*dead*FRY'S IN STORE E4300 & MOBO DEAL

[VeauX]

I'll go today for one...still have DDR and AGP so...

 

[VeauX]

How do I know if the board come with the latest bios for E4300 compatibility??

 

[MattressTester]

Most likely none of the boards have the December Bios. Today at the North Atlanta location I saw maybe 20 or more factory sealed motherboards. Not sure how many processors were in stock as they keep them in a cage behind the checkout.

When I brought up the incompatibility issue to the CSR's they acted like they never heard of it. However, they did finally volunteer to have their service dept flash the bios for me. Got home, hooked it up and it works fine.

I've also got a lot of DDR and a fairly new AGP card so this deal works fine for me.

If you go for this deal, make sure they give you a boxed processor. At checkout they handed me an OEM processor - but when I asked, they switched it to a retail box with heatsink and fan.

 

[VeauX]

I just bought it @Fry's, all is boxed, mobo and proc(E4300). But I wont be able to test it before I go home the next week. Hope it will work at once... I noticed some boxed came with a red color and other with yellow... what does it mean...

anyway, I asked the vendor for the incompatibility with the older bios and he told me that they were aware of it when they first issued the bundle 1 month ago and now it has to be ok.

So let's see if its works... I don't want to start the search of the cheap celeron D to flash to board and be able to run the E4300 ..

 

[VeauX]

Anyone who did buy that deal and that everything worked at once anyway?

 

[isekii]

BAH!!

i want this chip + a Gigabyte 965P-DS3!!!

 

[Tommy2000GT]

I bought mine today. Yes it is retail boxed. And yes the e4300 did boot right up with the ECS board so I assume it was either pre-flashed by Fry's or it was the newer board with the latest bios.

 

[VeauX]

Hope mine will do it too then!

 

[quique]

Dang, this board is not working for me...

Went to Fountain Valley Fry's today @ 4pm, waited for the CSR to flash the bios after purchase, got home, hooked everything up, and nothing! I powered it up and absolutely nothing appears on my monitor. I get no beeps or anything from the system.

I'm using 2x512 ddr Kingston sticks and an AGP Radeon x800xl card. I tried booting with the onboard graphics but got the same result.

I should have let the CSR test out my e4300 CPU after he flashed it but I thought everything would be alright. Oh well, I'm going back tomorrow to make sure this combo works right!

 

[TinMan2]

Renton, WA. Fry's.
Retail Box.
Booted up and installed operating system. No problems so far.

 

[driveeuro]

Originally posted by: VeauX
How do I know if the board come with the latest bios for E4300 compatibility??

You need the V2 of the board. Even look at ECS's website. There is a P4M800PRO-M V2. That's what you need. The V1 will not work.

I have mine running 2.4ghz (pin modded) crunching some F@H SMP work units.

 

[VeauX]

I have the V2 Boxed and unopened. (seems to) and a E4300 Boxed too.

Reading the forums in the internet, I think Fry's guys learned to not purpose a combo made of incompatible products last january (when they purposed the same combo but didn't know the board was not compatible with the CPU for that BIOS version) I mean with all that, they shold have pre-flashed all of their mobos before this one!

Just my guess... will verify that @ home when mounting the two... hope some friend of mine have an old 775 proco to help me if I'm wrong...

 

[3LEMENT0]

I used the 4300 in my DS3 and it works great. Oced to 3Ghz @ 1.33x voltage.

The mobo I'll keep and probably use when my old general purpose machine dies

 

[quique]

Hey guys, I know this is kinda off topic, but what type of PSU (brand & wattage) are you using for this board/CPU? Mine still will not POST and I've narrowed it down to my PSU as the source of problems. Funny thing is that I'm using the PSU that came with the Sonata II (Antec Smartpower 2.0 450W) and I only bought the case a few months ago. I get a blank screen with no beeps or anything, just the CPU fan running

When they flashed the board at Fry's everything seemed to be working fine, even with my DDR400 from home. The board has the same problem even with a Pentium 4 3.0GHz chip. That's how I'm thinking it's the PSU. Please help! Thank you!

 

[nomadh]

I'm thinking these new cores should be much easier on P/S specs. Slower clock, less wattage. Shouldn't C2D run on a decent Pentium 3 power supply? At least to test out and get started?

 

[AkumaX]

heh, i stopped by fry's on a whim and talked to the guy, he said they opened up every ECS box (new, used) and flashed them all. yikes!

 

[fleshconsumed]

Dunno... I bought one, I specifically looked for unopen V2, it worked out of the box. I didn't install anything, but it boots up and I can enter bios.

 

[VeauX]

That's pretty weird. I think too that the C2D have lower power reqs than the P4 p4D.

I think you plug all power cords right? The 24 pins and 4 pins ( i 've read that with a 20 pins instead of 24 it works but can fails).

You tried to boot just with the CPU and RAM ? your ram is on the good slots? try reseting the bios once too

 

[quique]

Hey guys, thanks for the input. Ok, I finally got this puppy working! Dang man, I finally found out that the culprit was the Antec Smartpower 2.0 450W PSU that came with my Sonata II case. I bought a Raidmax Volcano 630W PSU ($99-$40 MIR) and it booted up perfectly even without a BIOS flash! (the mobo was probably from a new shipment batch)

After a great deal of toying around with various components I narrowed it down to my PSU. And after reading the reviews from Newegg on the old Antec PSU the solution was clear as daylight.

It's just so strange because I had complete faith in all of Antec's products. However, even a CSR from Frys' suggested that I avoid the Smartpower series of PSUs. Oh well, I'm just happy that this rig is finally working!

 

[VeauX]

I installed it at last and everything is fine. I just have a couple of doubts regarding memory timings. Do anyone here know were I can find something to trick a bid the dividers?