Where Are The Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Motherboards?

[mjrtoo]

I'm looking for a good low profile air CPU cooler for this board. I'm not really doing any overclocking, but would like something that could handle a little bit. My current Freezer 7 Pro is nice, but I have to install it backwards with this mobo, with the fan towards the rear of the case, and also had to trim a couple cooling fins back a little bit where the northbridge, heat pipe sits.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, also, I'm getting the Lian-Li PC-A10A case located here, there might be some conflict with the top fan with anything tall, like my Freezer 7 Pro.

 

[jkresh]

well, just opened the box from mwave and its a rev 1.0 board so its going back, now I need to figure out what to do next.

 

[jkresh]

mjrtoo outside of water I don't know of any low profile coolers that can handle quads. I guess you could look at any of the horizontally oriented coolers anandtech has reviewed but none of them work as well as the vertical ones.

 

[mjrtoo]

How about this one, think it will fit over the heatpipes? I also have the Dominator II DDR, tall heat sinks on that as well.

http://www.enzotechnology.com/cpu.htm

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: jkresh
well, just opened the box from mwave and its a rev 1.0 board so its going back, now I need to figure out what to do next.

Mr jkresh, Why are you sending the mobo back ? The only difference between rev1 and rev2 boards is the southbridge. MCP55PXE for rev1 vs MCP55P for rev2. Most of us rev1 owner are delighted to have the better southbridge.

 

[jkresh]

Blazer7 I could be wrong (maybe Garry will have an answer) but I was under the impression that as with the evga boards the rev 2 is much better for overclocking quad core processors (especially G0's), if that is not the case then I may keep the board, but unless Garry or someone else with a G0 and good overclocking skills can verify that getting around 380 or higher is possible with the Rev 1 I cant see keeping it. I would rather go with the evga or dfi then loose a couple of hundred mhz on my overclock.

Also the fact that I think I got the last one that mwave had (they stopped selling the board the day mine shipped) and newegg/zzf and others don't carry it anymore leads me to believe that gigabyte is no longer pushing it and it might be silly to buy it at this time. Again Garry might say something different and I don't have any connections at Gigabyte to answer one way or another but I do feel this is kind of strange.

 

[evanscnce]

Anyone have any other ideas on my networking port problem?

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: mjrtoo
How about this one, think it will fit over the heatpipes? I also have the Dominator II DDR, tall heat sinks on that as well.

http://www.enzotechnology.com/cpu.htm

Mr mjrtoo, I'm using something similar to what you are looking at. Namely the Thermalright SI-128. I'm really happy with this one and it has the advantage that you can use any 12x12 fan that you like. The only downside is that you need to fit it before fitting the board to your case and one of the pushpins is surrounded by the heatpipes and covered by the heatsink itself. This makes it difficult to reach it and apply the necessary pressure to make it lock.

I don't really know if this ultra-x can be fitted to this board but from the looks of it this is just a copy of Thermalright's SI-128/SI-128 SE design. Since the SI-128/SI-128 SE can be fitted on this board I would choose one of them (probably the SE version). I'm also using an OCZ-XTC memory cooler which fits just under the SI-128 with no problems at all.

The SI-128 can be fitted in any of 4 different orientations on this board. Since you are using Dominators it can be fitted in any of 2 or 3 ways. One of them should give you marginal clearance from the DIMM slots while another may tower over the first 2 or 3 DIMM slots providing extra cooling. In the last scenario I can't really tell whether the heatsink can be fitted over the Dominators as these DIMMs are very tall and I haven't tested this configuration myself. I'm using std size DIMMs the XTC Cooler on top of them and the SI-128 clears them for about 5mm. I suppose that it will clear the Dominators for 5mm also but I can't be 100% sure.

http://www.thermalright.com/default.htm

I hope this helps.

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: jkresh
Blazer7 I could be wrong (maybe Garry will have an answer) but I was under the impression that as with the evga boards the rev 2 is much better for overclocking quad core processors (especially G0's), if that is not the case then I may keep the board, but unless Garry or someone else with a G0 and good overclocking skills can verify that getting around 380 or higher is possible with the Rev 1 I cant see keeping it. I would rather go with the evga or dfi then loose a couple of hundred mhz on my overclock.

Also the fact that I think I got the last one that mwave had (they stopped selling the board the day mine shipped) and newegg/zzf and others don't carry it anymore leads me to believe that gigabyte is no longer pushing it and it might be silly to buy it at this time. Again Garry might say something different and I don't have any connections at Gigabyte to answer one way or another but I do feel this is kind of strange.

Mr jkresh, please have a look at Gary's post on page 56 (27/7). Gary mentioned getting up to ~380 FSB with BIOS F5b. The F5b is for rev1 boards only. I think that you should pm Gary just to verify this and get some advise based on his settings too. I know that some of the guys here could kill for such info.

 

[jkresh]

Blazer7 how many post do you see per page because for my settings this thread only has 26 pages? Also I have pm'd Garry to ask about the rev1/rev2 issues and I will wait for his response before sending the board back (mostly because I have no idea as to what to order if I send the board back).

 

[TheBeagle]

Hello Mr. Mjrtoo.

I recently installed a new Zalman 8700 cooler, and It worked very well. It essentially is an upgraded version of the 7700 series, but the 8700 has heatpipes embedded in the fins. It is low profile and uses a form of the regular Zalman base assembly, which assembly is tried and true on any board I've ever seen. So, if you're looking for an efficient, low profile CPU cooler, I'd surely give that a try. I found that 8700 for sale at SharkaComputers.com for around $65.00 USD. Hope that helps. TheBeagle :beer:

 

[KRentfrow]

I had problems with the F5E BIOS, after the first install the system booted up fine and stress testing went fine, I soon noticed that I could not resume from S3 Suspend (standby), system would just re-boot. I re-applied the F5E bios and set "retain DMI settings" to disable, and also loaded the default CMOS settings from within Q-Flash, and applied "Fail-Safe Defaults" before applying my BIOS settings. S3 suspend worked ok but I noticed a problem with my Soundblaster Audigy 2 platinum pro did not have access to all of it's inputs, missing Line-IN 3 and SPDIF-IN which I use regularly, The only way that I could find to get my inputs back was to go back to earlier BIOS, I then loaded F5E again, I did have all my inputs for a while but I lost them again, I think turning off the power supply switch may have had an affect but I am not sure, I have not had the time to try to confirm. going back to F5B BIOS resolved the issue again. I will stay with F5B for now.

Maybe it's just my board but it seems to have a flaky BIOS, I had trouble in the past, a few days after upgrading to F5B I spent a couple of hours troubleshooting a problem where I could not get the system to boot at all, would just hang trying to boot from a CD or from the HD, even pulling the battery for several minutes did not fix the boot problem. Turning off the setting for USB mouse support allowed the system to boot, I checked several times, it would not boot with USB mouse enabled but would boot with USB mouse disabled. The Next day I was able to enable USB mouse support again and I have not had that issue since.

System: GA-N680SLI-DQ6 Rev1, E6600 3.2Ghz (357x9) 1.45V, Zalman 9700, (4x1GB) Crucial Ballistix 2.25V 5,4,4,12 1071Mhz Unlinked, Radeon X1950, Soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinum Pro, 3 x 500GB Seagate SATA 2 HD's (no RAID), Sony SATA DVD Burner, Antec P180 Case with Antec Neo HE 550w PS

Kevin

 

[mfarbman]

Mr. TheBeagle, did you have to remove the heat sink on the back of the board with the 8700?

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: jkresh
Blazer7 how many post do you see per page because for my settings this thread only has 26 pages? Also I have pm'd Garry to ask about the rev1/rev2 issues and I will wait for his response before sending the board back (mostly because I have no idea as to what to order if I send the board back).

Mr jkresh, I use std settings, that's 20 posts per page for a total of 64 pages so far. Gary's post is dated 07/27/2007.

 

[jkresh]

mwave will waive the restocking fee if I send the box back without opening, otherwise its %15 (about 43) does anyone think its worth trying the rev 1 board with a G0 or should I just send it back?

 

[justinburton]

I have a Rev 1 board and it works great. I overclocked my QX6700 to 3.6gHz easily. Then again there is an unlocked multiplier so my FSB never has to go too high. I got to 3.8gHz (316x12) but it was at 55 degrees Celsius at idle. Too bad the higher the gHx, the higher temp you will get. Rev. 2 was only made because there was a shortage of 590 chipset. They replaced them with the plentiful 570 chipset. You loose the ability to use Nvidia's Linkboost with the Rev2 boards. I would suggest sticking with the Rev 1.

 

[TheBeagle]

Good Evening Mr. MFarbman.

It is NOT necessary to remove the stock Gigabyte heatsink on the backside of the Gigabyte board in order to use any of the Zalman CPU coolers. It is a very simple process to cut each of the four corners on the backside mounting plate off the plastic plate, and just use them alone for each of the four mounting holes. If you scan back a whole bunch of pages on this Thread, you will find a complete posting of an explanation of that whole process. I hope that answers your concerns about having to remove the stock backplate. Best regards. TheBeagle :beer:

 

[jkresh]

justinburton, did you ever try for a maximum fsb overclock with your rev 1 board? If so what could you get. If I can get around 380 then I will keep it otherwise I will send it back, and I don't want ot open it find out I am stuck below 350 and have ot pay the restocking fee.

 

[jkresh]

Gary said that right now he is getting better results on his rev1 board then the rev2 (though the p5b bios is better then the p5e), I will start setting up the rev 1 tomorrow and post results as they come (probably wont be up with water till Wednesday and still trying to decide if I should swap the heatpipes for a nb waterblock and maybe heatsinks on the sb/vregs or maybe attach a waterblock to the sb heatsink (which could cool the whole assembly somewhat) or just use water on the cpu).

 

[justinburton]

jkresh,

I have not found the maximum FSB overclock for my board. I did find out the max OC for my CPU and system. It was 3.8gHz. I need better memory though.

About the water cooling. Just ask yourself, what components get the hottest and cost the most to replace? I would suggest cooling those components. You could always have two water loops too!

If your curious what how my setup looks
Check these out:

http://s149.photobucket.com/al...w&current=IMG_0799.jpg
http://s149.photobucket.com/al...w&current=IMG_0798.jpg
http://s149.photobucket.com/al...w&current=IMG_0797.jpg
http://s149.photobucket.com/al...w&current=IMG_0796.jpg
http://s149.photobucket.com/al...w&current=IMG_0795.jpg
http://s149.photobucket.com/al...w&current=IMG_0794.jpg

 

[Smitty1705]

Originally posted by: justinburton
I have a Rev 1 board and it works great. I overclocked my QX6700 to 3.6gHz easily. Then again there is an unlocked multiplier so my FSB never has to go too high. I got to 3.8gHz (316x12) but it was at 55 degrees Celsius at idle. Too bad the higher the gHx, the higher temp you will get. Rev. 2 was only made because there was a shortage of 590 chipset. They replaced them with the plentiful 570 chipset. You loose the ability to use Nvidia's Linkboost with the Rev2 boards. I would suggest sticking with the Rev 1.

I'm still using my Rev 1 board and love it... (Then again i'm only on an E6600)
Just curious, how much of a gain do you get on the Rev 1 boards with the "Link Boost" option? Has anyone been able to notice a difference? I'm not even sure what it's for except a switch that makes me hope my 8800 is going faster... hahaha

Smitty

 

[Blazer7]

Linkboost explained : http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=2869&p=5

 

[TheBeagle]

Good Evening Everyone!!

WARNING - WARNING!!!!! This evening I allowed Microsoft to download about 13 Upgrades/Updates to my Vista 64 PC, which utilizes the GA-N680SLI-DQ6 motherboard. After the download and install of these "upgrades/updates" the PC rebooted. After the reboot, the network function of my Rev 1 board was DESTROYED!!! No matter what I tried to do to repair the network function, it was a NO GO!!

MICROSOFT has SCREWED us AGAIN!!!! Do NOT allow this "upgrade/update package" to be installed on your machine!! Fortunately, I created a Restore Point prior to the upgrade/update nightmare, and that allowed me to completely (hopefully) return my PC to the previous state.

I sure hope that someone from Anandtech immediately investigates this issue and causes some sort of remedial solution to be implemented. I just thought you all would like to know about this potential disaster. TheBeagle :frown:

 

[evanscnce]

Did you check if the 3 and 4 network ports work?

If they did, then they may have the same thing with XP as I don't have 1 or 2 working, but 3 and 4 do...

 

[jkresh]

board shipped with f3 bios, tried a few quick tests with that bios and my g0 and was able to boot up to about 6*355, at 360 it gets to the gigabyte screen and hangs. Looks good so far, but I have been unable to post since that hang. Tried resetting the cmos (why doesnt the board come with the jumpers?), and my soyo diagnostic card is now showing a possible corrupt bios, have the battery out now and hopefully that will fix it, would be kind of sad if it failed this quickly. Assuming I can get it to post I will switch to the f5b bios tomorrow and install my fusion and see how far I can go.