ASRock 970 Extreme4 No Sound

ZeitgeistGlee

Hey all,

Long story short I ordered a PC from Hardwereversand last week and it arrived yesterday, because HWVS had a sale on to fit the components for only a €5 I figured it was worth the few bob to do.

Everything seemed OK cable wise when I checked the mobo before fitting the graphics card (Sapphire Radeon 7950) but for the life of me I can't seem to get the sound to work from either the front jacks (no sound at all) or the rear jacks (very, very faint sound from the left channel only). I've installed drivers from both ASRock and Realtek independently of one another (even wiping the drive in between) and had no joy.

Done a bit of checking online and it seems there's a few people have had similar problems and the general response has been to just RMA the board, would that be the best option or is there any other advice someone could give? Would I be as well off to return the whole unit seeing as it came together or just the motherboard?

Thanks.

imitation

ZeitgeistGlee wrote: »

Hey all,

Long story short I ordered a PC from Hardwereversand last week and it arrived yesterday, because HWVS had a sale on to fit the components for only a €5 I figured it was worth the few bob to do.

Everything seemed OK cable wise when I checked the mobo before fitting the graphics card (Sapphire Radeon 7950) but for the life of me I can't seem to get the sound to work from either the front jacks (no sound at all) or the rear jacks (very, very faint sound from the left channel only). I've installed drivers from both ASRock and Realtek independently of one another (even wiping the drive in between) and had no joy.

Done a bit of checking online and it seems there's a few people have had similar problems and the general response has been to just RMA the board, would that be the best option or is there any other advice someone could give? Would I be as well off to return the whole unit seeing as it came together or just the motherboard?

Thanks.

Don't panic just yet

Have you checked the front panel cable connection to make sure its on right ? I would also advise pluging out the front panel connector altogether see if it works from the rear.

Next try the realtek driver settings, theres options to seperate rear and front panel to see if that works.

I have had plenty of pain with front panels and realtek, they never work quite right..

ZeitgeistGlee

Yeah, I've checked the connection, it seems OK no loseness or anything, and the USB ports and power switch connected along with it work fine. Plugging it out doesn't make any difference either, still only one very faint channel.

Separating them using the driver hasn't made any difference either unfortunately, about the only thing I hadn't tried.

Thanks for the help though mate.

fl4pj4ck

there are usually two connectors to the same front panel cable. one called AC'97 (legacy) and the other called usually HDAudio(correct one), are you sure you had the correct one connected?

ZeitgeistGlee

Yep, even tried switching back to the AC'97 to see if I could get any kind of sound but the driver wouldn't install.

ZeitgeistGlee

After a bit more use (because who needs audio) I've noticed another issue cropping up (joy) and I'm wondering if it would be linked to a faulty motherboard (hopefully).

Basically I'm getting lag spikes while using the internet or the internet is active (say downloading an update to Windows) or something is being installed where everything locks up for about 10-20 seconds and becomes unusable. The cores go up into the 90s even though there's nothing running which should tax them to that extent (I'm doing nothing different to what I did with my old Core2 Quad-core Dell and it never gave any hassle). Occasionally it'll tell me "Microsoft Windows has stopped working" as well which requires a reboot.

I'm hoping it's just the motherboard being faulty and affecting the processor and SSD because God knows I don't want to have to send more stuff back to HWVS.

fl4pj4ck

do you have AHCI on in the bios?
it still looks to me like some software/driver issue

ZeitgeistGlee

It wasn't but I've switched it on now, had a gander online and it was suggested if I had installed Windows on the SSD while it was in IDE I should wipe and reinstall it now that I've switched it over to AHCI.

(Sidenote I have managed to get audio working using a set of Logitech USB speakers I had for an old laptop is that indicative of anything one way or another?)

fl4pj4ck

to be honest I would reinstall it while in AHCI, my guess is the random freezes are due to IDE driver being used

USB devices have a soundcard built in, so that's no indication

ZeitgeistGlee

Yeah just finished the reinstall, sadly no difference as far as audio goes.

Gormal

I had a similar issue (sound from speakers but not the front jack) with sound after a clean install ages ago and I had to go into the sound settings and play about with them. I got the software package along with the driver. So if you got software that came with your driver go into it and fiddle about with the individual settings.

ZeitgeistGlee

I've already tried all the sound options available through both the Realtek software and Windows with no success. I've already sent HWVS an email to RMA the board, if I don't hear anything by tomorrow I'll give them a call.