Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 Owners - Any Tips?

[itakey]

I'm building a new rig for work mainly and I got a killer deal on a CPU and the Gigabyte motherboard. The reviews are so so on Newegg, and I see a lot of talk about the boot loop or what not so it has me wondering if I should stick with this board, or get something else?

My build so far is as follows:
i7-2700K CPU (Got a sick deal on it)
Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3
Antec 302 Case
Hyper 212+ CPU Cooler

Planning for 8GB to 16GB Ram, and a plain jane video card, and 1 SSD for the OS.

I'll probably overclock a tiny bit, but nothing crazy.

Anyone say definitely swap this board out for something else, or is it a solid performer?

 

[Jman13]

Update to the latest beta BIOS and it should solve the boot loop issue.

 

[itakey]

Update to the latest beta BIOS and it should solve the boot loop issue.

Sounds good to me

 

[Charlie98]

Check your board, I think the current version is 1.3. Printed in one of the corners.

There have been 2 updated BIOS out since I put my GB board into service in December, I would probably flash the newest one before loading a bunch of stuff on it to make sure it works.

 

[BlackOmen]

I did not have this board, but another Gigabyte Z68 board at the beginning of January. The latest BIOS did not fix the boot loop and it was RMA'd with Newegg.

I've been a big fan of Gigabyte boards, but they have issues on this iteration.

 

[itakey]

I got the board for a good price, so I'm going to give it a try and see how it does. If it isn't great, i'll just RMA, buy something else, and sell off the replacement for whatever I can get.

 

[steptaker]

I did my first EVER build with this board, no problems at all. So easy a caveman could do it.

 

[Jman13]

I did have the boot loop problem with my board, but the latest BIOS did fix the issue. Key thing is to remember to copy the new BIOS to your backup BIOS, so they are both the same.

 

[itakey]

I did have the boot loop problem with my board, but the latest BIOS did fix the issue. Key thing is to remember to copy the new BIOS to your backup BIOS, so they are both the same.

Luck would have it, I have the dreaded boot loop issue! Can't even get into the bios the board will boot up, show the spash screen, post "waiting for ME ready" then shuts down and starts all over again

I've tried everything people say about resetting CMOS, unplugging, etc. I have the beta flash on a USB drive but it won't ever get into any of those options.

This sucks!

Anyone else experience this and know a fix?

 

[mkmitch]

Sorry to hear, tis why I shied away from that board and went with MSI, btw mine was up and running yesterday.

 

[itakey]

Sorry to hear, tis why I shied away from that board and went with MSI, btw mine was up and running yesterday.

I decided to not even bother, this board is going back to the store. Going to try to get a different board instead of a replacement.

I've never owned a Gigabyte board but I've always known them to be a decent brand so i'll try to forget about this experience.

 

[Elcs]

/justorderedtheGA-Z68X-UD3P-B3yesterdayandstumbleduponthisthread

This sounds like an awkward problem and I hope you can find a suitable resolution, whether it's a replacement or different board entirely.

 

[nsafreak]

Seems to depend upon which revision of the board you got along with what BIOS was loaded on it. The GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 I purchased 2 weeks ago with my i5 2500k from Microcenter has been working smooth without any issues at all.

 

[itakey]

Seems to depend upon which revision of the board you got along with what BIOS was loaded on it. The GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 I purchased 2 weeks ago with my i5 2500k from Microcenter has been working smooth without any issues at all.

I agree it seems like there are MANY people out there with Gigabyte boards (Different Models) experiencing the Boot Loop issues, but obviously not all of them so maybe they have a lot of lemons coming off the production line?

I'm either going to get a replacement and give this board another try, or exchange it based on what they allow me to do. I got the board for a great price and it has tons of functionality so it would be nice to keep it.

I may give it another try, but am going to post some of the other boards they sell to see if anyone recommends something over this one.

To any owner of this board, I dare you to push the reset button since people seem to think that is what triggers the boot loop. Any owners ever use their reset button and not experience the boot loop?

 

[fixbsod]

It could be the reset. I have a Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 rev1.0 w/F8 bios and a little over a week ago it hardlocked for the first time since slowing my RAM to 1600 and so I hit the reset to reset. The first reset it popped up some square message over the POST info notifying me that my RAM seemed to be overclocked as it should only run at 1333 -- not sure where this is coming from as the RAM is 1866 stock. Then the boot loop. I managed to stop it by powering off and then powering on -- came up the first time but I had to reset all the BIOS settings. I believe the system was boot looping as it had invalid settings in the BIOS as it redid all the RAM speed and timings.

So I'll keep it in mind to avoid the reset button and just hard power off/on or even pulling the damn power plug if need be because I've only experienced this once and it was after hitting reset...

 

[itakey]

It could be the reset. I have a Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 rev1.0 w/F8 bios and a little over a week ago it hardlocked for the first time since slowing my RAM to 1600 and so I hit the reset to reset. The first reset it popped up some square message over the POST info notifying me that my RAM seemed to be overclocked as it should only run at 1333 -- not sure where this is coming from as the RAM is 1866 stock. Then the boot loop. I managed to stop it by powering off and then powering on -- came up the first time but I had to reset all the BIOS settings. I believe the system was boot looping as it had invalid settings in the BIOS as it redid all the RAM speed and timings.

So I'll keep it in mind to avoid the reset button and just hard power off/on or even pulling the damn power plug if need be because I've only experienced this once and it was after hitting reset...

So I went to the store and decided to give this same board a try one more time. I figured my first one had to be a lemon, and I was right.

I assembled everything yesterday and it booted right up, no problems at all. First thing I did was update the bios to F11i, I know it is a bios but it lists this bios as "Update ME / CPU code" and my old board kept saying "Installing ME" and then would fail, so I wasn't taking a chance.

Since then I've tested 3 of my 4 ram chips with MemTest86+ and everything is passing, and the board seems to be working well. In and out of bios and all seems to be working as expected.

fixbsod, good tip on the reset button. I read on other forums that people were relating the boot loop to their reset button also, so I left the plug out completely.

Now i'll just hope everything else in this setup goes smoothly.

 

[Jman13]

If you start experiencing it, now that you get into your BIOS, the recent Beta BIOS will fix it. I used to have it about every 3rd boot before the BIOS update (along with a shutdown instead of restart, which then led to boot loop). Since the update, I have never had it, and have restarted/cold booted about 30 times (changing BIOS settings, installing new video card, monkeying with fan cables, etc.)

 

[itakey]

If you start experiencing it, now that you get into your BIOS, the recent Beta BIOS will fix it. I used to have it about every 3rd boot before the BIOS update (along with a shutdown instead of restart, which then led to boot loop). Since the update, I have never had it, and have restarted/cold booted about 30 times (changing BIOS settings, installing new video card, monkeying with fan cables, etc.)

Thanks for the heads up. My board seemed to work ok with the F10 that came on the board but I only went in and out of the BIOS maybe 4 or 5 times, but I didn't want to take a chance so I just loaded up the F11i update.

This proves my first board was definitely a dude since it went into the exact same setup, and one didn't work at all, and one is working good so far.

I'm running my RAM through MemTest86+. So far I did 3 of the 4 sticks with no errors. Once I finish running them individually i'm going to run all 4 and then i'll continue with my build.

 

[Jman13]

Now that you've updated the BIOS, don't forget to copy that to the backup BIOS (hit Alt-F12 during post and follow the prompts), so both the main and recovery have the same version (and I think, but I'm not sure, that it copies settings too, so to be safe I went to stock, copied the BIOS and the went back to my OC. )

 

[itakey]

Now that you've updated the BIOS, don't forget to copy that to the backup BIOS (hit Alt-F12 during post and follow the prompts), so both the main and recovery have the same version (and I think, but I'm not sure, that it copies settings too, so to be safe I went to stock, copied the BIOS and the went back to my OC. )

Good tip! I was wondering how the heck I was supposed to do this. I read it had dual bios but I scanned the manual fast and didn't see a mention. Thanks for the tips. I'll probably go in and set the defaults, back it up, and then tweak it.

What CPU are you running? and how far overclocked?

 

[Jman13]

Mild overclock as in my sig. 2500k@ 4.1 at 1.22V.

 

[fixbsod]

JMan -- can you be more specific on the board + BIOS you are using? Gigabyte like JUST rolled out a bunch of BIOS's Jan/Feb '12-- and some odd stuff too with the timing/what's avail online. For example, my board the GAZ68XP-UD3 rev 1.0 they did post F9 which came out just a few days ago, and I can only assume they pulled it as it now only shows like F9g which is beta with the date of 1/20/2012. Station drivers still shows an available download for F9 (non-beta) with date of 2/22/2012 for my board...so not sure how much of that happened with other boards for the recent BIOSs.

If you start experiencing it, now that you get into your BIOS, the recent Beta BIOS will fix it. I used to have it about every 3rd boot before the BIOS update (along with a shutdown instead of restart, which then led to boot loop). Since the update, I have never had it, and have restarted/cold booted about 30 times (changing BIOS settings, installing new video card, monkeying with fan cables, etc.)

 

[Jman13]

I'm using the board in my sig, using BIOS FCC, which was released mid January. They updated almost all the Z68 boards at that time, as they figured out the boot loop problem. It's certainly possible there are even newer BIOSs available since the beta release.

 

[fixbsod]

I don't think Gigabyte has any bios FCC -- they all appear to be F and then a number and if a beta a letter after that...

 

[Jman13]

Mine is FCc. I am not making things up. Downloaded directly from Gigabyte for my board. My board has BIOS names FA, FB and now FCc, which I'm assuming will drop the last c when out of beta. The Rev 1.0 version of my board has F(number) format, but mine is Rev 2.0. From what I can tell, the only difference between my Rev 2.0 board and the original Rev 1.0 is that my board has PCIe 3.0 on the x16 slots when used with an Ivy Bridge CPU.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4015&dl=1#bios