**[Official]** GIGABYTE Z77X Owners/Discussion/Information/Support Thread and Club (UD5H, UD3H,... - Page 277

So.......... I get the UD5H Bluetooth side of the card functioning and the driver for the WiFi Share side of the card shows up as not digitally signed or something like that.

I call Gigabyte tech support and we jump through all kinds of hoops and its a no go. The driver is there but it will not take.

Ugh!

That's pretty nice.. It's good to know!
I've actually decided against it, due to the cost. I just remembered that if I really start to run out of space i'll move BF3 off there!

Damn just got a Random surge USB error.

Hey all, throwing in my 2c, or maybe $2 re: this board. It has been a real problem for me.

[Summary in case TLDR]: Does anyone happen to currently use Windows 8 on this board successfully or manage to run 100% stable using optimized defaults (full auto/stock bios settings?).

Here is what's going on with me. Sorry for the lack of brevity in my post. I'm a pretty detailed person and I wanted to get as much info out there in case there are questions re: the content itself.

I got this board very recently...yesterday actually. I have read many things, good and bad about the board. I got it for the simple reason that I didn't want to lock myself into a board that I wouldn't be able to upgrade a year or 2 down the line. So I got one capable of SLI and overclocking even though I have absolutely no interest in doing so right now. The other features are great too and the cost of the board didn't put it out on a limb vs. the non-sli version. I got the 3570K for the exact cost of the 2500K and only $6 more than the 3550 so, why not right? That was a no brainer. I was overwhelmed with board choices and ended up going to 5 of the most popular review sites and avging the board reviews. Most of them ended up recommending Asus/MSI and Gigabyte. The Asus is expensive, I wouldn't have gone there and the MSI was also $30 more for the same features available on the Gigabyte. Of all of them the Asrock Z77 Extreme4 was my second choice of well recommended board, but I decided not to get that because one reviewer stated it was missing some feature (Turbo Mode/Turbo Boost? I forget) and also I'm not familiar with Asrock. I'm kinda old school and back in the day it was all about Asus, Abit, Biostar, DFI, Gigabyte, Foxconn, MSI so on and so forth. My main 3 were always Abit, Asus and MSI. Anyway, suffice it to say the Z77x-UD3H and UD5H came highly recommended and I went with the wifil/bt-less 3H.

I haven't at all been as lucky as the reviewers of this board. I've been having steady problems with it since install. Suffice it to say, it's "the freezing problem" that you've probably either experienced yourself or have read about elsewhere is the main issue.

The saving grace has been that this happened so far, only consistently in Windows 8. I realize that pretty much none of the drivers are written for Windows 8 yet, but I figured that whatever Windows 8 (and MS) installed were good enough. The system doesn't stay up though and I have tried just about everything.

Tried a spinner (1TB 7200rpm Seagate)
Tried another PSU (Antec 600w)
Tried setting BCLK to 100.1
Tried disabling all CPU Power Features (EIST, C1E, C6/C5 state)
Tried removing AUTO from all Motherboard Power Features (like pwm etc. I set that all to standard/normal, whatever their alternative settings are)
Set vcore to 1.1

Nothing at all seemed to work.

System works fine for about 5m then it just slowly locks up. Works for longer if I'm not playing music. Seems to work fine while I'm playing a game. The lockup symptoms are skipping/repeating music at a certain point, then the mouseover text stays on the screen, then some buttons will become unresponsive. After a short while the mouse locks up as well and there's a beep. There's no offending/tell-tale code on the board and no event to speak of in the journal except the typical "system shut down unexpectedly".

By the next day, all my excitement had worn off and I'd gotten fed up so I decided to go to Windows 7 in the likely chance that it was a driver issue. (I know USB hardware and drivers can be a real pain and this stuff is sorta new)
The system has been stable now for some time so I have set some things back to default except for the base clock because when I do set that to auto, the bios itself freezes. Maybe I've gotten the settings customized just right? Who knows...I'm too scared to go try optimized defaults at this point.

In the back of my mind, I'd really like the auto/stock settings to work. I would especially like to set the VCORE back to Auto or some lower number, 1.1 feels like I may be pushing it unnecessarily. I've read about folks doing 4.x OCing with 1.1 and here I am at a measly 3.4-3.8. I'm frankly just scared of going back because the system as of right now hasn't crashed since. My temps are OK, not wonderful for IB. 40c idle, 45c playing D3. Initially though, before I moved VCORE up, I was rocking 30/35c idle, 40c max load. Right now the system seems to be floating between 1.080 and 1.092 VCORE...ironically going to 1.080 at full load and 1.092 when idle (I don't get that).

In any case, my questions to you are:

Is anyone currently running Windows 8 stable and what are your bios settings? I'm asking because I 100% prefer 8. I've been using it since day 1 of the consumer preview (I'm on release preview now, since day 1 of that) and 7 feels like a backward step. I know it's not but I've gotten used to a new way of doing things so I'd really rather be using it. It's also coming in 3 months and I want to be ready for it.
The Abit board I had does run Windows 8 stable, I'm sure it helps that it's an older board with no "native USB 3" or highfalutin features.

Is anyone running at the optimized defaults? (vcore set to auto, turbo boost set to auto/enabled, all cpu power saving enabled, all 3d power settings at auto). As I mentioned, I'd rather have everything set to stock/auto and have it work. I don't really need C1E enabled, but would like EIST switched on since I've seen errors in the event journal (on my Q6600) when it is off. I like my event journal, non eventful. Since it currently doesn't, that's telling me that either GB has provided a dirt BIOS or I'm doing something wrong....maybe a little of both? If it works for you and not for me then I know it's definitely me. If it doesn't work for you either then I figure GB has some splainin' to do.

If you're running a 100% tried and true stable system, could you please in detail post what settings you're currently using or email me your profile(s)? Any setting you've manually switched or whatever, I'd be open to hearing it and messing with mine in the same manner. Even if you're OCing, I would do that as well as long as I'm not running hot. I would rather OC at 1.1 VC than let it sit at stock settings. I'm just scared to go below for fear of the freezing to return.

My last board was an Abit IP35 Pro which still works like a champ. It has currently replaced my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum and AMD as a bench/beta test PC along with my E2200 from my HTPC which was replaced by the Q6600 from my previous build. I feel sort of cheated in getting this nice $150 "reviewer recommended" board and not have stuff work properly right out of the box (not blaming the board, as I mentioned it might just be me). Are the days of having everything set to auto gone?

So my current, seemingly stable settings are:

BCLK = 100.1 (tried setting to auto and bios freezes)
Turbo Boost set to Auto
VCORE set to 1.1v
All the power stuff for the board changed from Auto to Balanced/Standard/Normal, whatever the setting is. Basically I don't want the bios attempting to do anything on-the-fly.

So far, so good in Windows 7.

Thanks for any and all help/advice you could possibly give.






*Note: I'm using the stock cooler because I couldn't find the 1155 bracket add-on that would make my Zalman 9700 work with it. It's listed on Newegg but for auto-notify, not even Zalman has it for sale so I may have to end up getting another cooler, though the stock one seems to be working fine (in terms of not letting the cpu blow itself up).
Edited by neoprimal - 7/20/12 at 11:26pm

1.1v is such a mere amount, I wouldn't worry! My 3570k demands 1.185v stock... It can run that for up to 4.1GHz or so though.
As long as your temperatures are alright! I'm sure that sounds like a non-working Win 8 driver too, I'd try resetting it back to default settings, otherwise you should contact Gigabyte and explain the story. Ask them if Windows 8 is actually supported and if they plan to? (it should be).

As for the music being the cause, was it ever choppy/laggy? If you got that with game sounds too it'd be high DPC interrupt (i think that's what it is). Basically to fix it you'll want to reformat,
I'd suggest running a partitioned drive and putting Windows 7 on one partition and 8 on another. Use Windows 7 for a everyday OS, and then start to use Windows 8 more as it becomes more stable on your system.

I've been traveling for the past month so can't check my settings, but my UD5H on BIOS since at least F7 has been pretty stable for Windows 8 if I set optimized defaults and BCLK to 100.1 and disable C3/C6.

From what I read, Windows 8 is still having trouble with Z77s freezing, mostly when idle, mostly with a browser running (for me Google Chrome but I have seen the same in Firefox & IE). MS did an update recently that was supposed to fix it (they know this is a problem), but it apparently doesn't work for everyone. I haven't been home to check the latest beta BIOS with Windows 8 latest updates. Google - Windows 8 freezes - and you'll find a host of "solutions", some of which seem to work for some people (Hyper-V seems popular, but I decided not to try it since I was OK with my BIOS settings). I did try using Google Chrome Metro beta, which made no difference for me. (Freezes would come back when I went back to optimized settings, and then only when my browser was open and doing nothing. The the browser freezes but not the mouse, and little by little the rest freezes up.) I can live with tweaking my BIOS settings for stability (no problems with the settings given above) and don't really expect joy until the October release. Hey, it's a beta. ;-)

I haven't tried the following; I'd rather be patient. It does seem to be a pretty common problem, and not specifically a UD5H issue.
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/broken-windows-8-release-preview-freeze-workaround-143550
http://rudiv.se/Blog/general/windows-8-release-preview-browser-freeze-fix
http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/06/28/workaround-for-windows-8-freezing-issues/

BTW I agree with you, I like the small changes from Windows 7 desktop.

I can run either one of my UD5H rigs at 100% "Auto" settings I suppose, although both are overclocked to 4.5. I always run EIST, etc, on AUTO unless I'm trying for an overclock above 4.7'ish.
Actually my overclock settings are pretty simple for 4.5, and I've always manually set the block to 100.0 with no problems at all.

Do you have any add-in boards?
What BIOS version are you running?

I know zilch about Win 8, but per suggestion above I would just run dual boot for now if you can't get Win 8 stable.

Last night a bit after I wrote the post I bit the bullet and loaded op defaults. I am now also running at Auto - yay! All I turned off is C1E. I even have the BCLK set to Auto. I ran Sandra Burn-In for 1 hr and it was fine.

Boble, you have completely set my mind to rest re: Windows 8 because that's the EXACT issue I was having. Thanks very much for the links. I am going to do as Matt and Mandrix recommends, run Win 8 from another drive and dual boot. I never gave the OS a chance to get a Windows Update. It had issues the entire time from install, so with all the freezes and restarts it never had time to install updates before I put 7 on.
If MS knows about the problem, I'm confident that a proper fix will be made by the time it's released so there's no rush to use it as my driver I guess. I prefer the current stability anyway.

Matt, thanks! Though I have it set back to Auto now I'm glad that 1.1 wasn't as drastic as I thought it was. Maybe I should do some OCing, it seems pretty easy enough. The freezing was on Windows 8 and I believe it was due to what Boble mentioned, I generally always have my browser open. I didn't think at all that this could be the cause so I sort of blamed the music, since it was maybe 3 or 4 mins after I started it that it would freeze, but it was likely due to the browser, which is why I mention too that it would sometimes happen when the PC is idle.

Mandrix, the only add-in I have is my GTX560. I'm running Bios F11. Boble has posted links into pretty much exactly what the issue seems to be so I'm confident that it is Windows 8 to blame. The fact that I haven't seen any freezes on 7 seems to confirm that, thankfully.

Thanks all for the input and help!

Glad to see that everyone could be of help!
Also don't forget you can give reputation for people that have helped you with your problem or good ideas.

- Just saying 'cause you're new, I didn't know what rep was for ages

Just assembled the machine in my profile. When I plugged it in and powered it on, all the fans start, the main BIOS light come on, but then it powers itself down after about 1 sec. It pauses for another sec or so and powers up again but only for 1-2 sec. This repeats and repeats.

No LED code and no beep codes from the speaker. I tried moving the memory around as well as changing the motherboard's battery. Tried clearing CMOS and also booting from backup BIOS.

http://youtu.be/PcDc3fwFeBI

Any suggestions? Note that I am trying to use the i7's on board video and do not have a video card in the machine. Monitor is connected via the onboard DVI.
Edited by graysky - 7/21/12 at 8:18am