*** Official ABIT IC7/G (875P) Thread ***

[KillerBob]

Funny thing though; when I started OCing, the temps in the IC7-G box came down. At normal usage, with a 220 OC, the temp is 60 degrees. Hmmmmmmm?

 

[rfutscher]

Originally posted by: Coherence
I haven't flashed my BIOS since getting my board back in April '03. Is there any major reason for me to flash it, and what revision do you peeps suggest? I seem to remember hearing somewhere in the hundreds of posts in this thread that BIOS rev 14 was the best/fastest.
Suggestions?

I have a Maxtor drive connected to the SATA port 1 using the parallel to serial converter. Twice I had to RMA my mother board because the SATA port started to act up and then the MB would not boot. The last time I returned the board they keep it for two months, until the 2.2 BIOS was released. This version has fixes for the Intel SATA hardware.

If you have a SATA drive don't use anything less than the 2.2 BIOS.

Also I had to RMA the board once because the BIOS chip went bad and only held the BIOS update for several days. Yes I am on my fourth mother board, three RMAs. You two may have a bad BIOS chip and you won't know it until you upgrade the BIOS at least once. Do it before the warranty runs out.

 

[KillerBob]

I am having some issue with running my LaCie 500GB external HD through the USB2 connectors. It works fine through the Firewire.

Does anyone else have issues, or views on which interface (USB2 vs. Firewire) is best for HD action?

 

[candirian]

Sorry, Wrong post location.

sorry.

 

[DealMonkey]

My IC7 is only a few weeks old and already the NB fan is making all kinds of squealing noises. I'm not overclocking my system, so I figured I'd just unplug it completely. Of course the heatsink is still there and my case has some great ventilation. Do you guys think I'll have any probs by just unplugging that one fan? How hot does the IC7 NB get under normal conditions?

 

[computer]

Not a good idea to ever unplug ANY fan that's on by default or included on a mobo. Throughout this thread is posts regarding the defective NB fan and assembly (falling off and noise). This was corrected on later versions so you must have been sent an older revision.

 

[piroteknix]

Maybe you guys can help me out with the problems I'm having with my abit IC&-Max3 bought it like 3 weeks ago from micro center with an antec lanboy 350 case was playing unreal tournament 2004 when the pc just locked up, nothing responded, did a hard reboot and the pc had video since.

RIG: Blue

Motherboard: Abit IC7 Max3
CPU: Pentium 4 3.0E
Video: ATI Radeon x800 Pro 256
RAM: 2x DDR 512 Kingston 333 PC2700
Audio: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
HDD: Western Digital 7200rpm 160GB IDE (OS)
HDD2: Western Digital 7200rpm 250GB IDE(storage)
PC Case: Antec Lanboy 350

A friend of mine said that he heard of abit havinf a problem with defective boards as of lately, I'm normaly an Asus buyer but wanted to try something different... so far not liking the results.

 

[MIDIman]

I might be getting a max3 soon. Don't have alot of time to go through every post in this thread, so here goes:

1) I have the newer Zalman blue northbridge - will this install ok on a new IC7 max3? A little confused by some earlier posts. Any temperature issues with this?

2) Anyone have a subjective noise rating of the OTES? Can I remove it, or is there a quieter solution to replace it with?

 

[Pilsnerpete]

Originally posted by: piroteknix
Maybe you guys can help me out with the problems I'm having with my abit IC&-Max3 bought it like 3 weeks ago from micro center with an antec lanboy 350 case was playing unreal tournament 2004 when the pc just locked up, nothing responded, did a hard reboot and the pc had video since.

RIG: Blue

Motherboard: Abit IC7 Max3
CPU: Pentium 4 3.0E
Video: ATI Radeon x800 Pro 256
RAM: 2x DDR 512 Kingston 333 PC2700
Audio: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
HDD: Western Digital 7200rpm 160GB IDE (OS)
HDD2: Western Digital 7200rpm 250GB IDE(storage)
PC Case: Antec Lanboy 350

A friend of mine said that he heard of abit havinf a problem with defective boards as of lately, I'm normaly an Asus buyer but wanted to try something different... so far not liking the results.

1. I don't think it's your board. Look at your memory speed and look at the front side bus speed of the processor. You might consider using a 5:4 divider (if you aren't already) or getting some good pc3200.

2. Also, you might look at upgrading your power supply...it's a 350w? I had an Antec sl350, and it was underpowered and it had fluctuating voltages running a xp2100 and a geforce3! Aren't those new cards power hogs? After I switched to a Sparkle, it was better, stronger, faster.

 

[eastvillager]

This is the last motherboard I'm buying where they use those soldered in horseshoes to hold down the northbridge heatsink/fan instead of full mounts.

A few months back, I decided to replace the noisy first run IC7G fan with the much quieter heatsink/fan from the IS7. When I got in there to work, I noticed that one of the horseshoes had popped out and the fan was barely even on the northbridge. No big deal, I flip around the spring connecter on the is7 fan/heatsink and put it on there.

Ok, now I'm in there yesterday cause I'm moving everything into a new case for a watercooled-project and ANOTHER one of those horseshoes has popped loose, and the only thing holding the heatsink/fan to the northbridge is heatsink compound, lol.

The horseshoes didn't snap off, they just broke out of the solder, and you can see all the way through the holes they left behind. I took some picture wire, removed enough strands so that I could fit it through the holes and tied them into small loops the same rough shape/size/length as the horseshoes. I'll be using those to stick on the waterblock tonight.

 

[MIDIman]

If I have SATA and SATA raid disabled in BIOS, which version of the Intel Application Accelerator should I install? It won't allow me to install the RAID version.

 

[computer]

You can only install the IAA if you're running RAID and it's enabled.

 

[KillerBob]

OK Guys,

I have been running my little machine for a long time now, and suddenly I start getting lock-ups when booting into WinXP Pro. When I finally get into windows all is fine, but I find that in the event viewer I have IASTOR.SYS issues, and that WinXP could not see HD0/1. I am running Raid0 through the Intel SATA Raid Controller, but have never had this issue.

The IASTOR.SYS is version 4.1.0.6325

I am using BIOS 24, and think the Raid BIOS is only 3.5.

Any idears?

 

[MIDIman]

Originally posted by: computer
You can only install the IAA if you're running RAID and it's enabled.

Thanks!

Now that I've become a member of the 1 ghz FSB club (P4 2.8c @ 3.5), I'm ready to look at hard drives.

I have a number of Seagate IDE hard drives lying around, no sata drives. Is there a significant difference between two SATA drives in RAID versus two IDE drives with SATA converters in RAID? i.e. I'm assuming you can't do RAID with the 2 onboard IDE channels.

 

[PhoenixOrion]

Originally posted by: MIDIman

Originally posted by: computer
You can only install the IAA if you're running RAID and it's enabled.

Thanks!

Now that I've become a member of the 1 ghz FSB club (P4 2.8c @ 3.5), I'm ready to look at hard drives.

I have a number of Seagate IDE hard drives lying around, no sata drives. Is there a significant difference between two SATA drives in RAID versus two IDE drives with SATA converters in RAID? i.e. I'm assuming you can't do RAID with the 2 onboard IDE channels.

MIDIman, or anyone, just curious as to what are your dimm and cpu core voltages for your overclock 2.8c to 3.0ghz (1000Mhz at 1:1 ratio).

 

[MIDIman]

MIDIman, or anyone, just curious as to what are your dimm and cpu core voltages for your overclock 2.8c to 3.0ghz (1000Mhz at 1:1 ratio).

I bought the combo from a fellow anandtecher this last month, and he had never tried overclocking - IC7 max3, 2.8c 800, 2x512mb hyperx pc4000.

I didn't get much when everything was set at default - kept upping voltages, but couldn't really go past 220 or so. Then I realized that when memory timings were set to auto, they were incorrectly 3-3-3-8. Set it to 3-4-4-8, and put all of the voltages back to default - cpu=1.525, ram=2.6, agp=1.55. Went all the way up to 250fsb with this. BIOS status however reports the following: cpu=1.47, ram=2.56/1.28, agp=1.52.

Which is accurate? Should I be giving more juice to everything?

Booting at 250 does work, but after running a few tests for hours, I get random reboots. I'm clocked down to 240 pefectly stable now, and quite frankly, there's not a huge performance difference in that 10fsb to warrant the temp increase from voltage increases, etc. Its a bonus for me to run this in a silent system at 45C idle

 

[THUGSROOK]

ooops / nm

 

[MIDIman]

Again - curious if I can run RAID with SATA converters on IDE drives, and if there's a significant performance difference (compared to having SATA drives) on the IC7-max3

 

[THUGSROOK]

yes you can
yes there is

IDE on SATA does nothing for the IDE drive ~ its no faster then it would be on IDE.

 

[SPQQKY]

Yes you can
NO there isn't

There is little difference with SATA150 and 133. SATA drives actually perform a little lower in some catagories and a little better in others over ATA drives.

 

[THUGSROOK]

yea.... there is.

my WD raptor beats the tar outta my WD800jb.

 

[Soulkeeper]

Originally posted by: DealMonkey
My IC7 is only a few weeks old and already the NB fan is making all kinds of squealing noises. I'm not overclocking my system, so I figured I'd just unplug it completely. Of course the heatsink is still there and my case has some great ventilation. Do you guys think I'll have any probs by just unplugging that one fan? How hot does the IC7 NB get under normal conditions?

my NB runs fairly hot at 30c+ and i find that the system crashes without a fan on it, so unless maybe your underclocked then i recommend buying good active cooling for the thing.

they put a cheesy fan on there
mine went out and my system overheated and crashed
luckily there was no permanent damage

i plan to water cool the northbridge eventually

 

[Serine]

Hi guys, not sure how much you can help, but here goes.

A week ago I put in a 2nd pair of Geil 3200 512mb dimms (I had 2 originally) and all went perfectly well for a week or so.

However, yesterday, the video started failing, and switching off, and then the pc itself started switching off. It's not a windows issue, sometimes I turn the PC on, and it will switch itself off instantly, or before POST. Other times it will boot into windows and switch off after 30 minutes of use or whatever.

I'm not really sure what's causing it, I'm certain it's not the RAM being damaged, because if i interchange the 2 pairs, there are no crashes. But when I run all 4 dimms the pc starts switching off randomly. All 4 dimms are the same brand, speed, and timing.

Is there:
a) an instability with the Abit IC7 using 4 dimms?
b) A chance a 430w power supply couldn't support 4 dimms, 2 7200rpm hdds, a 9800xt, and a cd burner.
c) A chance something else could be causing it?

I'm not even really sure what "upping the voltage" to the ram does, but, could it be switching off because the RAM isn't getting enough power? (I have no idea what I mean by that sentence). Or is it possible the PSU is dying, and spiking power, then falling away randomly.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Pilsnerpete]

Cheap power supply? Sparkle/Fortron makes nice ones, but of course there are others.

Bad ram? Test them thoroughly with memtest86...one by one and also all together.

 

[Serine]

Antec Truepower 430w.

memtest86? okies will try that, thanks mate <3