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INVITATION: Weigh in on Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard

BonzaiDuck

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
I built a system for a family-member last year who is in "advanced years." [I'm over 60]. She does a lot of genealogy research, but her learning-rate or tolerance for things like switching e-mail accounts is almost nada. She's impatient, and imagines things to worry about (like her Family Tree-Maker data, which is backed up about three different ways.)

So far, it looks as though the memory and processor are "OK." Win XP reported a bad block on the hard disk, and the system invariably begins to slow down and then lock up. Especially, this occurs with file-intensive operations, as with the Outlook 2003 e-mail file (her e-mail file is half the size of my own, but that just means "Large" and not "XL.") I ran all the options available to fix the disk, repair bad sectors, etc. I may try a different SATA cable,

I thought I'd serviced the registry, software and the OS, and the system seemed to be OK until I tried to install XP SP3, and the same symptoms re-occurred. This time, the OS went completely south, and I can't even get it to boot into Safe Mode.

I've got plenty of spare (new) parts -- including two new C2D processors, a spare SATA2 drive and about three memory kits. The power-supply seems to be OK.

But I'm short of time, because the family-member/user has an internet and computer addiction, and I need to get this puppy up and running soon.
 
I just got that mobo and from what I can tell it's pretty solid. Kind of overkill for an office machine though. Grab something cheap like the IP35 Pro or even a DS3. If you really want to go that route at least save some money and get the UD3R instead of the P, unless she wants crossfire?

-z
 
Just picked up this specific mobo for a friend of mine, his 650i was walling his overclocked quad and the chipset was hot. The new board is nice, he stresses it out with hours of TF2 daily with the OC'd Q6600, a GTX 280, and four sticks of RAM with a terabyte HDD. It should be solid, and it runs very cool.

OT: Have you considered backing off the OC on your family-member? It may help with any memory errors as well as the apparent stress.
 
Originally posted by: alkalinetaupehat
Just picked up this specific mobo for a friend of mine, his 650i was walling his overclocked quad and the chipset was hot. The new board is nice, he stresses it out with hours of TF2 daily with the OC'd Q6600, a GTX 280, and four sticks of RAM with a terabyte HDD. It should be solid, and it runs very cool.

OT: Have you considered backing off the OC on your family-member? It may help with any memory errors as well as the apparent stress.
Click to expand...

How did you know I OC'd it? I didn't say that! But -- matter of fact -- I did! The E2140 is boosted to about 2.1+ Ghz at 266 Mhz, in 4:5 with RAM @ DDR=667.

I ran some disk diagnostics from the manufacturer -- Hitachi's DFT. That identified the problem (versus other components. I chose the option to have it fix the bad blocks, and it did that, too. I might suspect that the drive will start showing other bad blocks or sectors soon. But after I exited DFT to pull the disk out of the system, I thought to allow for it to reboot . . . . and it did. Without a hitch.

It all seems to be fine, for now. But I think I'm going to clone that disk to a spare new one I have here. No sense in buying a new motherboard, but I'm glad I ran across that Gigabyte model, just to keep it in mind. . .
 
Sounds good.
The line about the OC was actually meant for the family-member, lol. Maybe they should relax a bit.
In any case, I would definitely image the drive and possibly just swap in a new one w/ image, in case the current drive dies between backups and especially if the geneologist considers the data critical enough to triple-backup.
 
I just picked one of these up late last week. Waiting for my Q6700 and RAM to arrive to see what overclocks I can get on it. So far, the board has been very stable and overclocks my E6400 with ease, so I expect the same for the quad.
 
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