Topic Problems with 680i -I have'd it went and bought a Asus Rampage Formula

mmarsh

I word of warning for you Asus Striker or P5N32-E SLI owners that use the 680i chipset.

There are some very serious flaws within these boards including the inability to add 4 GIGS of RAM in 4 DIMM modules as well as some incompatiblies with the DDRII 800mgz memory -the MB uses a insufficent memory voltage. It is possible to manually specify a higher voltage (2.2 volts I am told is the key) in the BIOS first and then reinstall the RAM but this solution never worked for me.

On top of this the 1403 BIOS is seriously bugged and should be avoided at all costs otherwise your NIC cards will stop working (a bug in the BIOS causes the NIC cards to lose their MAC address when the computer is put into sleep mode. Only way to get out of this is to reset CMOS, but problem will continue everytime PC is in sleep. Wait until BIOS 1405 is released for trying any major upgrades.

I got all 3 problems, and even after trying the non-official 1404 beta BIOS I finally gave up and bought another board. I am job hunting and the loss of my PC was too troublesome.

I was so sick of Nvidia (the GPU drivers in VISTA also suck) that I went out and bought the Ramage Formula which is based on the new Intel X48 chipset cost 250 Euros. Everything is now at 100%.

Lesson learned? unless you are planning for SLi stay away from Intel CPU versions of the Nvidia chipset such as the 680i.

I am told the Striker II is good, but its very expensive and it only takes DDR3 memory which is also expensive. I would have had to spend 500 Euros for both the board and memory.

I will probably get a new CPU later, but I have a major personal life announcement (its a surprise) coming up and I need to save money.

-HAL-

Hey, you "tricked" me into buying one of those boards!

I had actually planned to buy 2 more 1Gig modules of RAM, but it looks like I'll go for 2 x 2 Gig modules instead now..

Haven't noticed any problems with it at all yet, so I just hopes it stays that way.....

mmarsh

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I know. I am sorry, I feel guilty but it wasn't anything I could have foreseen. Did you buy the P5N32E-SLI or the P5N32-E SLI PLUS? The Plus supposedly fixed alot of problems.
I didn't have any problems until I (and most people) upgraded the memory from 2gigs to 4 gigs, it worked fine for 15 months. It came as quite a shock to me as well, I have been building systems over 10 years never once had a problem like this. There are two major problems and they are both related to the BIOS not the board itself. Software problems CAN be fixed if you can be patient. I would hold off on any upgrades until they do.

I had to buy a new board because 1403 totally trashed it, and I needed my computer back. I would like to repair my old board so I am checking the website to if the BIOS fix is released or not.

There are two thing you can do.

1. Wait until ASUS releases the 1405 BIOS which should be coming along soon because they are well aware of this problem.

2. Do as you said, buy 2x2GIG DIMMS, Thats should avoid the problem.

Whatever you do, don't upgrade the BIOS. Thats where I made my mistake.

-HAL-

No hard feelings..
I've had no problems with the motherboard so far, and if I just get 2x2gig DIMMs then it shouldn't be a problem..
But I'll probably wait until the 1405 BIOS is out before upgrading now since I really don't need 4Gigs yet anyway..

P5N32E-SLI, this one:
http://www.asus.com.tw/products.aspx...&l3 =397&l4=0

mmarsh

That's the normal unfortunatly. I would wait until they release a new BIOS.