vnf3-250, I cant take this anymore...help

ToyYoda03

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 1, 2004
Messages
1,871
I used to love this board, but imo chaintech sucks when it comes to a good bios. I updated to the 7/29 bios and a world of problems happened. I am now using the original one.

First problem, my storage hard drive catches on fire...literally...I know this is not related to chaintech though. I already have a RMA on the way but everything is lost
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2nd problem, my computer now makes a high pitched noise, it seems either hd related or video card related. When anything loads, the noise goes away. When I scroll, the noise goes away. Flashing back to the original bios fixes this problem.

3rd problem, TEMPERATURE INCREASE AHOY!!! My idle sky-rocketed to 58c even though I have good cooling. I know their are other threads discussing this topic though.

4th problem, bios lockups. Hitting delete to enter bios sometimes causes it to freeze up.

Here are my specs, ive spent 4 hours this morning tinkering with drivers and options and I got tired of it so I flashed to the old bios. Which fixed everything except my hard drive.

Athlon 64 3000+ CG revision @ 2.4ghz @ 1.6 vcore
Cooling SLK-948U w/ Thermaltake Smart Fan
Chaintech VNF3-250
1024 PC3500 Kingmax 2.5,3,3,6
BFG 6800GT @ 395/1045
WD Raptor 36GB 10,000RPM
 
I havea VNF3-250 and I have the same high pitched noise comming from my system, whenever I scroll the noise goes away... I think its comming from my HDD (seagate SATA 120GB) This is the third drive I'm going through the others failed and I had to RMA them DAMN YOU SEAGATE! anyway my motherboard has a tempreture bug in it and for some reason I'm getting 12C for my processor tempreture using stock cooling.. yea, I wish... as for the bios I'm using the bios that came with my MB (I have not upgraded) and you just scared me into staying with the current revision. try waiting for the next revision of the bios to come out, if you don't want to do that you can try flashing again it may have flashed incorrectly the last time you did it
 
x1600c said:
I havea VNF3-250 and I have the same high pitched noise comming from my system, whenever I scroll the noise goes away... I think its comming from my HDD (seagate SATA 120GB) This is the third drive I'm going through the others failed and I had to RMA them DAMN YOU SEAGATE! anyway my motherboard has a tempreture bug in it and for some reason I'm getting 12C for my processor tempreture using stock cooling.. yea, I wish... as for the bios I'm using the bios that came with my MB (I have not upgraded) and you just scared me into staying with the current revision. try waiting for the next revision of the bios to come out, if you don't want to do that you can try flashing again it may have flashed incorrectly the last time you did it

Yeah, maybe it was a bad flash. I know that the temp readings on the original bios are wrong, but the new bios seems way to high as well

edit- im going to try and reflash it again with the same version, just downloaded again
 
I wish I would have read this before I flashed not 5 minutes ago...I went from 3/8 to 7/29 as well and my temp went from a normal 32c idle to a 62c idle... My RAM went from 400mhz to 333mhz and I can't adjust it at all...it gives me a max of 166mhz in the bios. I'm definately going to flash back...Also, has anybody with a chaintech been able to overclock DDR400 ram to over 400mhz? I can't seem to find where to do this because it gives me a max of 200mhz x2 in the bios.
 
jubei said:
I wish I would have read this before I flashed not 5 minutes ago...I went from 3/8 to 7/29 as well and my temp went from a normal 32c idle to a 62c idle... My RAM went from 400mhz to 333mhz and I can't adjust it at all...it gives me a max of 166mhz in the bios. I'm definately going to flash back...Also, has anybody with a chaintech been able to overclock DDR400 ram to over 400mhz? I can't seem to find where to do this because it gives me a max of 200mhz x2 in the bios.

there is a discussion about the temp issue here

http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46

and I know there are modified bios's out there that fix this but I want something official. This bios adds features that I want, like cool and quite and multiplier control but damn it it also messes things up. I reflashed back to 7-29 and so far so good. Im looking into the temp issue

edit- that freaking noise is back again
 
I'm having a world of issues with my Chaintech as well. It came with the 7/29 BIOS, but I've dropped it to the April one because it's the only one that doesn't have issues with my SATA drives. With the 7/29 BIOS, it would hang any time you reboot after making changes to the BIOS. The April BIOS removes SATA drive detection during POST, so that seems to have alleviated the problem.

Then there's the issues with my overclock. I am not able to run above 230MHz FSB, regardless of settings unless I up my CPU voltage and even then it isn't completely stable. I was thinking of updating the BIOS, but I'd rather have a working BIOS. :rolleyes:

If it wasn't such a huge hassle, I'd sell it and get a DFI or an Epox because I never knew these boards had so much issues. Oh and I have noticed the squeals as well, I thought it was my Raptor, but perhaps it's something else now. Fortunately my fans are so loud I'm not really bothered by it.
 
heatsinker said:
I'm having a world of issues with my Chaintech as well. It came with the 7/29 BIOS, but I've dropped it to the April one because it's the only one that doesn't have issues with my SATA drives. With the 7/29 BIOS, it would hang any time you reboot after making changes to the BIOS. The April BIOS removes SATA drive detection during POST, so that seems to have alleviated the problem.

Then there's the issues with my overclock. I am not able to run above 230MHz FSB, regardless of settings unless I up my CPU voltage and even then it isn't completely stable. I was thinking of updating the BIOS, but I'd rather have a working BIOS. :rolleyes:

If it wasn't such a huge hassle, I'd sell it and get a DFI or an Epox because I never knew these boards had so much issues. Oh and I have noticed the squeals as well, I thought it was my Raptor, but perhaps it's something else now. Fortunately my fans are so loud I'm not really bothered by it.

I noticed that some of my problem were fixed after using AWDFLASH to flash instead of WInflash. I still have some problems though, the squelling pieces me off soooo much.
 
Yea, I used AWDFLASH. Both the built-in version and via floppy; still no worky. Wasted an entire weekend testing every BIOS they had.
 
heatsinker said:
Yea, I used AWDFLASH. Both the built-in version and via floppy; still no worky. Wasted an entire weekend testing every BIOS they had.

Ive wasted a good amount of time on this too, I think this will be the last time I use Chaintech as well. If they would get on the ball and fix the bios, this board would be great
 
dude, your data is not lost. the disk is still intact most likely, and some recovery experts can recover your data.
 
ToyYoda03 said:
Ive wasted a good amount of time on this too, I think this will be the last time I use Chaintech as well. If they would get on the ball and fix the bios, this board would be great

Well that new 9/21 BIOS did fix a couple of things though, like the HDD LED indicators for SATA drives are now working, but that's about it as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps the next one will be more useful.
 
Where'd you get the september bios? All I could find on the chaintech sight was the 7/29. Also, does the september bios fix the temp problems?
 
well today has been one fucking fantastic day, hard drive catches fire, and a bad flash on my computer. I now have a expensive paper weight. I feel like throwing the whole thing as hard as i can out the window

edit- fixed, yay!
 
jubei said:
Where'd you get the september bios? All I could find on the chaintech sight was the 7/29. Also, does the september bios fix the temp problems?

I forgot the exact address, but Chaintech Korea's got it on their site (it's where I got it from, actually). I don't know if it fixed the temps because I've never seen anything higher than 45C in the BIOS or Digidoc. I also have a thermister next to the CPU's IHS and it usually stays under 35C. Truth be told, I don't know who to trust. :confused:
 
Thanks, I'll try the korean site and hope I can tell where the bios downloads are, hehe.

Hey, yoda, how did you fix it? Running Prime95 for 1hr so far OC'd to 2.1ghz (210htt) 1:1 ratio 1.5v on the cpu, I'm getting 69-71c temps which shouldn't be happening...I'd be more expecting in the range of hi 40's or so...
 
ToyYoda03 said:
First problem, my storage hard drive catches on fire...literally...I know this is not related to chaintech though. I already have a RMA on the way but everything is lost
All may not be lost on your HD, brother.
If you've got a replacement RMA on the way, and the toasty one is still in your possession, You may still be in business. The part of the HD that caught fire, the controller board, is swappable. If you're careful and remove the fried one, and the replace it with the board from the new one, your data may be there. If the allocation table has not been borked, the data should still be on there. At the very worst, if once you get the controller board replaced the drive doesn't automatically show as formatted with your data magically there, you could try Disk Commander or other utilities that can search for resident data structures and write a corresponding signature on the drive.

If explanation is over your head, let me know and I'll try to be more concise.

Doc
 
apHytHiaTe said:
dude, your data is not lost. the disk is still intact most likely, and some recovery experts can recover your data.

He's probably right, but recovery services are horribly expensive ($400+/hr. last I checked). If the data's really important, you have a pretty good chance of success if you buy another identical working drive and swap the circuit boards.

Edit: missed the above post. Like he said.
 
ToyYoda03 said:
there is a discussion about the temp issue here

http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46

and I know there are modified bios's out there that fix this but I want something official. This bios adds features that I want, like cool and quite and multiplier control but damn it it also messes things up. I reflashed back to 7-29 and so far so good. Im looking into the temp issue

edit- that freaking noise is back again

I used the official 7/29 on all the systems I built with that board with no problems.
 
Jumped the ship while back on chaintech and quite happy with my Asus... (this purchase was made before DFI came out).
However, for the period I had chaintech, I didn't experience above mentioned problems. Most likely, the HDD got destroyed due to your PSU more than anything else. If you believe your PSU to be good one, I would like to ask if you have UPS to protect against over voltage/under voltage, etc?
Can't imagine running anything valuable without running UPS on my area... (Los Angeles)... Every now and than I see report of over voltage beyond 130v for few seconds at time... (No, those powerstrip can't really cope with this long time of exposure, they are for sudden burst... same goes with PSU)
 
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