Question Questions about Aorus Z390 Xtreme

[anandtechreader]

Hi, I got a Z390 Aorus Xtreme. Hope it works this time. Any advice on the following is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

1. For Samsung 970 Evo (Plus) 1-2TB SSD, does it matter whether I install it in the M2M, M2A or M2P SSD slot? In case of ASUS, they suggested me to fill in the one that has the lowest number. Not sure about Gigabtyte. I plan to install one SSD with Windows 10 at the beginning but add one more SSD later to allow dual boot of Windows and Linux. As my RTX 2080Ti takes 3 slots and very long, if it does not matter where I install the 1st and 2nd SSD, I would install the 1st SSD on the farest M.2 slot away from the GPU.

2. I have a Noctua NH-D15S heatsink with two NF-A15 140mm PWM 4-pin fans. For the main fan, I should connect to the CPU_FAN header. What about the secondary fan? Which header should I use?

3. I have five case fans (BeQuiet Silentwings3 4-pin PWM). 3 at the front, 1 at the top near the back and 1 at the back. Which fan headers should I use for these fans?

Menual can be found as follows:
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-AORUS-XTREME-rev-10#support-manual

 

[anandtechreader]

Enclosed is the part about SSD slots for your reference.
What do you think of installing the first SSD (Windows) to M2P and the secondary SSD (Linux) to M2A? Will that lead to the best performance? I don't quite understand the tables well enough to decide. It seems that depending on the slots, I will get different performance and lose some speeds due to sharing? At the moment, I need the PCIe x16 to run top speed for my thick (3-slot) and long EVGA Nvidia RTX 2080Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming.

 

[UsandThem]

Enclosed is the part about SSD slots for your reference.
What do you think of installing the first SSD (Windows) to M2P and the secondary SSD (Linux) to M2A? Will that lead to the best performance? I don't quite understand the tables well enough to decide. It seems that depending on the slots, I will get different performance and lose some speeds due to sharing? At the moment, I need the PCIe x16 to run top speed for my thick (3-slot) and long EVGA Nvidia RTX 2080Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming.

Wouldn't you want to put your main NVMe drive in M2M since it has a heatsink there? Speed-wise, there's just not going to really be any difference between the 3 slots.

 

[anandtechreader]

Wouldn't you want to put your main NVMe drive in M2M since it has a heatsink there? Speed-wise, there's just not going to really be any difference between the 3 slots.

I am a bit confused. Don't all three have a heatsink? I opened the U-shape heatsink covering M2A and M2P. There are two thermal pads underneath. I have some concerns:

1. It is a bad timing. Too bad Samsung does not release the 2TB version of Evo 970 Plus until April. At the same time, some people bought up all the stock of 970 Evo 2TB and sell them at twice the price. Not going to support that kind of people. If the 970 Evo Plus 2TB were available, I would have just bought 2x2TB and forget about upgrading SSD. If I remove the seal to protect the thermal pad, when I change the SSD next month, I need to find a suitable new thermal pad for the new SSD. Do I have to worry about this? Although this is a Gigabyte board, I recall ASUS told me that if I change SSD, I should change the thermal pad as well. Don't know how easy or difficut to find a suitable thermal pad.

2. It looks like regardless of where I install the SSD now, I have to remove the 3-slot thick and long EVGA Nvidia 2080Ti FWT3 Ultra Gaming GPU before I can access any of the SSD bays. Based on experience, it is not easy to remove the GPU. I had to remove all the wires and take out the entire motherboard to do it.

3. I asked Gigabyte about how to run the Corsair memory stably and at high speed, support just wrote " 9900K CPU is rated at 2667mhz, so we can only guarantee this speed to run stability as that is the default speed of the CPU. Any speed above this will result in overclocking the memory, you will need to perform manually setting on overclocking to determine how far you are able to push the memory"

As I am not experienced in OC, what suggestions do you have? My new RAM kit is: Corsair CMW64GX4M4C3466C16W Vengeance RGB Pro 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4 3466 (PC4-27700) C16


P.S. In the retail package, they included a correction page on installation of SSD. The real one for this motherboard has a U-shape SSD cover. See attachment.

 

[UsandThem]

I guess they all do, I only saw one at first when I glanced at the board.

1. You can use the same thermal pad again, won't make any difference.

3. You can try to enable XMP, and if that doesn't work, you'll have to manually do it. If you still have issues, you will have to start at lower speed and slowly work your way up until it becomes unstable.

 

[anandtechreader]

Thanks. When I opened the box the first time, I noticed that there was no anti-static bag. Is this normal?

Please refer to 1:10

 

[UsandThem]

So yours had the plastic shell on it like in the video? It's unusual, but plastic doesn't conduct electrical charges, so it would be fine. It's much like how Iwill used to package their motherboards.

I guess paying all that money for a motherboard gets you something unique.

 

[anandtechreader]

So yours had the plastic shell on it like in the video?

Yes

 

[anandtechreader]

I am almost done with installation. Can I connect 4-pin PWM cables from the case fans to these fan pump ports? What is the different between case fans and pump fans?

 

[anandtechreader]

From the case I/O front panel, there is a 2-pin power header which I am supposed to connect to the motherboard. The header has no +/- sign but there is a triangle (indicated in red arrow) on one side. Is that a plus? Is the way I connect the wires correct?

 

[UsandThem]

I don't think there is any difference outside of the pump headers possibly monitoring your CPU temps.

Although, why not just plug them into the normal case fan header (which your board has four of those)?

 

[UsandThem]

From the case I/O front panel, there is a 2-pin power header which I am supposed to connect to the motherboard. The header has no +/- sign but there is a triangle (indicated in red arrow) on one side. Is that a plus? Is the way I connect the wires correct?

Aren't the cables different colors? Plug it in the same orientation as your other front cables.

 

[anandtechreader]

I don't think there is any difference outside of the pump headers possibly monitoring your CPU temps.

Although, why not just plug them into the normal case fan header (which your board has four of those)?

Thanks. I don't know the reason but last time, ASUS tech support told me not to use those pump fan headers. Don't know about Gigabyte.

I have five case fans (3 at the front, 1 at the back and 1 at the top). One of the four case fan headers is next to the ATX_12V_2X4/1-2. With the motherboard inside the case, it is very difficult to plug it in. Besides, I need one more port to connect to the 5th fan.

In the box, there is a GC-OC Touch controller board. It has six fan headers. Not sure if those are additional fan headers (i.e. 6+4 = 10 controllable case fans) or they are connected to some of the hearders in the motherboard.

 

[anandtechreader]

Hi, I need some help.

I tried to connect as best as I can but whenever I turn on the machine, the LED CODE keeps changing but mostly display 4C, C1 and C5 (meaning "reserved" with no explaination of that that is). The machine keeps turning on and off automatically in a loop. Sometimes rebooting in 1 second but sometimes rebotting in a few seconds. There is no signal on the screen regardless of whether I connect the PC to the display via the RTX 2080Ti HDMI port of the motherboard's HDMI port. So I cannot go to the BIOS. I have 4x16GB Corsair Venegence RGB PRO 3466 RAM. Removing two does not help. The two CPU fans are on whenever the machine is on but case fans are off. I have to connect those case fans to my BeQuiet case's fan controller to make them spin. The LED at the edge of the motherboard are always on. Is the motherboard defective?

 

[UsandThem]

It's highly unlikely that you received two defective motherboards in a row (especially different brands).

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but maybe you should pay a local PC shop a few bucks to troubleshoot / build your PC for you.

 

[anandtechreader]

I unplugged everything including the CPU and reinstalled. It booted but when I added the GPU back, it failed to boot with different code. Removing the GPU and it booted again.

1. What do you think is the problem? GPU was working fine for 2.5 weeks on the ASUS WS Z390.

2. Also, even it POST and BIOS showed 3400Mhz, BIOS showed up very slowly unlike the ASUS WS Z390 PRO. Is it depending on the manufacturer and board? Is there any way to make it faster?

3. When I installed components for the first time, I noticed that two RAM slots had some resistant when I inserted the RAM. It was like when I inserted interface cards to the Apple II computer. Haven't encountered that kind of resistant for 30+ years. Do I have to worry about this?

4. I am also concerned about support from Gigabyte. It took them 3 days to answer simple questions. As least for ASUS, they mailed me everyday and sometimes even called me. I could also chatted with them. For Gigabyte, only email support is available and they are not so quick in responding. I only get support from 1 user who has the same motherboard.

Given such stability issues, is it better to replace the board or get whatever Z390 MB that most people have no problem with? Any recommendation?

 

[Shmee]

I would memtest the RAM at rated speeds as mentioned in the other thread. I also 2nd the idea to have a local repair shop do diagnostics, as they generally have more parts and testing tools to choose from.

If you want to continue testing yourself, please go here: https://www.memtest86.com/ and follow the instructions to make a USB flash drive bootable with the latest free memtest and then boot from that flash drive.

 

[anandtechreader]

It's highly unlikely that you received two defective motherboards in a row (especially different brands).

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but maybe you should pay a local PC shop a few bucks to troubleshoot / build your PC for you.

That could be a good alternative.

Why I could build a PC successfully on one trial 20 years ago but not these days? More complicated components more compatibility issues? QA less good then before when most people could not even imagine building a computer?

For my Adrous Xtreme Z390 board, given the issues with initial setup and the resistance on two ram slots, should I exchange for another board or just keep it and see how it goes within return period?

 

[UsandThem]

That could be a good alternative.

Why I could build a PC successfully on one trial 20 years ago but not these days? More complicated components more compatibility issues? QA less good then before when most people could not even imagine building a computer?

I can't really answer that one. I've been building computers since around 1996 or so, and I personally haven't noticed any downward trend in quality or compatibility issues as long as you follow the manual and select compatible components. In fact, I generally have far fewer issues today than I ever did dealing with motherboards that had chipsets like VIA and SIS back in the Athlon days.

For my Adrous Xtreme Z390 board, given the issues with initial setup and the resistance on two ram slots, should I exchange for another board or just keep it and see how it goes within return period?

I would have a local PC repair shop look at it and decide. I'm not sure that anyone can say with any certainty if there is / isn't an issue over the internet.

 

[KentState]

Did you plug both 8 pin PCIE connectors into the GPU? On the motherboard, you did the 8 pin PCIE for the CPU?

The ram can only go in one way as the key is offset to one side of the stick. You should be able to visually line them up before seating them.

 

[Furious_Styles]

It's highly unlikely that you received two defective motherboards in a row (especially different brands).

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but maybe you should pay a local PC shop a few bucks to troubleshoot / build your PC for you.

I agree. Why are you buying all the enthusiast (and extremely expensive) parts but with a beginner level tech skill? You're setting yourself up for failure.

 

[anandtechreader]

Did you plug both 8 pin PCIE connectors into the GPU? On the motherboard, you did the 8 pin PCIE for the CPU?

The ram can only go in one way as the key is offset to one side of the stick. You should be able to visually line them up before seating them.

Yes, I plugged both 8 pin PCIE connectors into the GPU. The first thing I did after inserting the GPU into the slot.

On the motherboard, I have 2x 8pin P

I agree. Why are you buying all the enthusiast (and extremely expensive) parts but with a beginner level tech skill? You're setting yourself up for failure.

Actually I am a scientist. I need the computer power for work. Previously, I got people to do the equipment related work for me so I have been out of the loop on DIY PC for a long time.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Yes, I plugged both 8 pin PCIE connectors into the GPU. The first thing I did after inserting the GPU into the slot.

On the motherboard, I have 2x 8pin P


Actually I am a scientist. I need the computer power for work. Previously, I got people to do the equipment related work for me so I have been out of the loop on DIY PC for a long time.

I'm not trying to say you're not intelligent or anything. I just think if you've been out of the loop it's best to buy mid level stuff that doesn't have 100 bios options that you have to read up on. That said if something is not working properly it can be difficult to troubleshoot if you don't have a bunch of known-good spares. I just had a friend send me his Z270 setup because he got tired of RMA'ing parts of it trying to figure out what the issue was.

 

[Ketchup]

There are several programmers where I work that would be totally dumbfounded if you asked them how to build a computer (but most could figure it out). So don't feel dumb if you can't figure this one out. If you haven't already, try assembly outside the case and make sure you don't have a short somewhere. Several youtube videos on how to do this.

 

[anandtechreader]

I'm not trying to say you're not intelligent or anything. I just think if you've been out of the loop it's best to buy mid level stuff that doesn't have 100 bios options that you have to read up on. That said if something is not working properly it can be difficult to troubleshoot if you don't have a bunch of known-good spares. I just had a friend send me his Z270 setup because he got tired of RMA'ing parts of it trying to figure out what the issue was.

That is one of the problems. No known good spares -> Can't tell which components are working and which are defective.

Now Amazon sent me a friendly warning letter asking me why I keep returning things. I read that people who got such letter are on the verge of being banned. In my city, there is only one big local computer store. They charge a restocking fee when people opens and return a product. Without opening and testing the components, how do we know if they work or not? Continuing to order and return to Amazon could lead to banning, what can I do?

My system seems to have stablized. Do you think I have to worry that it may fail after the 30 days return period? The ASUS Z390 PRO worked at the beginning but failed on the 3rd week.