Gigabyte GA-965P-DS rev 3.3 changes & quirks I noticed

[zjohnr]

The rev 3.3 DS3 I ordered from clubit.com arrived last Friday which is nearly a week ago by now. I still haven't migrated my primary system to it as I wanted to "play with it" a bit before locking into a set of configuration choices. While doing this I have noticed at least one nice change as well as some strange quirks ... for lack of a better word ... and was wondering if anyone else had noticed them and/or had any comments about them. I posted the observations below over on AnandTech and figured it wouldn't hurt to also see what feedback I might get here.

FYI, the system I'm basing the comments below on consists of
Core 2 Duo E4300
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro HSF
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 rev 3.3 with F10 BIOS
2GB memory, Corsair DDR2-800 (XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400)
eVGA 256-P2-N554-AX Nvidia Geforce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3
1) Hurrah! There are (now) more than two fan headers on the motherboard!
You may laugh, but one of the "big" concerns I had about buying a DS3 was that it had only two fan headers. Thankfully, my rev 3.3 DS3 has four fan headers. There are two 4-pin fan headers labeled CPU_FAN and SYS_FAN and two 3-pin headers labeled NB_FAN and PWR_FAN. (BTW, does anyone out there know what the heck PWR_FAN might refer to? All I can come up with is "Power Fan" but that makes no sense to me).

Quirk: While the NB_FAN is a 3-pin fan header there seems to be no way to detect the RPM's from it. All I have seen listed in the BIOS ... or detected by Speedfan ... were the speeds for the CPU_FAN, SYS_FAN, and PWR_FAN. Weird omission, no?

2) Extra fan headers are good because you will definitely want to put a fan on that Northbridge!
While I haven't measured the temperature, I have noticed that without a fan on it my Northbridge becomes so hot that I cannot keep a finger on it. This while running just Microsoft's Windows Memory Diagnostic with the FSB set to 320MHz. I dread to think what temps it would soar to if I tried going to 400MHz or above.

Quirk: While I had no clearance problems when installing my Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, there is going to be a problem putting a fan on the Northbridge. The fins of AC 7 Pro heat sink and the fan casing actually overhang the Northbridge a bit. Not by much. Only an 1/8 of an inch or so. But it's enough to interfere with the installation of a fan on the Northbridge. Right now I've "securely" attached my Northbridge fan using scotch tape. But I'm not sure what I'm going to do as a longer term solution. (Any suggestions?)

Complaint: BTW, Gigabyte did not include a NB fan with the motherboard. The Northbridge fan I'm using is something I dug up out of my old parts bin.

3) The mystery of the vanishing (G)MCH/Northbridge and ICH/Southbridge temperature sensors.
The first time I booted my DS3 and entered the BIOS I was very happy to see that the motherboard included temperature sensors for the (G)MCH/Northbridge and the ICH/Southbridge. I knew they must be there because I saw the entries for these temps listed right under the CPU temp as soon as I entered the PC Health Status section of the BIOS. "Nice touch", I remember saying to myself at the time.

Then I rebooted the system and ... poof! ... they were gone. I tried using CNTRL+F1 on the BIOS entry page to enable the "advanced options". Doing this allowed me to access the additional memory timing settings in the M.I.T. section, but resulted in no changes in what was displayed in the PC Health Status section. So for a bit I thought I had only dreamed that I'd seen it, but then the MCH/ICH temps showed up again the very first time I cleared the CMOS. This time I took the time to write down what I was seeing. There were definitely two "extra" lines in the PC Health Status section of the BIOS. One for the ICH tempature and one for the (G)MCH temperature.

And then, just like before, as soon as I booted out of the BIOS the readings vanished. And they have never showed up for me again even after clearing the CMOS. I'm very curious about this, but can't think of any way to get any meaningful answers about it. Given how hot that Northbridge tends to get I would really, truly, definitely prefer to have a temperature sensor available for it. But I guess I can also see that since the Northbridge gets as hot as it does, Gigabyte ... perhaps in hindsight ... might have decided they didn't want to advertise this information. As I say, it's a mystery. Oh, well.

4) Once AHCI is enabled for the purple Gigabyte/JMicron SATA ports, it damn well wants to STAY enabled!
Having read in a review (from AnandTech?) that there could be problems with PATA IDE if RAID/IDE was enabled for the JMicron SATA ports on the DS3, I certainly had no intention of ever going there. But I was curious about AHCI. My understanding was that if I wanted to do "hot plugging" then I'd need to use the JMicron SATA ports on the DS3 and enable AHCI for those ports in the BIOS. So I went into the BIOS and selected AHCI for the JMicron ports to try this out.

It worked. I had to install the (so-called) Gigabyte SATA driver when Windows came back up, but once I did that I could hot-plug and also disconnect a SATA drive using the purple ports. My purpose accomplished I went back into the BIOS, set the JMicron ports back to IDE, rebooted Windows, and opened the Device Manager to verify that the GBB36X Controller was gone.

Only it wasn't gone. The GBB36X Controller was still there even though I had definitely turned it off in the BIOS. Puzzled, I uninstalled it and rebooted. Windows promptly detected the "SCSI/RAID" device and reinstalled the GBB36X Controller. Long story short, nothing I did in the BIOS seemed to get rid of the GBB36X Controller. I disabled the purple ports and the GBB36X was still there in Device Manager. I think the only way I was able to get rid of it was by clearing the CMOS and deleting the Gigabyte SATA drivers from Windows. Weird, no?

That's all I've got for now. Any thoughts, comments, and especially insight! on any of the above would be appreciated.

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

 

[Pax2All]

(I responded on the original thread as well)
@BIOS is buggy! Flash via floppy or not at all.
Carry on.....

 

[evongugg]

I can answer 1):

Some power supplies have a 3 pin connector which allows monitoring of the power supply fan in the Bios.
You may be able to monitor the NB fan with a software product. No guarantees.

 

[CmdPT]

1) Hurrah! There are (now) more than two fan headers on the motherboard!
You may laugh, but one of the "big" concerns I had about buying a DS3 was that it had only two fan headers. Thankfully, my rev 3.3 DS3 has four fan headers. There are two 4-pin fan headers labeled CPU_FAN and SYS_FAN and two 3-pin headers labeled NB_FAN and PWR_FAN. (BTW, does anyone out there know what the heck PWR_FAN might refer to? All I can come up with is "Power Fan" but that makes no sense to me).

Quirk: While the NB_FAN is a 3-pin fan header there seems to be no way to detect the RPM's from it. All I have seen listed in the BIOS ... or detected by Speedfan ... were the speeds for the CPU_FAN, SYS_FAN, and PWR_FAN. Weird omission, no?

You can use either CPU_FAN or SYS_FAN. What do you mean by weird omissions?

2) Extra fan headers are good because you will definitely want to put a fan on that Northbridge!
While I haven't measured the temperature, I have noticed that without a fan on it my Northbridge becomes so hot that I cannot keep a finger on it. This while running just Microsoft's Windows Memory Diagnostic with the FSB set to 320MHz. I dread to think what temps it would soar to if I tried going to 400MHz or above.

Quirk: While I had no clearance problems when installing my Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, there is going to be a problem putting a fan on the Northbridge. The fins of AC 7 Pro heat sink and the fan casing actually overhang the Northbridge a bit. Not by much. Only an 1/8 of an inch or so. But it's enough to interfere with the installation of a fan on the Northbridge. Right now I've "securely" attached my Northbridge fan using scotch tape. But I'm not sure what I'm going to do as a longer term solution. (Any suggestions?)

Complaint: BTW, Gigabyte did not include a NB fan with the motherboard. The Northbridge fan I'm using is something I dug up out of my old parts bin. Sad

The Northbridge will be fine, as far as temperatures are concerned. There is no need to put a fan on this.

3) The mystery of the vanishing (G)MCH/Northbridge and ICH/Southbridge temperature sensors.
The first time I booted my DS3 and entered the BIOS I was very happy to see that the motherboard included temperature sensors for the (G)MCH/Northbridge and the ICH/Southbridge. I knew they must be there because I saw the entries for these temps listed right under the CPU temp as soon as I entered the PC Health Status section of the BIOS. "Nice touch", I remember saying to myself at the time.

Then I rebooted the system and ... poof! ... they were gone. I tried using CNTRL+F1 on the BIOS entry page to enable the "advanced options". Doing this allowed me to access the additional memory timing settings in the M.I.T. section, but resulted in no changes in what was displayed in the PC Health Status section. So for a bit I thought I had only dreamed that I'd seen it, but then the MCH/ICH temps showed up again the very first time I cleared the CMOS. This time I took the time to write down what I was seeing. There were definitely two "extra" lines in the PC Health Status section of the BIOS. One for the ICH tempature and one for the (G)MCH temperature.

And then, just like before, as soon as I booted out of the BIOS the readings vanished. And they have never showed up for me again even after clearing the CMOS. Sad I'm very curious about this, but can't think of any way to get any meaningful answers about it. Given how hot that Northbridge tends to get I would really, truly, definitely prefer to have a temperature sensor available for it. But I guess I can also see that since the Northbridge gets as hot as it does, Gigabyte ... perhaps in hindsight ... might have decided they didn't want to advertise this information. As I say, it's a mystery. Oh, well.

Again, no need to worry about the temperature from either Northbridge and Southbridge. If you are going to OC these two will have a pretty decent temperatures. Its not like these bridge would melt or something.

4) Once AHCI is enabled for the purple Gigabyte/JMicron SATA ports, it damn well wants to STAY enabled!
Having read in a review (from AnandTech?) that there could be problems with PATA IDE if RAID/IDE was enabled for the JMicron SATA ports on the DS3, I certainly had no intention of ever going there. But I was curious about AHCI. My understanding was that if I wanted to do "hot plugging" then I'd need to use the JMicron SATA ports on the DS3 and enable AHCI for those ports in the BIOS. So I went into the BIOS and selected AHCI for the JMicron ports to try this out.

It worked. I had to install the (so-called) Gigabyte SATA driver when Windows came back up, but once I did that I could hot-plug and also disconnect a SATA drive using the purple ports. My purpose accomplished I went back into the BIOS, set the JMicron ports back to IDE, rebooted Windows, and opened the Device Manager to verify that the GBB36X Controller was gone.

Only it wasn't gone. The GBB36X Controller was still there even though I had definitely turned it off in the BIOS. Puzzled, I uninstalled it and rebooted. Windows promptly detected the "SCSI/RAID" device and reinstalled the GBB36X Controller. Long story short, nothing I did in the BIOS seemed to get rid of the GBB36X Controller. I disabled the purple ports and the GBB36X was still there in Device Manager. I think the only way I was able to get rid of it was by clearing the CMOS and deleting the Gigabyte SATA drivers from Windows. Weird, no?

If you can't get it to work, don't use it

 

[zjohnr]

What do you mean by weird omissions?

I mean it is weird (to me) that there appears to be no way to detect the speed of the Northbridge fan even though a 3-pin connector is provided for that fan. Oh, well. At least there's a connector for it.

The Northbridge will be fine, as far as temperatures are concerned. There is no need to put a fan on this.

The hell there isn't! (Well, at least in my opinion). Anytime a heatsink gets so warm ... from mild use! ... that I cannot keep a finger on it without pain, I worry. Perhaps the Northbridge is within spec. I still feel a lot better after having put a 50mm fan on top of it. (It's a kludge, but at least it keeps the heatsink cool).

Again, no need to worry about the temperature from either Northbridge and Southbridge. If you are going to OC these two will have a pretty decent temperatures. Its not like these bridge would melt or something.

No, but they do burn out. See for example: Motherboard northbridge reaches 120c (!) and dies. And that happened with an Asus P5B Deluxe which has a fancy-shmancy heat-pipe heat sink system. A little fan for a little peace of mind is not too big a price to pay, IMO.

-john

 

[Pax2All]

....and in my world the painfully hot northbridge heatsink (that literally hundreds of posts have mentioned putting a fan on) doesn't affect my motherboard at all....its simply there to warm my heart...

 

[zjohnr]

....and in my world the painfully hot northbridge heatsink (that literally hundreds of posts have mentioned putting a fan on) doesn't affect my motherboard at all....its simply there to warm my heart...

I suppose I should clarify that I'm not actually claiming that there is anything wrong with the design of the board just because the Northbridge seems to idle at 40 C (104 F) and operate "normally" probably closer to 60-70 C (140-158 F) . I don't know what the thermal design limits of the 965P MCH are but apparently it's expected to "run hot".

But knowing it's within the design limits is not the same thing as liking it. The irony here is that I bought a Core 2 processor because it uses less power than the Pentium D. But now I have a more energy efficient processor only to see the MCH become a new heat source inside the case. Will the madness never end!

Hopefully some day in the future when the chipsets scale down to 45nm they will also run cooler again. In the meantime I'm going to at least slap a fan on that sucker. And also think about getting a big honkin' heat sink for it.

I've also been considering removing the heatsink and replacing whatever thermal gunk was applied at the factory with some Arctic Silver. Only problem is I can't figure out how to remove the Northbridge heat sink. How the heck do you get those damn plastic doohickeys to release?!?

-john, the clueless but ranting redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

 

[Pax2All]

Ive seen some using a noctua heatsink on the northbridge but a fan should do the trick without voiding your warranty or putting your MB at risk. Theres just not that much room once you have installed your cpu HSF and a fan fits easiest. I get a kick out of the people who advocate ignoring northbridge heatsink heat when a simple fan will do wonders to cool things down. Heat has always been the enemy to computers overclocked or otherwise.

 

[Pax2All]

Oh yeah, those irritating plastic clips securing the northbridge heatsink are fragile....frageeelay...sounds Italian!

 

[rdhood]

Ive seen some using a noctua heatsink on the northbridge but a fan should do the trick without voiding your warranty or putting your MB at risk. Theres just not that much room once you have installed your cpu HSF and a fan fits easiest. I get a kick out of the people who advocate ignoring northbridge heatsink heat when a simple fan will do wonders to cool things down. Heat has always been the enemy to computers overclocked or otherwise.

I agree. I have never had a heatsink so hot as the NB gets at 430Mhz. Like I said in another post, I'm putting a Sycthe Mini Kaze on mine. Its not much airflow (5cfm or so) but it is very quiet and only about $4. If it works... why not?

 

[zjohnr]

I have never had a heatsink so hot as the NB gets at 430Mhz.

Heck, I think it's hotter than I'm comfortable with just running it at my E4300's stock FSB 200MHz speed. Though at the moment I have decided to go with a "really high" overclock ... for me. I'm running the FSB at 266MHz. The memory multiplier is 3.0 for DDR2-800. All voltages are stock, of course. My desire is to use as little power as possible while still running stable. So far, so good.

Like I said in another post, I'm putting a Scythe Mini Kaze on mine. Its not much airflow (5cfm or so) but it is very quiet and only about $4. If it works... why not?

Sounds like a good idea. Maybe I'll also go that route someday. But for now I guess the 50mm socket 7 CPU fan I dug out of my junk pile and kludge installed onto the stock NB heatsink is doing a good enough job. It makes more noise than the AC Freezer 7 Pro CPU fan, but not so much that it is bothering me.

The biggest drawback for me to buying another fan is the shipping charge. It seems for a $4-5 fan you are going to pay the cost of the fan or more to ship it. Just a fact of life in the accessories market I guess.

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

 

[rdhood]

The biggest drawback for me to buying another fan is the shipping charge. It seems for a $4-5 fan you are going to pay the cost of the fan or more to ship it. Just a fact of life in the accessories market I guess.

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

I know what you mean.... times 3! I decided to do the whole works and quiet my PC. The problem is that I picked the top three fans from each category (40mm, 92mm, 120mm), and not one single mail order company had even two of the three fans that I wanted in stock. So I ended up ordering the Scythe mini kaze from frozenpc, a bunch of yate loon 120mm fans from jab-tech, and a couple of Scythe 92mm fans from Newegg. The total was about $65, and $17 of it was shipping!

These fans will go to replace every noisy fan in two systems in two Antec Solo cases, and should make them nearly silent when installed.

 

[zjohnr]

Right now I've "securely" attached my Northbridge fan using scotch tape.

What ??
Like I said, it's more than just a bit of a kludgey NB fan installation. :lol: Actually though I've improved on it since I wrote that. Now I've got it "locked down" with a fan screw on one side and a cable tie on the other. Sometimes necessity is the mother of a bastard child.

-john

 

[archae86]

I have a new PC built about ten days ago using 965P-DS3 (rev 3.3).

With an Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro more than taking care of my E6600 CPU, 1 120mm exhaust fan and two 92mm intake fans on the case, and a trailing edge X300SE graphics card, this is mostly one cool box. The one thing hot in the machine is the MCH (Northbridge). As so many have noted--painfully hot to touch for even a second or two.

I've had a persistent problem with hot boots and restarts since I built the machine. More often than not, a hot boot or restart got me nothing on my LCD screen after tens of seconds, and I'd power down. If I waited 15 minutes with the cover off, it would always boot properly, I think. Shorter (hotter?) times were more iffy.

Oddly, I've had very stable behavior in Windows. I had a couple of freezes during overclocking--I think probably caused by insuffiently conservative RAM parameters. But otherwise the Windows behavior is flawless. Odd that seems in a machine with such trouble booting.

So today I read this thread and finally acted on my diagnostic thought. I kludged in an 80mm Panasonic low-flow fan, a couple of inches from the North Bridge blowing toward it.

Since then I've had two successful restarts.

I'm starting to think my hot boot, hot restart problem is at least partly North Bridge related.

Have others seen such a relationship?

Does anyone know a way to see North and South Bridge temperatures on this board while in Windows?

I also saw the BIOS numbers just three time--once on first boot, once after loading F10, and once after doing a CLR_CMOS when I got my F10 settings into a state which had an even more disastrous boot behavior--two seconds of power after power on, with normal HD and Optical drive activity, followed by three seconds of power off--cycling as long as I let it (more than ten cycles).

I've got an RMA number. But if this is normal behavior for this board, and the fan "fix" continues to work, maybe I should just keep it. Please say "No".

 

[zjohnr]

I've got an RMA number. But if this is normal behavior for this board, and the fan "fix" continues to work, maybe I should just keep it.

That's too personal a decision for me to offer advice on. Unless the board develops an "obvious" failure I'd have to say the call on this RMA is between you and your gut. :?

I kludged in an 80mm Panasonic low-flow fan, a couple of inches from the North Bridge blowing toward it.

An 80mm fan for the NB and an AC Freezer Pro on the CPU? 8O Wow. That's got to be a tight fit. I'd low to know how you kludged it into place.
Got any pictures?

Does anyone know a way to see North and South Bridge temperatures on this board while in Windows?

Per my OP, my guess is that the sensors for the NB and SB temps are present in the hardware, but for unknown reasons Gigabyte has decided to not make the sensors available to us. I got the impression from your post that you also briefly saw the temps for the NB & SB temps displayed in the BIOS. You just saw them two times and then never again, correct? My experience also. Very strange (to me).

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

 

[archae86]

I kludged in an 80mm Panasonic low-flow fan, a couple of inches from the North Bridge blowing toward it.

An 80mm fan for the NB and an AC Freezer Pro on the CPU? 8O Wow. That's got to be a tight fit. I'd low to know how you kludged it into place.
Got any pictures?
This is by no means a permanent installation--it is just leaning there. Also the air flow efficiency to the sink is lousy. But I do think it is cooling appreciably (I can hold my finger on the sink for several seconds--with CPU use at 100% at a 20% overclock). I think I could lash one corner of the fan to the fan cage of the Freezer Pro with a cable tie, so if I can find one more lash point, maybe I could leave it almost this way.

Does anyone know a way to see North and South Bridge temperatures on this board while in Windows?

Per my OP, my guess is that the sensors for the NB and SB temps are present in the hardware, but for unknown reasons Gigabyte has decided to not make the sensors available to us. I got the impression from your post that you also briefly saw the temps for the NB & SB temps displayed in the BIOS. You just saw them two times and then never again, correct?

Three times--once on initial system boot (it was born F9), once after I loaded up F10, and once more after I hit CLR_CMOS.

I suspect if you want to see it again, and don't mind losing your settings, shorting out the CLR_CMOS pins might do it. And yes, I also think it strange.

 

[zjohnr]

This is by no means a permanent installation--it is just leaning there. Also the air flow efficiency to the sink is lousy.

OK, now I see what you're doing. Looks like you are also still working in "getting to know you better before I commit" mode with your DS3 too.

Regardless of whether you RMA your DS3 or not, if you decide to go with a NB fan long term you might want to consider picking up something like the Scythe SY124010L "Mini Kaze" 40mm fan that rdhood mentioned. Not sure how well it will fit on top of the NB. The AC Freezer 7 overhangs the NB heatsink just enough to be a problem. :roll: But the 40mm is probably a better fit than the 50mm I dug up from my "old stuff" drawer. The 50mm looks like it would be an exact fit to the NB heatsink ... if that damn AC Freezer 7 weren't in the way.

The Mini Kaze seems to be a popular solution. A quick glance around at some of the sellers Google turned up gave me the impression it is "out of stock" at a lot of online stores at the moment.

I suspect if you want to see it again, and don't mind losing your settings, shorting out the CLR_CMOS pins might do it.

Well, that didn't work in my case. I've cleared the CMOS at least once or twice more since the last time I saw the NB & SB temps in the BIOS. They've never shown up again. I have absolutely no idea what is really going on here. :? Maybe some day word will leak out from Gigabyte about what is up with this nonsense.

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

 

[archae86]

The Mini Kaze seems to be a popular solution. A quick glance around at some of the sellers Google turned up gave me the impression it is "out of stock" at a lot of online stores at the moment.

I suspect if you want to see it again, and don't mind losing your settings, shorting out the CLR_CMOS pins might do it.

Well, that didn't work in my case. I've cleared the CMOS at least once or twice more since the last time I saw the NB & SB temps in the BIOS.
Mini Kaze seems a good idea. I have zero 40mm fan experience, so am having a little trouble with the idea that a fan over 3000 rpm is considered "quiet". More importantly, I have no idea how to mount it. If someone with one on this board cared to post a picture they could probably induce sales of hundreds of this fan.

After this post, I tried CLR_CMOS. As you observed, no return of bridge temperatures. I surmise that something else which happened before I cleared CMOS was a critical part of the enabling sequence (I don't want to go there again, that was my infinite loop of power-on self power-off on a repeat cycle of 5 seconds).

Right now I consider my Motherboard's many, many times repeated failure to restart and boot an as-shipped failure to perform, and do intend to RMA the board for replacement. But I also intend to rig some sort of cooling for the North Bridge. Even if it has nothing to do with my "hot boot" problem, it just seems insanely hot compared to the rest of a pretty decently cooled system I intend to use for a long time.

My 80mm fan kludge, aside from its other defects, seems to have slightly unbalanced the Artic Cooling FP 7. I got some disturbing sounds never heard before from the box, which went away when I turned off the science ap I was running. I'm still leaving it in for the rest of the weekend, until I RMA the board.

 

[zjohnr]

Mini Kaze seems a good idea. I have zero 40mm fan experience, so am having a little trouble with the idea that a fan over 3000 rpm is considered "quiet". More importantly, I have no idea how to mount it.

My guess would be that you just drive the fan screws into the gaps between the NB heatsink fins. The diameter of the screws is (I think) roughly the same as the size of the gap between the heat sink fins. Of course, I'm not sure if any fan screws are included with the Mini Kaze. Or what length the fan screws would need to be. :?

So I agree it would be better to wait on such a purchase until after reading some feedback about how well the process works from someone who tried it. Eventually I intend to go searching around for threads which discuss DS3 NB fans. But that can wait until after I get my system installed into a case. My NB fan kludge is (I think) mounted securely enough to work for a month or three until I can buy a better fitting replacement fan.

After this post, I tried CLR_CMOS. As you observed, no return of bridge temperatures. I surmise that something else which happened before I cleared CMOS was a critical part of the enabling sequence (I don't want to go there again, that was my infinite loop of power-on self power-off on a repeat cycle of 5 seconds).

I suppose that's possible, but I can't think what that might be. In my case I saw the NB & SB temps in the BIOS twice. The first time I powered up the board and the first time I powered up the board after the first time I cleared the CMOS. Every other time since those that I've bothered to go look, the chipset temps were not displayed.

I can't think of anything I did different when I cleared the CMOS that I could try doing again. (My reason for clearing the BIOS was to see if that would stop windows from detecting the Gigabyte/JMicron AHCI controller, not because I needed to do it to boot). Possibly flashing the BIOS might trigger it, but I don't expect to try that if/until Gigabyte releases another BIOS for the DS3. (My board arrived with the F10 BIOS installed).

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

 

[Pax2All]

Hey all,
Just thought I'd update things on my build. All went well. The board came with the f10 bios and is currently OC'd to 2.7ghz with an e4300 on stock volts whilst I try and get some video editing projects done that have been on the backburner. Anyone know a decent DVD burning program? I have nero 6.6 lite (oem show me the stutter version) and Adobe premeire 6.5 (awesome but I cant burn DVDs with it). Nero lite leaves much to be desired. Anyway, no cold reboot issues seen on this board. I'm at 9x300 with the 2.66 multiplier and I have an Abit chipset fan I salvaged from my T-bird's MB fixed on the northbridge using nifty specialized medical tape. The board is rock solid with no vdroop noted with my moderate OC.

 

[rdhood]

Regardless of whether you RMA your DS3 or not, if you decide to go with a NB fan long term you might want to consider picking up something like the Scythe SY124010L "Mini Kaze" 40mm fan that rdhood mentioned. Not sure how well it will fit on top of the NB. The AC Freezer 7 overhangs the NB heatsink just enough to be a problem. :roll: But the 40mm is probably a better fit than the 50mm I dug up from my "old stuff" drawer. The 50mm looks like it would be an exact fit to the NB heatsink ... if that damn AC Freezer 7 weren't in the way.

The Mini Kaze seems to be a popular solution. A quick glance around at some of the sellers Google turned up gave me the impression it is "out of stock" at a lot of online stores at the moment.

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur

Well, the Mini Kaze came Saturday, and I was able to play around with it.

first, I used a small rubber band to mount. The stock HS has a "T" shaped fin at either end of the middle bar. I hooked the rubber band around either end and slid the Mini Kaze under the rubber band next to the heat sink. Now that I know this works, I'll replace the rubber band with o-ring for long term use. If someone hosts it, I'll send a picture.

Without the fan, the heat sink gets *almost* finger-burning hot.
With the fan, it gets warm... probably no more than 37-40C.
Its at least a 10-20C drop . Now, that doesn't tell me what the chip temperature is, but at least the heat sink isn't scary-hot.

The Mini Kaze itself is inaudible. As soon as newegg has them back in, I am going to pick up a few more for replacement in some hard drive housings that I have.

 

[african_leopard]

1) Hurrah! There are (now) more than two fan headers on the motherboard!
You may laugh, but one of the "big" concerns I had about buying a DS3 was that it had only two fan headers. Thankfully, my rev 3.3 DS3 has four fan headers. There are two 4-pin fan headers labeled CPU_FAN and SYS_FAN and two 3-pin headers labeled NB_FAN and PWR_FAN. (BTW, does anyone out there know what the heck PWR_FAN might refer to? All I can come up with is "Power Fan" but that makes no sense to me).

The Rev 2 board also has this.......

 

[wallis]

some power supplies like the ennermax noisetaker have a lead coming from them that plugs onto the PWR_FAN header so that you can monitor the power supply's fan speed in easy tune 5 or other monitoring software

 

[zjohnr]

1) Hurrah! There are (now) more than two fan headers on the motherboard!

The Rev 2 board also has this.......
Thanks, for mentioning this. I don't recall it ever being mentioned in any of the supposed "follow-up" articles I read at AnandTech and other sites.

(It seems (to me) like something they should have mentioned since they thought it was worth pointing out that there were only 2 fan headers in reviews of v1.0 of this board. If a reviewer comments about something and then the manufacturer later makes a change, I think the reviewer should be considerate enough to point out that the manufacturer was good enough to respond).

-john

 

[Pax2All]

I remain impressed with this board. No vdroop noted with my e4300 @ 2.88ghz. sorry for interjecting the video aside. For what its worth, I solved my problem by editing in premiere 6.5 outputting to my dv camcorder then capturing the project in Nero with it's DVD codec. Not a single dropped frame . My T-Bird dropped left right and center when trying to capture DVD even with a gig of memory. This MB and chip have turned out to be a very good combo.