I am going to very quickly summarise the next problem I have had with my motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3, in this post because it has reached the point that I can't take much more of it.
Firstly, my previous computer, better known as the Platypus (which I loved but sold most of it to a fellow computer enthusiast), was a marvellous computer. It had no problems. It was simply because I had read about Intel's Sandy Bridge being so incredibly good for video editing, which I was certainly doing a lot of at the time, that made me want to buy one for myself.
So the Platypus left and the new computer, better known as the Zebra (both are named after animals named after their chipsets: P45 and Z68, although the Zebra is also black and white) took its place. The Zebra was built with an incredibly cheap-to-build system, as most of the expensive components from the Platypus could be kept and reused. The Zebra cost around £575 (£100 for the motherboard, £50 for the RAM, £250 for the CPU and £175 for the case), which to me seemed great, but it was terribly flawed.
Now I loved it when I first got it, and still love it now, but it's breaking my heart more and more these days (or maybe just really annoying me I suppose). Here's precisely why:
It started with the motherboard having a device that seemed unknown to the computer. So I disconnected everything and noticed it was still there. Next, I decided to plug a USB flash drive into each USB port, and there we went. The problem was solved. One of the rear USB 2.0 ports was not working. I complained to Gigabyte, who seemingly did nothing to help, apart from saying that my chipset was incorrectly installed, which makes no sense anyway. I filed a complaint and tried to get it sorted under warranty. But it was too much effort after assembling the computer that I decided to leave it, as it was just one USB 2.0 port, and Gigabyte themselves even said they would not pick it up.
It now suffers from another problem: a device that plugs in and then unplugs a second or two later. Listening to the Windows 7 device connected (dum dum) and then immediately after disconnecting (bum bum) was driving me mad. I could not bear it any more. I muted and removed the sound from the Windows sound manager in the Control Panel.
I have decided when I can. I'm going to sell the motherboard and get a new one for my birthday when Haswell is well and truly ready. I will probably sell the CPU as well.
