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NF4 Expert will not cold boot- psu issue?


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Hey guys just want to mention that if you turn off this board by turning off power supply or unpluging it your suppose to wait 15seconds before turning power supply back on or you could damage something. When I got my board there was a revision page in the box that stated this. This could be whats killing some peoples boards. Never seen this mentioned on this site so I thought Id mention it.

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I love how it's a "power supply issue" when this is happening with many different types, even ones "A List" recommended. This is a motherboard issue and that is the bottom line.

 

Mine does the same, boots perfectly, but don't you dare power down or you get the dreaded blinking LED of doom.

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Guest maverick

Count me in for the same problem ... got some word from OCZ on this .. interesting (don't know if it was posted before ... sorry if it did)

 

RyderOCZ

 

http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20278

 

The Expert board can draw up to 3.25 ampls on the 5V Standby rail during a startup. Most PSU's on the market today only have 2.0 amps available on that rail (the norm up until now) so you are seeing that rail reach an Over current state and the PSU shuts itself off.

 

Cycling the power switch seems to reset things and make it work again.

 

Doesn't look like a solution is going to get here soon....

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Regardless of the current draw by the Expert board, why is the same issue experienced on dozens of other boards that I've tested? Boards from ABit, ASUS, MSI and Tyan all experience the same issue if you have them running on the newer "high power" PSUs.

 

Why does replacing the PSU resolve the issue for some users?

 

The big issues are below...

 

First - Having the 3.3V, 5V and 12V rails balanced. It has been shown in testing that if you don't have a proper load on 12V rail you can't reach maximum current on the 3.3V or 5V rails. Additionally, if you don't balance the load across the 12V rails you can also cause the PSU to fail on startup.

 

Second - These new "high power" units have only been available for two years or less. There are still some growing pains involved.

 

Third - The higher current draw motherboards seem to be ahead of what the power supply manufacturer can handle.

 

Conclusions...

 

The Expert board can draw more than the rated 2.0Amps on the 5VSB line. But! If the Expert board was the only point of failure, no power supply would run it properly.

 

We've got hundreds of Expert board members in this forum that are not having a single issue with their rig.

 

I've built dozens of Expert boards and only had one unit that wouldn't start proplerly with a PSU. I simply put another PSU in place and the rig has been running fine for weeks.

 

I won't even get into "switch bounce" this time...

Count me in for the same problem ... got some word from OCZ on this .. interesting (don't know if it was posted before ... sorry if it did)

 

RyderOCZ

 

http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20278

 

The Expert board can draw up to 3.25 ampls on the 5V Standby rail during a startup. Most PSU's on the market today only have 2.0 amps available on that rail (the norm up until now) so you are seeing that rail reach an Over current state and the PSU shuts itself off.

 

Cycling the power switch seems to reset things and make it work again.

 

Doesn't look like a solution is going to get here soon....

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snip

The Expert board can draw more than the rated 2.0Amps on the 5VSB line. But! If the Expert board was the only point of failure, no power supply would run it properly.

 

We've got hundreds of Expert board members in this forum that are not having a single issue with their rig.

 

I've built dozens of Expert boards and only had one unit that wouldn't start proplerly with a PSU. I simply put another PSU in place and the rig has been running fine for weeks.

 

Yeah, doesn't really seem to explain why the FSP Epsilon (2.0a max on the 5VSB line) boots these boards with much fewer problems than say the Enermax Liberty with a 3.0a max or even the OCZ 600W which has the same as the FSP (i.e. 2.0a). I guess the FSP could have a higher OC protection point on it, but seems odd that it would be higher than the Liberty which is at 3.0a

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I get the cold boot issue off and on and lately it seems to happen almost everyday when I first bootup for the day. Doesn't matter if I unplug the cord from the PSU and shut everything off totally overnight, it'll cold bug. Even cycling the PSU for 15 secs or a few minutes doesn't fix the problem. The only way that seems guaranteed to work for me if all else fails is to turn on and let it cold bug then quickly cycle the PSU off and then on again and it will boot no problem.

 

On my first OCZ 520w SLi the problem actually went away for the most part after awhile but then about a month later the unit died. I bought another OCZ 520w SLi to replace it since the RMA was too long, but it ended up a good choice as the RMA PSU I got back was DOA... OCZ was pretty cool about it and they upgraded my 520W SLi to a 600W SLi, but now I'm reluctant to even switch out my other 520W SLi due to the 600W SLi problems I've been reading about with the DFI eXpert. Sounds like I'll have the same cold bugs with both and maybe even a few added problems using the 600 SLi.

 

So now I'm reading that I'm probably going to have to send in my eXpert board for RMA to get the "Fix" if I ever want to maybe get rid of the cold boot bug problem. So it's either risk the damage to other components from all the switching on and off of the power or RMA and hope for a BIOS fix or wait for probably 2 weeks for a replacement board and be down the whole time. Is it even possible to fix this with a updated BIOS or is this just the inherit design of the board where it'll have to be hard modded or I'll have to wait someday to get a PSU that doesn't freak out due to the increased Amp load on bootup for the 5V rail.? :sad:

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Yeah, doesn't really seem to explain why the FSP Epsilon (2.0a max on the 5VSB line) boots these boards with much fewer problems than say the Enermax Liberty with a 3.0a max or even the OCZ 600W which has the same as the FSP (i.e. 2.0a). I guess the FSP could have a higher OC protection point on it, but seems odd that it would be higher than the Liberty which is at 3.0a

 

I posted my FSP 600w's problem a few posts ago. I have the same issue as these folks.

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I posted my FSP 600w's problem a few posts ago. I have the same issue as these folks.

 

Yeah, I saw that in the other thread, all I am saying is that the 5vSB thing still doesn't really explain it since I have the same PSU as you and it boots my board just fine while many with the Liberty @ 3.0a have the cold-boot issue.

 

Also the other guy I saw with the Epsilon and the cold boot issue tried his FSP Blue Storm (also 2.0a on the 5vSB) and he said it booted fine. Seems to be an issue only with certain individual boards and certain individual PSUs. Obviously it is not an issue with all Expert boards or all PSUs, but there are some individual combinations that are just not working.

 

Which is at fault the board or the PSU? Hard to say...it would be pretty easy to test if someone had access to both a non-working combination and a working combination.

 

Test 1) Take the PSU from the working combination and try it on the board from the non-working combo. If it powers the board then that points to the PSU as the problem, if it does not work it points to MoBo.

 

Test 2) Also try the PSU from the non-working combo on the board from the working combo. This time if the PSU powers the board then it points to the MoBo as the problem, and if it does not power the board it points to the PSU.

 

I think it would be pretty simple and informative for someone from DFI to do that comparison (if they have not already) and perhaps clear things up. I say perhaps because you may not get the same results from another test with two different setups. You would need to test a few different combinations to have any real sense of the issue. Perhaps the board is at fault sometimes and the PSU at other times.

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definately

 

it would be nice to be able to push my computer under my desk.. haha. maybe i'll rig up some on/off PSU switch on a cord.

 

well, hell, i guess i can use a surge protector..that wouldn't be bad anyway.

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I'm having it here too with my Ultra-D. This is getting pretty annoying in the morning since it is taking me 10 min to boot up. Going to reflash my bios and see if it will fix it.

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