8rda6+ pro nforce2 RAID--I HATE IT- 3 problems!

[wrx1]

I hate this new board. I have now tried 2 ver1.2 boards!
It has cost me 4 days of work now and i still have nothing.

I blew the first board bios on day 2 with a change in FSB that went nowhere and just hanged. As a result the board never worked again

So i put the second board in. The second board has a new latest ver. bios and it has another problem! The board will not restart after you shut it down.
It comes on but you have no display. The only wau to get the board to come back on is to switch it off at the psu. Then it will come back on.
If you do a restart of windows all works fine...

Thirdly I can also not make out how to make a Nv Nvidia RAID setup from using a sinlge preformatted hdd that is already running windows on that pc and just adding a second empty drive to build a RAID1 setup.

I Tried to use the 3114 Raid chip and it would HANG every time you set it up to build the raid 1 setup and ask it to copy the disk during the raid setup in the bios!!!

LIKE I SAID HATE.
I am giving all these epox boards back and going to a 939 setup if I can't resolve this ASAP!

[Áedán]

Under nVRAID, you cannot convert a single disk setup into a RAID setup without reinstalling. However, the boards ship with a copy of Norton Ghost, so you can use that to create an image of your existing hard disk. Once you have an image, you can then create the RAID setup and not worry about wiping the disks. Once the RAID array is created, use Ghost to re-write the image back to the drives.

That's the theory at least!

[Áedán]

Originally Posted by wrx1

The second board has a new latest ver. bios and it has another problem! The board will not restart after you shut it down.
It comes on but you have no display. The only wau to get the board to come back on is to switch it off at the psu. Then it will come back on.

That sounds suspiciously like an issue with the PSU. I've found that EPoX boards require a good solid power supply, and that some PSUs cause issues.

[wrx1]

Hi mate, you say "Under nVRAID, you cannot convert a single disk setup into a RAID setup without reinstalling".

Can yo create a raid setup from single disk with the SIL3114 chip. I tried that but is also just lock the moment is it asked to create RAID and copy data...

[Áedán]

I don't know I'm afraid. Has anyone else used the SIL3114 RAID on any board?

[MietmaN]

@ wrx1 :
Cold boot issue on stock bios from October? I thought it was due to my modified Merlin's bios, so what you wrote is something peculiar to me .... (3+ PRO and 6+ PRO share the same bios binary).

[warrenwrench]

I'm running this board with NV RAID strip-0 with 2 80gig maxtors and a mirror-1 RAID on the 3114 with 2 160gig maxtors at 215x12 2600+m. I have been running this way for so time now with no problems. I'm using a Antec true480 PSU, Heatpipe101-92mm Tornado. 28c idle 38c loaded. I tried using GSkill 4400LE 2x512, bad move. It corrupted all 4 drives. One stick failed memtest, the other was OK but it would not OC very well. I talked to GSkill and he told me that the RAM was not compatable with nForce2. So went back to BH-5 @2-3-2-11. This has been a very good stable board. In fact just recieved my 9NPA and 3200 winny today. I'll post when I get it running.

[MietmaN]

Originally Posted by warrenwrench

I'm running this board with NV RAID strip-0 with 2 80gig maxtors and a mirror-1 RAID on the 3114 with 2 160gig maxtors at 215x12 2600+m. I have been running this way for so time now with no problems. I'm using a Antec true480 PSU, Heatpipe101-92mm Tornado. 28c idle 38c loaded. I tried using GSkill 4400LE 2x512, bad move. It corrupted all 4 drives. One stick failed memtest, the other was OK but it would not OC very well. I talked to GSkill and he told me that the RAM was not compatable with nForce2. So went back to BH-5 @2-3-2-11. This has been a very good stable board. In fact just recieved my 9NPA and 3200 winny today. I'll post when I get it running.

Bad news you're telling me ...

Since I know Epoxes do have some memory compatibility issues (e.g. my 8RDA3+ rev.2.1 didn't run with OCZ PC3200), as many other nFroce2 motherboards as well, I had made sure it would run fine before I bought the current mem sticks. One of the guys here in forums runs his 8RDA6+ PRO with G.Skill PC4400 LE 2x512MB at FSB233 without any issues and rock stable, well, at least he claims so.

I won't get rid of the G.Skill sticks, 'cause they are very good overclockers and should work with my future A64 system. At FSB210 they don't cause any problems at all (2-2-2-11), but above that I've observed some really peculiar stability issues. Good I haven't sold my Twinmos Twister PC4000 yet.

And good news you're telling me ... because I was already thinking of changing the mobo, although I was pretty sure my OC problems were memory-related.

Btw. What exactly has happened to your HDDs?

[wrx1]

I tried for 2 days to overclock my latest 8rda6+
The merlin bios AND L12 mod gave me nothing ...

Both bios crash at anything over 210fsb!
The NTUNE program says it is stable to 225 mhz but you run PRIME95 and it carshed in side 1 minute

I use 1x OCZ 256mb ddr pc 3700
With 2.9 volts and low multiplier 6 (max 1400 mhz from my XP2000+ cpu)

The ram might be dodgy as well but I tried 2 similar stick seperately and both were within 3-5mhz fsb the same

I thing these EPOX boards can not overclock.

I used all the retail heatsinks and more and put a huge fan on the south bridge and replaced the north beidge heatsink compound all to get only 210 mhz - I MEAN COME ON!!!

[Áedán]

The 8RDA6+Pro board I have is running stock cooling on the northbridge, and no additional cooling on the southbridge (CPU's watercooled though). I've had the board up to 265MHz (270 was out of reach), but stability issues with Merlin's BIOS means I'm not running those settings currently. In terms of memory, there's a couple of sticks of 512MB GSkill PC4400 LC.

With Merlin's BIOS, it would run stable for a while, then on a reboot, would get stuck at "C1". Reflashing the BIOS would fix the issue, but it would reoccur a few days later, for no apparent reason.

As I'm working on some other stuff at the moment, I've backed off the overclock and am using the latest official 8RDA6+Pro BIOS.

[MietmaN]

Well, I can boot at FSB240 and do some Sandra and Everest memory tests - everything with 2x512MB in dual channel mode. But the board is far from being stable at so high FSB (no wonder, 2x512MB dual channel is simply too much for the memory controller). At FSB230 it can count SuperPI 16M, but cannot pass 3DMark2001SE (strange, it's always been the other way round with my nFroce2 mobos). As already said, I think it doesn't like my G.Skill's mem sticks.

With the old Twinmos Twister PC4000 it used to be rock stable at FSB222, 2x512MB dual channel. However, with just one stick the highest stable FSB was the same.

With just one stick of 256MB it should do much better, unless this particular OCZ memory is TCCD and and it can't talk to the mobo properly. Everything depends on luck or lack of luck. I think I haven't had much luck with this mobo - at least Merlin's bios doesn't cause any issues in my case.

[warrenwrench]

MietmaN, Hi, The one stick of GSkill was defective, therefore I RMA'd them both. It was supposed to have been a matched set. They don't test the products too well. The tech support person I talked to said they hand pick each module before it is sent out, must have been a bad day at the office that day! LOL! The support person I talked to also said that there RAM it not compatible with nForce2 chipsets. The person I talked to runs under the screename "one page book" @ extremesystems.org. I decided that I did not want to deal with a company like that so I took a full refund. The GSkill were the LE's.
Untill I found the one defective stick, the system BSOD'd several times. By the time I got the system running stable It had corrupted all 4 HDD's (data). Not a good experience. I tested the RAM on another MOBO, the one stick tested bad on that one too. After that I ran the Epox 8RDA6+ with the good stick of GSkill. It would not run stable over 200fsb @ 2-2-2-11 no matter what settings I used.
I wish everyone the best of luck with the GSkill, I decided to stay away. I've got a set of Muskin level1 3500 2x512 I am going to run on the new 9NPA and see how it works untill I decided what else to use. That is what I had planned to do with the GSill. Oh well, L8R!

[MietmaN]

The problem is, I culdn't get any G.Skill nor any other TCCD-based memory in Poland. I've checked in Germany, but almost all internet-shops were out of stock, so I bought them from a friend of mine, who had gotten some from his family in the U.S. I can check them on Abit NF7-S v2.0, Abit AN7 or some nFroce3 /nForce4 mobo, when I come back home. I hope none of the sticks is defective.

As to compatibility issues : some people used to have the same problems with Epox 8RDA3+ PRO/ 6+ PRO and A-Data Vitesta TCCD memory sticks. Therefore I assume, that nForce2 mobos just don't like any TCCD memory, as a rule, unless you've got some luck, which I haven't had at all with my current system.

[Áedán]

Perhaps I should ask why I've been having the luck I have with my machine then, given it's nForce 2 with TCCD?

[MietmaN]

Originally Posted by Áedán

Perhaps I should ask why I've been having the luck I have with my machine then, given it's nForce 2 with TCCD?

I don't know exactly - you could have been chosen by Korean gods, while I must have been cursed by them, after I had advised my parents to sell their Hyundai Pony and buy Toyota Corolla.

[Áedán]

I wonder if could be explained by the differences in the timings stored in the SPD - you have LE, I have LC.

[MietmaN]

Originally Posted by Áedán

I wonder if could be explained by the differences in the timings stored in the SPD - you have LE, I have LC.

Could be ....

Btw. in my case the mobo can't read the SPD timings properly - neither in bios nor in Windows (Everest shows some horrible values like 3-6-6-11 or something like that - I can't recall them). And it doesn't matter, if I use the stock bios or Merlin's one.

[WooferWrecker]

Hi MietmaN,

I see in your sig that you spend some time in krakow... Is that where they make the Krakowski Sudha sausage?

That stuff is delicious. I might be willing to trade the memory in my sig for a regular supply of sausage for the next year! lol!

[Áedán]

Hmm, Everest is showing my memory to be 2.5-4-4-8 at 200MHz, and 3-6-6-12 at 277Mhz. I was hoping to dig up somethign that would show the rest of the data stored in the SPD.

[Pandaz3]

Well the Verdict is in. The warden wanted to "try" my 8RDA6 and she says it is definitely better than my NF7-S which she had previously confiscated. Now I keep the NF7-S and she keeps the EPoX.... I was/am running some Mushkin 2x512 PC3200 CAS 2.5. She loves it no problems, but it has a single SATA HDD. Thanks for talking about the Everest program, I Googled it up. That is a great utility.

It is too bad some folks have trouble with this board, mine is a revision 1.4