DFI Motherboard Pains

[Sean Maxwell]

Just had my 2nd day air shipped sli-dr expert arrive, and I was pretty excited to get this thing installed. I found it on my lunch break and installed it when work ended. Hit the power switch and it just idles. Power is fine, all peripherals are fine, and no issues were occuring other than I could not get a video signal.

Set it up on a piece of cardboard, and it still wouldnt give me video. Tried each video card individually. Tried each ram stick individually. Tried different memory. Reseated the CPU. Reset the CMOS for 16 hours.

I had to hook up my A8N-SLI for now, but do you guys have any suggestions? All the diagnostics are lit, as well as the standby light by the pci express card and the one by the CPU. Please help!

Thanks fellas,
Sean

 

[drewintheav]

What power supply are you using? Try one stick of memory in the orange slot furthest away from the cpu. Try one videocard. make sure all three of the power connectors on the mainboard are plugged into...

 

[Yoshi911]

wow dude, I'm having the EXACT same problem with mine... wierd Even have a spare A8N-SLI to hook my CPU up with 😛

 

[LOUISSSSS]

yea i really dont know much on this issue but i want to contribute that dfi lanparty boards are a pain in the ass and i knew i shouldn't have bought it over the a8n-sli deluxe. (premium wouldn't work in my case or else it was definately without a doubt my first choice). i'm getting ram problems and i dont know if its the ram or the motherboard or how to configure everything.

for your situation did try another video card to test the slot? start contacting dfi for a rma maybe..? sorry that you (and i) have to go through these problems

 

[Ike0069]

Sorry to hear that.

My suggestion is to return the damn thing a get a different brand. These S939 DFI boards are waaaay too problematic for me.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Sounds like the issues they were having with the PSUs. I know some (maybe all, I'm not sure) DFI mobos are incombatible with Seasonic PSUs, due to not have a -5V lead I believe. From what I understand, they just won't work together.

 

[Bozo Galora]

The DFI expert (and Venus) are not really the boards to use if you want to just build and forget. There are many boobytraps in the road to overclocking happiness, and you must be quite committed to doing research on the thing. Most peeps would just say screw it.
You may get lucky, and everything you plop together works, but then again, you might not. Clearly, one should research before buying anything associated.

heres 46 pages to start with (for the ultra boards - which dont even have some of the more advanced settings of the expert/venus). The expert was supposed to address some of the ultra probs, but just added a few of its own.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59207&page=1

and heres 83 pages of info:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

After 2 years of intense study and $86,000 worth of replacement parts, you too can become certified as an expert Expert.
Oh, wait - after 2 years it will be obsolete anyways.
😛

 

[nib95]

I had exactly the same issues.

Here's how to sort it.

In BIOS, do the following BIOS option changes/choices.

"SLI aperture enabled" = disabled

"PCI-E lane set up" (cant remember exactly how its worded but you can find it above the option quoted below) = 8 - 2 - 2 - 8

"Enable 6600GT SLI" = disabled


After this, run driver cleaner pro or uninstall the Nvidia display drivers via windows add/remove progs.
Then turn power off. Install just one of your cards (eg 1 x 7900 GT) and after the restart install the latest drivers.
Then when it asks you to restart, dont! Just shut down.

Once the PC's off, install the second card and then the SLI bridge.

Restart, then install the drivers again. This time you should see a message pop up near the end of the installation, saying your set up is SLI capable, click it, and enable SLI.
Then just allow the restart after the driver install completion and hey presto.

SLI on your DFI SLI-DR Expert.

 

[HybridSquirrel]

and make sure you plug in ALL power connectors includin the 4 pin molex and the floppy looking connector