GA-Z87X-UD5H USB 3 not work on Back Panel

[rwillett]

There's a number of people who have been through this (Google is your friend). We've tried updating BIOS's, using different OS's, re-installing. Most have the same issues of the back panel giving up, but the front panels working. The problem does appear to be hardware, I can't find any evidence of the USBs working once these symptoms have appeared.

Gigabyte support is useless (to be honest, none of the motherboard support teams are much good unless you have an Enterprise contract with them), I'd get prepared to send the board back and get a new one. The one instance I can find of Gigabyte support coming back was when they said to RMA it.

Best of luck,

Rob

 

[VISR3]

So what I'm hearing is that this motherboard sucks and i should return it for a different one. Does the UD3H or UD4H have the same problems?

 

[rwillett]

When the motherboard works well, it seems to work very well. I exchanged my UD5H for a UD3H and haven't had any further problems. Its my main workhorse and gets used 6-10 hours per day and has lots of USB stuff plugged into it.

It appears to be a random fault that doesn't hit everybody otherwise Google would be full of it. I have tried to see if there is a different version motherboard which could indicate that Gigabyte have fixed it. I couldn't get another UD5H so got a UD3H instead (and didn't regret the change at all), so couldn't see if there was a V2 or a V1.1. My sample set is only one personal one and what the intertubes tell me. My UD3H is V1.1 but have no idea what that really means.

I'm currently very happy with the Gigabyte board to be honest. When the UD3H turned up, I simply plugged the SSD in from the UD5H and carried on where I'd left off. It just worked. I also had three USB 3.0 PCI cards lying around so the lack of the USB 3.0 bank panel wasn't a massive issue, annoying but I worked around it.

The UD3H and UD5H boards look awfully similar so I would assume that they all have the same 'potential' issue and I stress, potential, as Google is not full of this issue I would assume that its not a massive problem, otherwise it would be easy to get more information. As an example, my iPhone 4s had the wifi chip burning out issue and there were thousands of hits. Admittedly Gigabyte Z87X motherboards are a smaller group to have problems with, but if it was widespread far more people would be complaining.

I have been in the IT business for 30 years (sigh) and can remember how most manufacturers have been through their rubbish stages. IBM, Dell, Apple (lots of these), HP, Sun etc etc. I've had problems with MSI, Supermicro, Asus, Gigabyte, Intel motherboards over the years. I don't recall any manufacturer being perfect.

Its annoying, frustrating but thats the world we live in. I'm not convinced a different board manufacturer would be better, I know the installation for Gigabyte was so simple and I'll accept the dodgy USB chip for not wasting days and days of time trying to get the installation working.

Its up to you to how you want to proceed. I've been through the pain and can sympathise, but only you know how pissed off you are.

Rob.

 

[joshmariana]

I am also now having this issue with a brand new GA-Z87X-UD5H build. Was fine for ~2 weeks, now ports are sporadic at best, even having trouble with the front ports. A hard reboot seems to help sometimes, but then ports will randomly stop working. So freaking frustrated.

I'm wondering why TonyMac is still suggesting this board with this USB issue cropping up for so many people. Are there lots of GA-Z87X-UD5H users out there that don't have the issue? Wondering if I should get a new one through Amazon returns or switch to something else?

 

[rwillett]

If you have USB problems AND it's a new board then send it back to Amazon.

Why would the USB problems get better once they start?

There does appear to be an issue with the USB hardware system, since it appears to only affect a small percentage of boards then I would assume tonymac has not seen the issue and people have not alerted them. Whilst it's very annoying for us, the fact that the inter webs are not buzzing with hundreds of reports of these failing boards makes me believe it's a small problem. It's annoying for me personally and for you, but there may be only a few dozen issues worldwide and so it's negligible on the scale of operations. We probably come under the stastical heading of "Not worth worrying about".

I know have the z87x-ud3h and have zero regrets about getting the cheaper board. The only difference I can see are the graphic output options. I'm running separate and dual graphics cards so would have not used the inboard graphics anyway and so saved money.

Just my 2p worth.

Rob

 

[rmwamon]

Hi,

I likely know much less about the issue, but I have the same MB and all USB ports work fine in OSX. As soon as I switch to the windows OS on my Hack the backboard USB ports don't work anymore. However, restarting in windows or even moving the USB stick from one port to the next would "revive" them. I also realized that if I eject an USB stick that worked fine and replace it with a different USB stick, the new one would not be recognized. Not sure if that helps with diagnosing if this is a hardware or software issue.
As always, thanks for all the valuable information.

 

[leerage]

Finally after a month I have my Z87X-UD5H board back and all is working well. Just tested all USB 3.0 ports and working great. Looking at the board it looks like they replaced three 8pin ICs. Two right by the "110dbm" labeling and one right by the cmos battery.

The chips are labeled (at least on mine):

RT9018B
18GSPFGV35

Looking those up they look to be manufactured by Richtek: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/RT9018B-18GSP/1028-1006-2-ND/2470040

Hope this info helps anybody else. If you've got dead USB 3.0 ports on this board, you'll more than likely have to send it in for repair.

 

[rwillett]

Are you sure they didn't simply replace the motherboard? I'd be very surprised if they replaced IC's given these are multi-layer PCB's. The costs of doing that are very, very large and 999 times out of a thousand uneconomical to do. Desoldering IC's like this is hard.

They may have replaced the board AND replaced the IC's on the production line.

I'd check the serial numbers (if you can) against what the original shipment was (if you can).

Of course I could be wrong but its the first time I've seen this done for years (> 20).

Rob.

 

[leerage]

Are you sure they didn't simply replace the motherboard? I'd be very surprised if they replaced IC's given these are multi-layer PCB's. The costs of doing that are very, very large and 999 times out of a thousand uneconomical to do. Desoldering IC's like this is hard.

They may have replaced the board AND replaced the IC's on the production line.

I'd check the serial numbers (if you can) against what the original shipment was (if you can).

Of course I could be wrong but its the first time I've seen this done for years (> 20).

Rob.

I'll check the serials. Didnt even think to look when I first got the board as I noticed right away the left over residue of where the something was clearly desoldered and resoldered. These are little 8 pin voltage regulators that wouldn't be too terrible to desolder and resolder but I do see your point.

 

[leerage]

I checked the serial number and it is the same. I took a pic with my phone so it isn't the greatest but you can see around the two chips where there is residue left over from being desoldered and resoldered.