scottR

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I just wanted to start a "Thank You" thread for RGone, ExRoadie, Angry Games and the rest of the DFI support staff (Ricky et al) for the terrific work they do here and behind the scenes with our DFI products. Not enough appreciation is expressed to these fellows who put up with the frustrations of trying to help those in need. People come here for help, and these guys deliver! :angel: Gentlemen (ladies too!), this one is for you: Thank You!

I have a suggestion: why not include the above information (e.g. the fickle nature of high power psus) in the first part of the sticky post for power supplies within recommendations and hot deals? Perhaps others who are beginning their builds might benefit from this information and not waste everyone's time RMA-ing boards and psus if they encounter this problem?

To my knowledge at least three diferent OCZ power supplies were tried on my board- all of which exhibited the same cold boot problem (RMA was able to reproduce the problem in the lab). I seriously doubt that these power supplies are defective in some way- the odds are just against it. To quote ExRoadie "Sometimes good hardware goes bad or two pieces just won't work together."

Well, ExRoadie, I have my facts straight and I never made such a blanket statement. If you were paying closer attention to my wording (see above) you might not have jumped on me so quickly. Ignorant, lol, did you forget who started this thread?

Same memory I use- no problems running at advertised specs on my Expert board. See my signature...

Update on my cold boot status: I actually sent my board back to RMA for a second round of analysis regarding the cold boot issue. The staff wanted to add a couple of capacitors to the board as a possible fix. When the board came back I examined it very closely and could not detect any additional capacitors anywhere on the board, I suppose it is possible that some were replaced with caps of different rating or manufacture. Anyhow, same result with my OCZ 600w powerstream- no go on cold boot! Finally I broke down and bought an Antec Neo 550 HE psu and the board now works perfectly. For some reason certain Expert boards just will not work properly with the OCZ power supplies. Now I have a spare $150 psu that will not work properly with my board. Should have followed my instincts on this build and gone with Antec from the beginning instead of reading too much into the psu recommendations for the Expert. Live and learn...

Update on my cold boot issue- I contacted DFI about the rma of my board. They were able to reproduce the cold boot problem with an OCZ power supply. They mentioned that several power supplies were tested: OCZ, Enermax and two different Antecs. In my case the OCZ made power supplies seem to be the issue- they got the board to boot perfectly with the Enermax and Antec units. Recommendations for me are to switch power supplies, at least temporarily, while DFI and OCZ work on this problem. Perhaps this information may help others.

Corsair says the ram timings for the C2 and C2PT XMS series are 2-3-3-6 which is what I'm running. I have to say there is not much performance difference that I can detect between default (3-3-3-8) and the factory recommended settings (2-3-3-6). Make sure you set the correct number for the correct ram timing variable- I think in the bios they re listed out of order (2-3-6-3).

ExRoadie that does sound similar to the issue I have except that the system self powers off quickly (by power supply lockdown?)- about one or two seconds. By the way, do you know if I can obtain information from DFI concerning my rma #DFI-4254? The same board I sent out came back, no paperwork or explanation as to what was done and no obvious signs of any repair. Kind of left me hanging since it exhibits the same problem it was rma'ed for...

I'm running the platinum series of the same memory at advertised CAS2 with no problems. You might want to try flashing the bios to 12/7 version and see if the memory will cooperate.

I'm running that exact memory! No problems yet, running advertised cas latency too...but not overclocking.

RGone, thanks for the info- I can hang, no problem. I really like this board and do not have issues aside from the cold boot problem. I know how corporations operate- after a month wrestling with this problem a week to 10 days sounds pretty quick to me . BigKohones, you got lucky with the A8N32 if you have no issues. I was considering that board before I got the Expert, but after reading up on them I found they have their own unique set of problems. Plus at the time no one had them in stock.