ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 - Who has it?

[supastar1568]

I have this board and it's running my 2500k at 4.2 with no problems at all, haven't tried to go higher. I do have a question about the the "Target Fan Speed".

I have my "Target CPU Temp" at the lowest in BIOS at like 45C. I put the "Target Fan Speed" at Level 4. Does that mean that the Max Fan speed is Level 4 when the CPU gets about 45C. Just curious that's all since the wording is kinda weird. I'm at only 59C after 20 hr Prime anyway.

I like setting 4 because 5 and above gets pretty annoying in my case.

 

[kalrith]

So, I got my Thermaltake Ultra Extreme to work on this board with some new screws, but it's not making good enough contact with the CPU. The temps are fine at stock, but they jump to 75 at load at 4.4 GHz. I'm going to try one more thing with the heatsink, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to replace it.

Anyways, I'm looking for heatsink recommendations for this board. It seems that it's a tight fit for a backplate, so I'm guessing that not all LGA1155 coolers will fit. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, then please post what CPU heatsink you're using (assuming you're pleased with its performance).

BTW, I've been really pleased with this board so far. The BIOS update went smoothly, and my mouse (Alienware TactX 9) works fine. The only "problems" that I'm having are that I can't figure out how to get the USB ports to power down when the system powers down (i.e. my LED mouse pad will glow indefinitely), and my Rosewill internal card reader won't install in Windows. The card reader gets power, because the lights are on (also indefinitely), but Windows won't install it. I tried the Vista drivers on Rosewill's website, but it says that the card reader has to be installed in order to install the drivers, so it must not be detecting the card reader at all.

Also, programs (esp. Firefox) seem more laggy than my old system even though I went from a mechanical drive to a crucial m4 SSD. But that could be a software issue rather than a hardware issue.

 

[zlejedi]

I have this board and it's running my 2500k at 4.2 with no problems at all, haven't tried to go higher. I do have a question about the the "Target Fan Speed".

I have my "Target CPU Temp" at the lowest in BIOS at like 45C. I put the "Target Fan Speed" at Level 4. Does that mean that the Max Fan speed is Level 4 when the CPU gets about 45C. Just curious that's all since the wording is kinda weird. I'm at only 59C after 20 hr Prime anyway.

I like setting 4 because 5 and above gets pretty annoying in my case.

If i understand the system correctly by setting those parameters you are setting a temp to fan rpm trade off.

The lower Target CPU temp you set the faster fan will start speeding up.
The lower Target fan speed the less rpm you will get when below target cpu temp.

Fan speed 1 is around 40% of nominal rpm which will cause some problems with most of fans.

Personally I use 60 degrees as target temp and fan speed 2 for maximum silence with reasonable temps (having Raven 2 helps ).

@kalrith- I can only vouch for Mugen 2 since it's what I'm running right now.

 

[96Firebird]

Anyone get a basic overclocking guide for this board yet?

 

[kalrith]

Anyone get a basic overclocking guide for this board yet?

Here's what I did at first:

Enable PLL Overvoltage
Disable Spread Spectrum
44x Multiplier
Fixed Voltage - 1.29v
LLC = Level 1
​

I did 1.29v, because with LLC of level 1 it puts it at 1.304v at load according to CPUz. I did fixed, because it's easier for initial overclocking. Once you find settings that work, then you can find the offset that reaches the same voltage.

I got my heatsink working better, but it was still at 69° at load with the above settings. I decided to go with some more relaxed settings. The following are my current settings, which ran Prime95 for 12 hours with no errors:

Enable PLL Overvoltage
Disable Spread Spectrum
43x Multiplier
Offset voltage = -.040v
LLC = Level 2
​

I found that the 43x multiplier worked with a fixed voltage of 1.23v and LLC level 1, which yielded 1.24v at load. I found the offset that matched that, and it's working great. It only hits 65° at full load, so I'm pleased with that.

I'll probably tweak it some more and might try for a higher overclock if I fix or replace my heatsink. But for right now, it's nice to just use my system instead of doing nothing but messing with the settings

Hopefully this helps someone.

 

[arredondo]

Bios v1.20 just came out. Who will be the guinea pig?

Oh, and for the record I got my board from Superbiiz and have had no issues.

 

[duragezic]

I've been meaning to do a new build for 6 months but too lazy to research parts. Finally last Sunday night I did it but got fed up researching chipsets and motherboards and I just said whatever and went with this ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3. Reading over this thread I'm glad to hear it seems to be pretty solid!

Pairing it with a 2500k. Not overclocking yet because I was tired of researching parts and didn't get a new PSU. I think my 450w is enough to run the system... estimates show the power use a touch higher than my current system. But I don't want to try overclocking until I get a new PSU.

Is there a driver package that I need for Win7 64-bit? With my nForce4-based board, when I do a Windows install I need to install the nForce driver package (mostly for the NIC driver). I'm sure the ASRock has a disc but I usually like to load the latest drivers on a flash drive to use. There is about a dozen individual drivers on their website but usually there is a package of what I need, right?

 

[96Firebird]

Here's what I did at first:

Enable PLL Overvoltage
Disable Spread Spectrum
44x Multiplier
Fixed Voltage - 1.29v
LLC = Level 1
​

I did 1.29v, because with LLC of level 1 it puts it at 1.304v at load according to CPUz. I did fixed, because it's easier for initial overclocking. Once you find settings that work, then you can find the offset that reaches the same voltage.

I got my heatsink working better, but it was still at 69° at load with the above settings. I decided to go with some more relaxed settings. The following are my current settings, which ran Prime95 for 12 hours with no errors:

Enable PLL Overvoltage
Disable Spread Spectrum
43x Multiplier
Offset voltage = -.040v
LLC = Level 2
​

I found that the 43x multiplier worked with a fixed voltage of 1.23v and LLC level 1, which yielded 1.24v at load. I found the offset that matched that, and it's working great. It only hits 65° at full load, so I'm pleased with that.

I'll probably tweak it some more and might try for a higher overclock if I fix or replace my heatsink. But for right now, it's nice to just use my system instead of doing nothing but messing with the settings

Hopefully this helps someone.

Thanks for that, it will definitely help. When I get some time I will overclock along with all the necessary stuff that goes with overclocking, like seeing if its stable... :sneaky:

 

[daninfamous]

Can someone write me up a pretty details guide to get this plus it 2500k to 4ghz, and where is the option to stop it from under-clocking? its sitting at like 1600ghz all the time

 

[daninfamous]

Also, on a fresh win7 ult install it didnt find my onboard nic drivers, which is annoying if I ever format down the road and the cd isnt handy

 

[uo7]

Can someone write me up a pretty details guide to get this plus it 2500k to 4ghz, and where is the option to stop it from under-clocking? its sitting at like 1600ghz all the time

I just set the multi to 41 at stock volts to get a little over 4ghz easy.
also you need to disable speedstep I think it is called in bios, so it doesn't throttle it down to 1600mhz etc.

only thing I don't really care for with this mobo is the mouse (g5) problems in the bios, and of course on board sound is pretty bad imo but to be expected.

 

[zlejedi]

Can someone write me up a pretty details guide to get this plus it 2500k to 4ghz, and where is the option to stop it from under-clocking? its sitting at like 1600ghz all the time

Sitting at 1600 is correct behaviour - run intel burn test in background and see if it stays at 1600 - only then something is wrong.

 

[duragezic]

Also, on a fresh win7 ult install it didnt find my onboard nic drivers, which is annoying if I ever format down the road and the cd isnt handy

Yeah that's something I've always had to deal with my nForce 4-based mobo (at least in XP). Everytime before a format I would download the latest nForce 4 driver package and put it on a drive or partition with my other saved data. It would be the first thing I would install after loading a fresh XP install because I didn't have NIC drivers otherwise.

So it sounds like I'll still need to do the same. I wish though the ASRock website had the drivers packaged up. They are 12 individual ones and I'm not sure which all are really required.

 

[daninfamous]

the driver cd is pretty easy to navigate, im thinking im just gonna copy all the drivers to a flash drive and stick the flash drive in the case

 

[duragezic]

Well everything went pretty well. I did find that in the UEFI BIOS, I can only move the mouse on the y-axis. Not a big deal as I could use the keyboard. I imagine I have the v1.0 BIOS and if I upgraded to v1.10 or v1.20 that it would fix that.

The other issue that is pissing me off is the headphones don't work really. Whether I unplug my speakers and plug the headphones in the rear out jack, or leave the spakers plugged in the back and plug into the front panel jack like the Win7 Headphones seems to indicate, they don't work. They only work if they are plugged in the rear in place of the speakers and the output in the Volume Control is set to "Speakers". Whenever I set to Headphones, like as default, I get no sound. Even the headphone mixer is going up and down but there is no sound.

I don't get it. In XP, I unplugged the speakers from line out and plugged in the headphones and they worked. I don't know if this is a ASrock mobo problem (or rather, the onboard audio) or Win7 issue.

 

[TomBk]

Does anybody else have any problems with the front headphone jack working while the speakers are plugged into the back?

I want to be able to use a headset for Pal Talk and Skype, etc.

 

[Skott]

So whats the final verdict? Is it worth buying to eventually moving up to an IB cpu in a year or so? It has a nice attractive price right now. I never owned a ASRock mobo before though so I'm a little leery if its a good product or not.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Not having any issues with headphone/speakers when using FPAudio here.

Mouse still broken in UEFI with 1.2 BIOS.

 

[Smoblikat]

I own this board. Its a BEAST. No problems overclocking at all. The only thing i would like is two more SATA ports and a USB3 header. But you get what you pay for.

 

[Rvenger]

Is it just me or does this board overvolt the ram like crazy at boot up on a clear CMOS? I booted on Bios version 1.0 my vdimm was 1.672v. The newest bios revision 1.20 did the same thing.

My ram boots up at 1333mhz @ 1.67v, the spec for this ram is 1333mhz @ 1.5v. I had the computer on for 2 hours like this. I hope I didn't do any damage. So far everything seems good.

 

[Ike0069]

Ok, I've had thso board for a little over two months now and as been rock steady at 4.3 GHz @ 1.3vCore (2500K). Never could get anything over that to be stable (even 4.4 @ 1.4v) but I am now pretty much convinced it is my CPU vice the board itsself. I did not get any noticeable benefit from BIOS 1.1 and haven't bothered to try 1.2.

Overall, very happy with this board. UEFI BIOS does not work with my MX518 mouse, but I am used to using the keyboard, so no big deal. Other than that, I don't have any negatives about this board. Inital BIOS was a little quirky, but it would probably be highly unusual for an initial BIOS to be bug free. For ~&60 less than the Extreme4, this is still a great choice IMO.

 

[arredondo]

I've had mine up and running for about a month or so and am pretty pleased. This was my first time attempting a CPU over clock and I have it at 4.4GHz @1.33 volts and it's been rock solid through stress tests and games while maxing out at 65C degrees.

Ike0069, since I'm no expert at this, I relied on some tips on the 'net about adjusting my CPU settings in the BIOS to get this to work. I recall having to lower or disable a few features so to ease the stress on the processor, so maybe that's something you need to adjust to get stable results.

BTW, for kicks I lazily tried to go 4.6GHz @1.30 volts and rebooted. My computer said "lol, no" and wouldn't even load Windows so I put it back to 4.4 Ghz. I guess I don't feel the need to find the max stable values.

 

[Calumus]

I'm looking to pull the trigger on this board today. I just need to know if it will boot from a Pcie 4x raid card installed in the bottom Pcie 16x slot. I read somewhere that it could be and issue with boards that use uefi as opposed to a regular bios. I've got a pair of Seagate Cheetah 15k7 300gb drives that I'd hate to see go to waste The card I'm looking at using is an Hp SA-E200 If that makes a difference. I landed a 2500k at microcenters bf sale and 8gb of corsair on amazon last night so I'm getting antsy to get that last piece of my new toy. Thanks,
Shawn

 

[Gabe3]

do I need drivers for a single ssd in ahci mode? are there intel drivers that I need to download or do I use the sata raid driver from the asrock site? I assume I install the driver during the windows 7 install?

thanks.

 

[mikemcc]

For those of you who have been having problems using a USB mouse and keyboard with this board, I had the same problem with my Extreme4 Gen3 board. I had to start with a standard PS2 keyboard but then after I enabled the "Legacy USB Support" setting, I was able to use the USB mouse and keyboard while in the BIOS. When I was doing my initial overclock, I had to keep resetting everything, so I just left the PS2 keyboard and the USB keyboard both hooked up at the same time, so I could keep re-enabling the "Legacy USB Support." Once I had everything running the way I wanted, I just unhooked the PS2 keyboard and stored it away for when I have problems in the future. But for now, I can make all changes in BIOS using the USB keyboard and I'll only lose that if I have to cancel out all my settings for some reason. Incidentally, I had the same kinds of issues that many of you are reporting with the Extreme3 Gen3 -- USB keyboard that would only partially work or work not at all, USB mouse that would work on only one axis at a time or work not at all.