Should I RMA my board?

My PC rebooted unexpectedly during POST and when it came back up it crashed after "verifying DMI pool data" screen.
The 200Gig SATA drive Windows was installed on wouldn't boot at all, I attempted to reinstall keeping the current partition intact but still no joy. I was able to boot off another drive and using the 200 gig as slave rescue the data off it with the intention of wiping the partition clean and starting fresh.
When I came to install windows again, I deleted the partition, and when I attempted to create a new one I was told there was only 139GB available on the drive. Previously there had been 194GB.
So using an add in SATA card (SI3112) I booted into windows installer and tried the same process, the drive was coorectly recognized as 194GB's.
So my question really is, is my onboard SI3114 controller likely to be defective? Granted that I was using the onboard when copying data off the drive as slave and windows installer could actually install to the original partition but it just wouldn't boot.
I don't know if this has always been the case with the onboard controller cos when I originally installed windows onto this hard drive it was off the SI3112 add in card on an nforce2 setup and put the drive straight intot he nforce4 machine when it arrived.
Has anyone experienced a similar problem? I've tried searching but searching for "drive" bring up a million and 1 driver problems.

Quote
Dunno how that affects your theory
Hardly a theory :- How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives in Windows XP
Still if your sorted
luck

Similar Messages

TS4088 why is there a limit on 3 years? it should be all the MacBook Pro mid 2010 with symptoms, there should get their logic board changed for free, mine mac is 3 month late and i had this problem for over a year, but i first saw this article today :(

it should be all the MacBook Pro mid 2010 with symptoms, there should get their logic board changed for free, mine mac is 3 month late and i had this problem for over a year, but i first saw this article today

Hey Clintonfrombirmingham
I called Apple technical support in Denmark, but with no positive reply.
She couldn't do anything, and said that They had sent a recall Email about the problem and with their offer to repair the Macbook Pro, but I'd never recieved an Email about the problem. She wasn't in power to make an exception. It can't be true that i paid a lot of money, for a product that can't barely stand on its own feets, Apple didn't tell me that the product I was about to buy, would restart every 5 minute. and now when they know the problem, they wont repair it? it just don't make sense for me. If a car seller discovers that all the brakes in a car he had sold, will crash after some years he will call all the cars back to repair no mater what. i just don't understand how Apple will make good service for their custumers, by extending the warranty from 2 to 3 years, but wont take the computers there is a little bit to old, 4 months will make the difference. i can't believe it.
What can i do now?
best regards Oskar

Occasional GPU (N580GTX TF II/OC) freezes (usually recovers), should I RMA?

About a week ago after being depressed with Rage's poor performance with my Radeon HD5850 I went ahead and ordered a shiny MSI N580GTX Twin Frozr II/OC. After it arrived I installed it and it seemed to work fine (at least in Rage), but then I found that certain games (World of Warcraft, Battlefield 3, some other game I forget) would infrequently freeze or cause my screen to go black, after which I needed to CTRL+ALT+DEL to get to the task manager to close the program. Usually I'd also see a popup telling me the GPU/driver stopped responding and was succesfully reset/recovered. (Sometimes I wouldn't get this popup, and sometimes instead of just the game freezing, the whole PC would freeze - though the latter is somewhat rare).
Now, initially I had a CoolerMaster Real Power 520W power supply, with only 19A on both 12V rails (38A total). This power supply was obviously not enough for my GPU so the first thing I did was order a CoolerMaster Silent Pro M 700W PSU, with a single 12V rail with 50A. To my horror, after installing this I discovered I still had the same sort of freezes. According to GPU-Z my GPU wasn't getting too hot, as far as I could tell (79°C being the highest temperature measured during full load), and my case has a decent airflow (two 120MM fans as intake and exhaust).
Then, to rule out a flaky PSU or anything else in my system, I went ahead and installed my GPU in a different machine with a Corsair RX750W PSU, but the issue remained, after 1-2 hours of playing Battlefield 3, the game would freeze in the manner described above. Finally I also tried a bunch of the NVIDIA drivers in the 28x.xx series (280.26, 285.38, and 285.62), to no avail.
So now I've kind of ran out of ideas, and I'm starting to wonder if my GPU has a defect. Could this be the case? Should I RMA it? I'm a bit weary of sending it back to the shop where I bought it, considering it can literally take hours before some of the games I've tested freeze (Rage for example hasn't frozen up on me at all yet despite over 11 hours of play time, BF3 can take up to an hour or two before it freezes) - I doubt they will be willing to spend that much time to verify that it is faulty.
PS. I've googled around a bit and saw some anecdotal evidence that this could be an issue with the 28x.xx driver series, and I'm tempted to give it a try, but that would probably not help me with getting Rage and Battlefield 3 to run since they depend on more recent drivers :/ (I'll probably give it a shot anyway this weekend just to see what happens)

Thanks for your reply, I have 'discarded' the old 520W power supply already since I guess using that is asking for trouble However I'm not sure if this is a specific issue to Battlefield 3 since I had other games crash as well - but.. I haven't really tested anything other than BF3 after installing the new 700W power supply, so I'll spend some time to see if those still crash. If they still crash/freeze like BF3 does, I'll post a reply here
Also, since I forgot in my initial post, here are my full (current) system specs:
CPU: Intel Core i7 870
MOBO: Gigabyte P55-USB3 (BIOS version F9 2010-11-01)
MEM: 4x2GB DDR3 Kingston PC3-10700 (667MHz)
GPU: MSI N580GTX Twin Frozr II/OC (Label top line: 912-V255-067, S/N:602-V255-060B1108015588, BIOS version: 70.10.20.00.01, Default clocks: 800-core/2048-memory/1600-shader, Default voltage: 1038mV)
HDD: Samsung HD103SJ / Samsung HD753LJ
OS: Windows 7 64bit
PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M700, 700W, 50A @ +12V (Full DC output: http://www.coolermaster.com/upload/product_feature/SilentProM700-6.jpg)
Should probably point out that before replacing my Radeon HD5850 with the new 580GTX I have not had any stability issues

If you RMA your board....

:O :O :O Youd better go on vacation, or lease a DELL, ive been without mine for over 2 weeks now. I got my Corsair RAM back within 5 days. TWICE. MSI should at least put a "check RMA status" link on their site. Im feeling pretty boned, and by the time I install my 2500+, it will have dropped by 25% of what I bought it for. I will seriously think twice before I buy another MSI. Now if I can only ditch the other 2 MSI boards Ive got...... :O X( X( X( X(

Sorry Guys,
Your Ranting has no place on these forums and will fall on deaf ears, since no one from MSI reads these forums. Us Mods are users like yourself who volunteer our time and effort. However, I will recommend the Status thingy to them but don't get your hopes up.
It's not just MSI, there are plenty more manufacturers out there that take their sweet time on getting your stuff back.
I had three Items last year take just over a month to get my stuff back. Visiontek in our own back yard here in Gurnee, and Hoffman Estates, took 6 weeks to send me back my GF4 Ti4600.
I agree it needs improvement, but the reality is that many companies have cutback and trimmed on services and employee numbers just to stay in business during these trying times.
Get over it, it's the nature of the beast 8)

Grrr.. Should I Rma Neo Fis2r

ok, i hate having to RMA motherboards because it takes so long and i have to undo all my cables.
but i have had some issues and now more have come up
FIRST: Long Shutdowns, i cant find the issue and im leaning toward MOBO, nothing fixes it for more than a day or so
SECOND: Onboard Audio Quit working a month ago (have a new sound card now, wasnt a big deal)
THIRD: Just today my realteck Network card started acting up, every 2 or 3 minutes all my connections drop, i cant renew my ip or disable/enable card once this happens, i have to reboot to fix it, just for it to happen again 2 min later
if i do RMA it i think i will go ahead and order a new PSU also, what do you guys think..hit submit and it did it before i could post this thread GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

...if you get a new PSU and exchange the mobo at the same time then you'll never know what the problem was...don't you want to know?..
...a PCI network adapter is cheaper than a sound card...you bought a soundcard...why not spend some more money?..
...j/k...
...you have to draw the line somewhere...maybe this is where it should be...

How long beforce MSI ships back RMA'd board?

For anyone with experience, how long does it normally take for MSI in California to replace/fix and ship back an RMA'd mobo(875P Neo-FIS2R) after they receive it? And, is there a way to find out the RMA status online? Thanks!

From the time the receive it, it takes approximately 2-3 weeks for them to ship it back.
My only experience with their RMA department was when I actually dropped by their SoCal office---and I was initially curtly informed that they do not accept RMAs in person. After being persistent and having the very nice receiptionist correctly sense that steam was about to erupt from my ears, she got me an RMA number and expedited it. The board was shipped approximately 15 days after I dropped by.

925XE Neo Platinum-54G - 2nd RMA replacement, board locks up

I would really appreciate any assistance anyone can provide about the problems I'm having with this mobo, I'm ready to toss it. This one is the 3rd RMA replacement; the first one failed within 7 months of purchase and the replacement that MSI sent for that one failed within 3 months after receiving it. The current board locks up my system after boot; the time to lock up is anywhere from 15 seconds to 3 minutes. I have hooked up only bare minimum components to the board to reduce the possibility that it's a compnent issue, but everything else in my system has been working fine. System specs are:
Intel 3.2 ghz single core proc
Geil DDR2 SDRAM 533 (PC2 4300) 3 x 1gig sticks
Sapphire RADEON 7000 64meg PCI video card
Creative Soundlbaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card
Maxtor DiamondMax 200gig SATA drive (3x)
Let me know what other information you might need to help. Thank you to anyone that can help.

Memtest ran for 8 1/2 hours, here is what is hightlighted in red below the test data:
Tst Pass Failing Address Good Bad Err-Bits Count Chan
6 7 000389a2e74 - 905.1mb 0000000010 0000000050 0000000040 1
I have 3, 1gig sticks of Geil RAM, how do I determine which one has the fault? Could this be the cause of board lock-up?
I can't get to the power supply to see the lable information.

7950 twin frozr iii running hot? should i rma?

I noticed my video card after having it a while is now 1) much louder and 2) is running idle around 55-60c. I also noticed a game ive been playing (FFXIV) ive gotten far more moments of freezing or horrible FPS drops.
Im running Windows 8.1 (this started back when i was on windows 7) and the case is pretty well vented. This has only come up now after owning it for quite some time (nearly a year i think). Is this just normal for this card to be so hot or should i be worried and RMA it. As much as i dont want to be without my gaming rig, id rather not risk it if something is wrong.

seem to be about 71-72C (with the usage fluctuating like crazy for a while at first then stabilizing at 99%). Also like to note that while playing a game last night i had it flash and the display driver fail then recover (not sure if thats relevant to it or not)
I also notice even after the program has been off for a bit, the card is still saying its under heavy load 80-99% and about 65C when there has been nothing running,

POP UP window or screen to enter badge id ( it should work like Key board)

Hi ,
We have requirement that client have touchscreen user interface desktops in plant where production process goes on.
I am developing a dynpro program for PP operations. This program will be used in touch screen devices. Before the operators starts his work , he has to enter his Badge ID (Numbers only). (Note : They don't use Key board for these devices)for that i need to create a pop up window as F4 help. I am looking whether SAP already has any kind of pop-up window which can solve my problem. Please let me know whether any key board screen/window available?..
Thanks in advance.
-Siva

Try :
*fields-tabname   = 'TRVOR'. " table name
*fields-fieldname = 'SUMSO'. "field name which the user might enter..
*APPEND fields.
*CALL FUNCTION 'POPUP_GET_VALUES'
* EXPORTING
*   no_value_check        = 'X'
*    popup_title           = 'Jay'
**   START_COLUMN          = '5'
**   START_ROW             = '5'
* IMPORTING
*   returncode            = l_returncode
* TABLES
*    fields                = fields
* EXCEPTIONS
*   error_in_fields       = 1
*   OTHERS                = 2 .
*CALL FUNCTION 'COPO_POPUP_TO_DISPLAY_TEXTLIST'
* EXPORTING
*    task       = 'DECIDE'
*    titel      = 'TEST POPUP '
* IMPORTING
*    function   = sy-ucomm
* TABLES
*    text_table = it_data.
[ Check this nice WIKI by Sandra|http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/x/bIChBg]
Edited by: J@Y on Oct 5, 2009 9:48 PM

Should i RMA my K8T-Neo Fis2R?

I am getting some weird cpu temps in the bios 67c!! and according to mbm5 its only 48c.. worth rmaing? is ther a problem with the sensor on the motherboard?.

...Moan Guide...
...the first time you enter BIOS after clearing the CMOS the CPU temp always reads high (mine reads 65C)...I'd be more concerned with the 48C that MBM5 reports and that is a HSF issue...
...create a signature with all your hardware specs, OS and BIOS version in the Profile area...

Kt3 Ultra 2 R, no post. Should i RMA?!

I have read in other threads about the 'IDE detection problem' I think i have the same, no signal to monitor, only lights are
1-RED
2-RED
3-GREEN
4-GREEN
I have tried all the usual, out of case different PSU, ram video etc, but still nothing, even after clearing CMOS and removing battery.
HOWEVER i don't have another CPU to test (not made of money u know!) is there any possibility the CPU is at fault? The computer doesnt start, won't boot into BIOS. But I have two dead older CPU's, with them it doesnt start at all.
I will RMA but i don't want to if all i need is another CPU.
Thanks in advance, J

Those Q-Tec PSU's, even the so-called 550W, will not power as much as a high quality 300W-350W.
It was probably already stuggling to manage with what you had in there, an adding the higher power card pushed it over the limit. Something had to pay the price for the lack of power, and the sound was just the "lucky victim"
If you can borrow a different brand PSU to try, it could very well solve this issue.
If you read the entire post titled "Q-Tec warning", one of the last posts there was from someone that had been using a Q-Tec 550, and switched to a different brand. He was amazed at the difference it made.

K8N Neo corrupts data - should I RMA?

Mobo: K8N Neo Platinum
AMD 3000+
1 GB memory (Generic)
Primary IDE: 160GB maxtor and DVD (in that order)
Secondard IDE: 160GB maxtor (same model) and DVD (in that order)
SATA 1 to 4: 250 GB maxtor (same model on each)
So that's 6 hard disks and 2 DVDs in total.
Greaphics: Asus v9400 magic
NOT overclocked!
BIOSes tried 1.1 and 1.3
After my 20th (or 30th) install of Win 2003, I've finally concluded, I think, that I have a faulty mobo, unless soemone has any good ideas. Basically, if I copy large quantities (say 2GB or more) of data to the device on SATA3 or SATA4, the data corrupts. No errors in the event log, but apps fail to work randomly, and a binary file comparison definiitely shows the corrupt file is not the same as the source. (usualoly by one bit only).
OK. Here's what I've tried:
1. Swapping hard disks around. Result: it's always the device on SATA3 and SATA4 that fails.
2. Swapping SATA cables. Result: No difference.
3. Doing large quantities of data moving on the other drives: Result: no problemo on IDEs and SATA1/2.
4. I've followed the instructions in the FAQ (the rsheppick one that instructs to set up the disks as raid 0 stripes even if they're single disks and use the Nvidia drivers). result: Still corrupts on SATA3/4.
5. I've also disabled the raid bios and used the Nvidia IDE s/w drivers. Same result.
6. I've disabled the RAID bios and used the MS drivers: same result.
7. In case anyone asks: no I'm not overclocking!
8. Just for fun, I've also set up various RAID configuraytions in hardware and software and the bottom line is that any array that uses SATA3/4 gets data corruption.
9. There's no other hardware in the machine other than what's mentioned.
10. I've tried all combinations of BIOSes 1.1, 1.3 and NVidia IDE drivers 2.5 and 2.6. result: always a corruption on SATA3/4.
The annoying this is that because there were no errors when the system was installed and got up and running, it's been a pain to locate the problem of the various app crashes. (The OS has always been on the IDE channels and hasn't been a problem.)
Questions:
1. Has anyone else found the same problem? WARNING: if it's a bad batch of mobos or a design fault then there could be lots of people with this problem that don't know it!
2. Any other ideas? Just a faulty mobo?
Cheers
Mark

Several of us have reported data corruption with nForce 4 based motherboards.
I'd like to share my experiences with you. I hope nVidia's & MSI's experts read this forum and finally offer us the right solution.
In short:
Some random data data corruption happens if a motherboard is stressed with DMA transfers (about 2 or 3 bytes altered out of ~5 GBytes). The operating system does not log any error.
You copy a file of some GBytes, you compare them e.g. with the "comp" command in a DOS window, and the two files wont be the same. You repeat comparing them: you may see different errors at different file offsets each time. It seems to be a random error.
You can reproduce this error under Linux, too, e.g. SuSE 9.3.
I think data corruption happens when the DMA writes the memory.
- If disk writes (DMA memory reads) were broken, then once the file copy is carried out (with some errors), you would always see the same errors when comparing the two files repeatedly.
- I moved a disk of mines to an "old" machine, I created some files (big RAR-s) and double-checked them on that machine. Moving back, the files seem to be corrupted.
It is funny to see that it is always the byte at the offset hexadecimal 0x1d8 (out of the 512 = 0x200 byte long disk sectors) that is altered by 0x10, e.g. 0x2f becomes 0x3f or vice versa.
My HW-SW configuration:
- MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum MS-7125 ver: 1
- AMD Athlon 64 3700++
- 2 * 512 MByte Kingston DDR 400 MHz PC3200
- Leadtek PX6600 GT
- 2 * Maxtor DiamonMax Plus 10, 250 GBytes
- BIOS updated to 1.90, factory optimized defaults
- Windows XP pro + SP2 + nForce_amd_6.66.WinXP2K_international.e xe
- SuSE Linux 9.3
The data corruption error can be reproduced with both RAID-ed and singe disks.
Just to make sure no other HW component can be blamed for this data corruption, I changed:
- the CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000++ (the n-1 technology)
- the memory: no-name DIMs of 333 MHz
- the video card: an old Trio64 PCI
- the power supply: 2 of them from 2 other manufacturers
Needless to say that the data corruption error persists despite the speed reduction of the machine.
For the log:
- The usual CPU temperature is about 35 Centigrade, the voltages are no more that 2 % off from their nominal values.
- I tested the memory by the stand alone Memtest-86 v3.2 (e.g. on the SuSE 9.3 install CD) for hours, no memory error could be detected.
I can reproduce this error by connecting my disks on both the S-ATA controller built in to the nForce 4 chip set and on the Silicon Image's S-ATA-RAID controller (I guess this latter is a PCI device happened to be soldered on the motherboard). This is why I think it is the nForce 4 DMA logic (that is common for both of these S-ATA controllers) that is responsible for this error.
I connected some P-ATA disks and some SCSI ones (via an NCR-875 card). None of them suffered from the data corruption. Explanation: these disks stress less the nForce 4 DMA logic due to their lower data rate.
Some of the posters suggested the the NCQ/TCQ would be the origin of the data corruption. I set off the
Device Manager
Nvidia nForce4 ADMA Controller Properties
Primary and Secondary Channel
Enable Command Queuing
I compared some files of ~10 GBytes on a single disk: they did match.
Having become enthusiastic over the success, I compared files located on two distinct disks. The deception was back: they were different. The number of the differences were somewhat lower.
I organized my disks as RAID-0. In addition to switching off the command queuing as before, I set off the
Device Manager
Nvidia Stripe Properties
SCSI Properties
Disable Tagged Queuing
It did not help.
I think by switching off the NCQ/TCQ, the error is not eliminated, only the transfer rate is diminished. If the nForce 4 DMA logic is sufficiently stressed, data corruption will happen.

Neo2 Memory ratio issues, please read

hey all
very strang stuff...
just got a 3200+ winchester .90 CPU, its nice. also have 2x twinx corsair 3200 non LL ram.
idea: I had in mind that since my ram doesnt OC very well (220 max) I was going to get the neo2 and play with the FSB and set the ratio of the ram to 166 or something so that I could up the FSB which would in turn up the ram to around 200 or a bit over. thats the idea anyways...
result: initially I could not even post with this ram, had to flash to 1.3 but now it works. when I try to set the ram to 166 and start upping the fsb, I can get to around 220 fine. any more than 225 and I cant post... huh??? the ram is only running at 183 or so mhz at this point so I know its not that. I raised the voltage of both the cpu and ram to 10% and 2.80v and still had same problem...
ok, so I thought I would just change the fsb to 133... well again around 225 or so I cant post... ram is running at 150 only then, so definately not ram. I am lowering the HT to 4x and 3x and still no difference..
my last resort was 100mhz.... well oddly enough, when I set the ram to 100 I can up the FSB to 270 and it posts! I can boot windows at 260 fine, cpu is 2600 and ram is 133 at that point... well the ram doesnt bench too good there obviously, like 3100 in sandra.
the only other thing I could thing of was upping the FSB as high as I could go to get the ram up there and lower the cpu multi while leaving the ram at 100... I was able to get it up to 300 which the ram runs at 150 and booted into windows. but zcup said that HT was running at 300mhz... when I tried to up it from 3x to 4x it posted all weird, so I dont really want to stay at that level...
anyone else had issues changing the ratio?? I tried 1.37 with the same result.
facts: in 1:1 I can run up to 220 and boot windows, so ram runs fine at 220
: the CPU runs fine at 2.6ghz so the cpu is ok
the only conclusion I can come to is that the motherboard is wacked out.. I think the bios is crummy or something. I cant afford new ram; I just want to be able to change the ratio to 166 and have it work, is this too much to ask?
Should I RMA the board?

I use an Antec TruPower and that is hindering my performance right now.
If its your ram that is failing use memtest to see at what speed it's failing. I started at (1:1) at 2.0 Ghz dropped the multi to 9 and slowly raised the fsb until memtest would give me errors. After finding a setting that was error free i then ran prime95 to see if it was really stable. I haven't been able to run 1:1 but i do hit 2.5Ghz without any memtest or prime95 errors.
"the only other thing I could thing of was upping the FSB as high as I could go to get the ram up there and lower the cpu multi while leaving the ram at 100... I was able to get it up to 300 which the ram runs at 150 and booted into windows. but zcup said that HT was running at 300mhz... when I tried to up it from 3x to 4x it posted all weird, so I dont really want to stay at that level..."
You were running HT at 300 and tried to go from x3 to x4? I don't remember the exact number but you can't go over 1020-1040 on HT.
Edit: finally... (1:1), now just gotta test for hours on prime95...ugh.

MSI big bang xpower ii memory problems

Hello! I wasn't sure where to post this question, so If it is in a wrong subforum please forgive and transfer it to the correct one.
Story is, I have msi big bang xpower ii motherboard, runnig 3930k, c1 cpu. I have two memory sets, both tested extensively, 1) gskill ripjaws 2133 32gb 4x8 (one matched set), 9/11/10/28 1.65v and 2) gskill ripjaws 1600 16gb 4x4gb 9/9/9/24 1.5v, also one matched set.
I updated bios to 1.2 (i think that's the latest official one).
Problem is, in 2133 mode, i can only post with 1 stick. With set 1) in 1600 mode I can post with 2 sticks (any slots as shown in manual). With set 2) in 1600 mode, I an post with 3 sticks (also any slots as shown in manual). That's it. Any other configuration (for example quad channel or 8 sticks) will not post, I get error 67.
I tried manual mode as well as XMP. It seems in XMP mode i don't even get to error 67, it just keeps rebooting and rebooting, rebooting on error code 19.
Does anyone run this 2133 set at 4x4gb ? If so could you please possibly give me your OC settings? I tweaked vccsa, pll and dram voltage, but no luck.
Thanks in advance.

It won't boot in quad channel even in 1333. Manual says, if you number slots A B C D | E F G H, quad channel is A _ C _ | _ F _ H . It will not post in this configuration. Neither of my two sets (even 2133 running in 1600 or 1333). However, A B C D | _ _ _ _ will post in 1600! I tried this out of curiosity and this is technically an invalid configuration? It's not even mentioned in the manual. It also seems to me the system will never post if I have something in slot G.
I also must add both of my kits are tested, additionally my asus rive can run quad set in 2133 just fine.
I set 1.5v kit at 1.5, then tried 1.520. For 1.65v kit, i tried 1.5, 1.520 and 1.65 and next one I don't remember i think 1.68. I tried vccsa (system agent) 1.15 - 1.30, also, why is PLL so high on this board? I am seeing ~ 1.77 (I did set it at 1.8 later).
Also what are the modes 1-7? Where can I find more information about those?
Should I RMA this board? I can probably get it replaced within a day or two.
I also must note, I have the worst luck ever with lga 2011 boards. It took me 3 tries to get normal rive, and now this. Sigh.

H55M-E23 Problems with Onboard Realtek Gigabit NIC

I just finished a new build HTPC using the H55M-E23 and I'm having problems with the onboard Realtek Gigabit LAN controller.
System specs are: OS is Windows 7 - 64 bit. Intel i3-540 @ 3.0 GHz, 4GB RAM, 60GB SSD. NVIDIA GT 430 video card w/ 1MB RAM is only add in card. 300 Watt Power Supply. NVIDIA card is the primary video card and is set up that way in BIOS.
Everything installed fine and seems to work great, except that when I watch HD video, stored on a local NAS on my home network (all gigabit, including cables), about half the time, the Realtek controller will drop to about 10 MBPS, which causes the video to stutter and lockup. The video normally streams across the network at about 23 MBPS max. All other PC's on my network play these videos (home movies) no problem. CPU utilization on the MSI board is only about 5% and the video card's GPU utilization maxes out at only about 65% when the videos are streaming properly. Also, I can copy the video directly to the SSD on this HTPC and the video plays fine. So I think the rest of the hardware on the HTPC is sufficient to do what I'm trying to do. The truly annoying thing is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work.
All the latest drivers have been installed for the motherboard, video card, and Realtek NIC (trying both from MSI's website and Realtek's with the same result). The Windows installation is very clean. I've wiped the SSD twice and done a fresh Windows install and tried this immediately after the Windows install has competed and all drivers installed and again after Windows has completed all updates and I get the same result each time. I've tried several "slow network connection" solutions from Google and none so far have worked.
For anyone old like me, this acts like an IRQ conflict from back in the early days of Windows. Of course Windows 7 doesn't let you mess with IRQ's anymore, at least that I can find. BTW, Device Manager lists the IRQ for the Realtek NIC as "-2", which is very odd to me, but I'm no expert. I'm at the point now of disabling the onboard Realtek LAN and buying a cheap NIC to see if that works, but wanted to try to see if MSI has any suggestions or should I RMA the board? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ben

Yeah, I agree that I'll need to upgrade the PSU anyway. 300W is marginal at best for this setup. I would have probably been ok without the add in video card, but the GT 430 really makes a difference compared to the built-in graphics of the i3 and the card was so inexpensive that it was a no-brainer. I may try to take out the GT 430 just to see if the Realtek NIC behaves better, but I think long term I'll just get a cheap PCI-e NIC and that should fix things.
I would normally suspect the SSD as well, but I get the stuttering when I'm using the network streaming. The videos play fine when running directly off of the SSD. I know the SSD could still cause issues, but everything just seems to point to the Realtek chip. Honestly, I really think it's a driver / setting issue and not a bad piece of hardware, although I could be wrong.
If anyone has any other ideas, please keep 'em coming. In the meantime, I'll try a new NIC, etc and let you know what I find.
Thanks,
Ben

Should I RMA my board?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for