The [not so] Unique DFI Experience.

[Hurican]

Well, my system is finally up and running, after much hassle and gnashing of teeth.

 

I will say that I got quite a bit of help through DFI support, so I appreciate their efforts and no-nonsense answers.

 

I bought the final computer part 3/10/2006. I have a stable system on 5/9/2006.

 

My first mistake was buying My SLI-DR from a retailer early on (I should have not gotten the board first.)

My second, was the retailer I had bought it from. Amazon had a good price, but they ship from T*g*r D*rect (name hidden to prevent identity ). I would never have bought from them had I known. Anyway...

 

I get all the pieces, I assemble the board and find this place for instructions. No boot, no post, no beep, 4 LED's.

Days of hardware adjustments and CMOS resets later I contact DFI with the problem. After going through a stepped reset process (Courtesy RGone), I indeed had a dead board. RMA.

T*g*r would not return the board, as it had already been over 30 days, and wouldn't budge on their decision, even though it was only a few days over. NewEgg was different, they actually went outside of their policy to help me out with a bad product (bad PSU in a good case).

 

I RMA'd to DFI. They had it about a week before replacing the chipset and sending it back. Still, a long wait of 2 1/2 weeks including shipping as I am on the other coast.

 

Get board back, it boots!! Go through the normal process, hook up all the hardware, grab a DVD burner and experience Oblivion. (No, I didn't get the computer just for that. :-) ).

 

Really good, but occasional lockups with BSOD, restart fixes. I saw on the forums that it was a pretty common error, and to update the bios. I Winflash to the 4/06 release... computer doesn't shut down by itself afterwards. *sigh*

 

I reboot, and get a beep, but 3 LEDS and no post. So, three resets later, 30 sec, 15min, and 8 hour, I finally get it to boot. The trick was removing the Karajan Audio module, which btw is a performance killer anyway. It never worked for me in the first place, but with the Realtek drivers installed, I could still see an additional 15 sec hang during boot.

 

So now I'm running with Optimized Defaults, and will shakily get back in to tweak some of the settings as soon as I can get back on that horse.

 

So there's my experience. A real test to the emotions and mental health.

 

So thanks to all who helped and the wealth of information in these forums. I am excited to see how it will handle 10 Trk audio recording and some taxing digital studio software.

[wevsspot]

Hurican,

 

Thanks for sharing your experience. Sometimes it helps the healing process when you share your pain

 

The DFI experience is definitely NOT a plug and play experience. And I highly recommend that BYO types pick another board if they are looking for plug and play. MSI usually fits that bill pretty well with a solid board, good quality and excellent company based support.

 

However, for those brave souls that venture into DFI land, and have the patience and persistence, the DFI boards can reward you with results that are nothing less than spectacular.

[Hurican]

Yeah, I needed to share that one. Don't get me wrong, I love to geek and tweek, and love DFI boards... (I have one still running like a tank from '98), but this was a little more pain than pleasure. I must be a maschoist though, for the next board will probably be another one, although I like Asus too.

[OverByter]

Well Sir you are to be commended on your perseverence. And now the fun begins!!!! :nod:

[Magel]

Hurican,

 

The DFI experience is definitely NOT a plug and play experience. And I highly recommend that BYO types pick another board if they are looking for plug and play. MSI usually fits that bill pretty well with a solid board, good quality and excellent company based support.

 

I have to dissagree. When I put my computer together, I had no problems what so ever. I litterly plugged and played with ALL the components on the board first time. The only problem I did have was when I installed windows and then installed the motherboard drivers whithout installing DirectX first which gave me a few headaches trying to figure that one out but a quick read of the manual solved that problem pritty fast.

 

I gotta say I feel sorry for all the people that have major problems with their setups in the forum when I had little problems with mine. I read instructions, follow guides and I dont have problems. I have had alot of problems in the past when building computers but they were never hardware related, they were always user related on my part.

[Zoli]

Same here, I also had it easy. Plug and play all the way, the board was rock stable with the initial bios that it had. I only had some problems with OC because of the weak PSU and Corsair memory, but a bios update helped a little.

[Voltes-5]

I am also one of the lucky ones that did not have any issues with the 4 DFI boards I built. I did my apprencticeship with the Asus P4C800E Dlx.. I modded that board to the max with my Prescott till I got a stable 3.8 clock. I built it for video editing, and boy it was fast. But I managed to kill it soon after. Thats when I got myself a used 875ProB. Thats how it all started with me, progressed to Ultra-D, SLI-DR and Expert. None of them gave me any troubles.

[3stars]

gotta agree no problems at all apart from user stupidity runs solid just passed 12hrs prime at 2.8 it will do 2.95 but with to much vcore for my liking got some crap ram just looking for some good stuff at a resonable price and i'm away i just love this board

[Ambian]

My name is Ambian, I am a certified 'tweaker' ... i must fiddle with every setting available JUST because... This is my first DFI board and I have to say it was purely a Plug'n'Play affair. My last board was a MSI Neo-2 and I had nothing but trouble... DFI was perfect from first boot but lets me tweak every setting until it crashes! But hey... it crashes on MY terms... THAT is the sign of a truely good piece of hardware

 

Peace out...

[3stars]

gotta agree there nothing like fixin somthing till it breaks

[wevsspot]

In my mind plug n play infers that you can grab just about any power supply, cpu and memory and throw together a rig in about 1.5 hours (OS install included). Now, for the most part we all understand that seldom is that approach successful when building a system based on a DFI NF4 board.

 

Careful research of recommended power supplies, compatible memory and correct BIOS settings and memory timings are crucial to a successful first time build. Of course that applies to about any motherboard, but especially so on the DFI NF4 boards.

 

DFI designs and manufacture's enthusiast class motherboards, intended to be coupled with high quality components.

 

My first DFI build was also essentially trouble free, but I spent alot of time here and in various other forums "learning the ropes" so to speak. And in that time I learned alot of things that I was able to apply when I built my first DFI based rig.

 

For every one user that does extensive research, buys quality components, follows the build guide and other tutorials here at the Street, there are probably four others that attempt the "plug n play" approach and end up frustrated and disappointed.

[Espm1000]

Hello, my name is Robbie and I must be retarded. Although I am rather familiar with computers when it comes to installing new hardware, it has always been on a prebuilt computer. Anyway, I am going for my first build and choosing DFI because of the sheer quality their boards are known for. The only hting I am afraid of is having to flash the bios as that is where a lot of problems seem to occur for people. I am retarded .