playing games After a month I had major game updates on my 5 Mbps connection (10+ GB) so this weekend will be game time.
Good to see you back. Hope all is well for you. :thup:
 
Thanks for the reply it's good to be back and doing well.:) Is everything overclocking to the same clock speeds as it was with the old motherboard?
 
Yup. For s&g I plugged my old numbers in to the new board and fired it up. Worked like a charm. I was able to actually lower the vcore, LLC, and offset a little with no loss of stability and better temps. I took the opportunity to thoroughly clean everything while it was down. Tore the case down, got all the dust in the nooks and crannies, washed out the radiator and cleaned all the fans and filters and the graphics card. Replaced the case front audio PCB after a mishap with a headphone cable and a new latch for the top screen. It's like a brand new build again. Then my ODD died. LOL. I'll pick up a new one next month and that should do it for a while.
 
It's good to see you have had good luck with performance and overclock settings, it's great that you feel like it is a new PC again.:)
 
I bet to keep misery down, Alaric tried overclocking some toasters in garage and a kitchen microwave. I wonder how how high she went from stock 2.4ghz
 
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