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GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

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    GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

    Sorry for bumping an old thread, hopefully someone is still watching. I have a slightly similar issue: I'm thinking of replacing an IT8720F on a Gigabyte desktop MB, but I'm not sure if it can be done directly, by simply putting in a blank chip in its place, that's why I'm asking.

    This board's been lying around my shop for like 2 years, so I thought I'd have a look at it today (since I didn't have a matching CPU for it until now). It's acting really weird and I think it's the ITE chip to blame. I was finally able to get it to fire up, though it's still not working perfectly: you plug the PC in, it tries to power on for a second, then goes off. After a few more seconds, it tries to power up again, but again shuts off and stays off. The power button does absolutely nothing and there's only 0.6v on the button's pin (same on the reset pin). The way I was able to get it going was by briefly shorting some pins on the ITE chip, close to the corner, though I'm not sure what they are - probably some data line which causes the chip to reset or something. The first time I did this, the board fired up, told me the BIOS is corrupted and it's restoring it from the backup chip. When the process ended, the board restarted, but it came up with the same message and tried restoring the BIOS again and again until I cut its power. What I did next was replace the M_BIOS chip with a blank one and this time, after the recovery process, the PC booted into the BIOS setup menu. Still, it would not respond to the power/reset buttons at all...the only way to get it going after a shutdown was by doing the ITE trick again. No amount of clearing the CMOS gets it going: it just does those two power-up attempts then dies. While it's on, I even upgraded the BIOS to the latest version which worked, but the issue persists, so I don't know what could be causing it other than the ITE. Thank you.
    Wattevah...

    #2
    Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

    (this is a new thread not an old one)

    IT8720F is not programmable so you can swap it directly.
    Did you confirm it's not a power button (or something related) issue by unplugged everything unneeded and taking the board out of the case? Only PSU, motherboard and CPU (in some cases) are required — RAM will be required for POST but that's not the problem here.
    You can short the pins for power button to turn it on.
    OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

    Comment


      #3
      Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

      Originally posted by piernov View Post
      (this is a new thread not an old one)
      It got moved to its own thread in the meantime, because I initially replied to someone asking about another ITE chip in a laptop, but a mod moved it as OT.

      Originally posted by piernov View Post
      Did you confirm it's not a power button (or something related) issue by unplugged everything unneeded and taking the board out of the case? Only PSU, motherboard and CPU (in some cases) are required — RAM will be required for POST but that's not the problem here.
      You can short the pins for power button to turn it on.
      Of course. I did all that. It's interesting that the board IS working, just not responding to the buttons. A continuity test shows the pins for the power and reset buttons go to some pins on the ITE chip directly, as expected, so I can only assume the fault is there. Not getting 3.3v on those pins either, only like 0.6v but there's no short either...it's either supposed to be like that, which I doubt, or there's something pulling that line down, which is like keeping the board with both its buttons pressed at all times, which it doesn't like and explains the one-time only start...

      here's another tiny 6 pin chip right next to front panel header where the pins for the buttons are and it's some sort of ESD protection sh!t which I'm not sure exactly how it works (the datasheet shows an array of diodes inside of it). It's got VCC, GND and the power/reset pins connect to two of its pins, so it's like it's got an "input" (the buttons) and an output to the ITE chip. If I short the pins leading to the ITE to the VCC pin on THIS small chip, the board powers off or resets like it should, BUT it doesn't switch back on again, even if I short the same pin I used to turn it off in the first place ! The only way to switch it back is by touching those two pins in the corner of the ITE chip, which I'm not sure what they're for and they certainly don't go to my header, since I checked ! I'm probably just breaking some clock or data line which "wakes" the chip...
      Wattevah...

      Comment


        #4
        Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

        Can you take a picture of said ESD protection chip?
        Also there should be a pull-up resistor array not far array, which is how the power button gets the 3.3V in the first place.
        OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

        Comment


          #5
          Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

          I don't have the board nearby unfortunately, so the best I can provide right now is an alternate picture which shows an identical looking chip, though it might not be the same. It looks like this (hope the link works).

          Also, I got a high-res pic of the board and the chip is right next to the front panel header, circled in red there...unfortunately you cannot read what's on it. The VCC pin is the one in the middle, on the top half and the pins going to the ITE are on either side. The bottom-middle pin is GND and the outer two lead to the reset/power button headers. If I short the VCC pin to the ones on either side of it, the corresponding function activates, but only for turning off the system - it doesn't work again for turning it back on...
          Attached Files
          Wattevah...

          Comment


            #6
            Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

            Looking at the schematics of GA-B75-D3V (I don't have GA-H87-HD3) there's indeed a TVS array for the power button and reset button. You can simply desolder the chip to exclude the possibility of it being bad. (then you'd have to replace it to keep the safety feature)
            Attached Files
            OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

            Comment


              #7
              Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

              Yes, that's the area in question and how the internals of that chip look like. Judging from the schematic, it would seem I'm not getting "3VDUAL PCH" for whatever reason, since my power-on pin is "dead" and stuck at 0.6v all the time, but where it comes from remains a bit of a mystery. Assuming that "PWRBTSW 17" tag leads straight to the ITE chip, it could be that it's faulty and pulling that line down. I'd need to find the pull-up resistor and measure before it to see if there's 3.3v there. The BIOS chips also don't have 3.3v on them when in standby. It's only after I perform the trick to start the board that they actually get 3.3v on pins 8....
              Wattevah...

              Comment


                #8
                Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                3VDUAL_PCH is present if you can get the board to turn on, so nothing to worry about there.
                Did you remove ESD10 yet?
                OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                  No, I haven't actually touched anything, except the M_BIOS chip which I removed and replaced and then put back...maybe tomorrow if I go visit my old shop where the board is. I often go there to help out and play, since I kept in touch with the boys there

                  That's another weird thing I haven't mentioned: even though the board was saying it was recovering the main bios from the backup one, I had a feeling it didn't actually write anything to the M_BIOS chip (hence the infinite boot loops and recovery attemtps), so to confirm, I removed the M_BIOS chip entirely and the board still came on (by jumping those ITE pins, of course), so it was running on the B_BIOS chip all the time. What I did next was replace the original chip with a blank one to see what happens, thinking perhaps the chip is dead or has internal faults. I was expecting to see the B_BIOS contents getting transferred over to the new, now blank chip, that I just put in, but no: same story: the board came on, went through its recovery process over and over, but when I removed the M_BIOS chip again and checked it on my CH341 programmer it was still blank ! This was clearly not working, so what I did next was I let the board came on on just the B_BIOS chip like before so I could go into the Q-FLASH utility and update to the latest version which I found (F10). Then, I put the original M_BIOS chip back on the board and upon first power-on it once again "recovered" it, but this time it actually worked: the board is coming on and working fine, except it doesn't switch on/off via the buttons. I just wanted to update on everything I did to this board since then.
                  Wattevah...

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                    It might be related to glitches with power/reset buttons, not sure… but for now I'd ignore it and try to fix power button.
                    OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                      Ok, everybody who's reading this: I need you to open up your PCs right now and measure the voltage you get on your power/reset buttons If you have a Gigabyte MOBO, that's even better
                      Wattevah...

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                        Here's some actual close-ups of the area around the front panel connector. The chip in question is a c96fj which links to THIS. I doubt it's to blame though. My money is still on the big ITE chip.

                        EDIT: here's a close-up of the ITE chip as well. The pins I touch to get it going are the ones in the top-right where that small lone capacitor is.
                        Attached Files
                        Last edited by Dannyx; 12-30-2019, 08:02 AM.
                        Wattevah...

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                          Ok, get this: the board is now working I ended up removing that 6-pin ESD chip and I got 3.3v on both of the pins (reset and power) so the board is behaving normally now. My idea is that one of those internal diodes had become shorted and those 0.6v I was seeing on the power/reset pins was the voltage drop across the remaining diode which was still good...just a thought :|
                          Wattevah...

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                            It's nice to hear it's working, but you should find a replacement (assuming you still have the board with you) for that.

                            I've been bit by Intel's stupid 82801ER southbridge going up in smoke because of inexistent ESD protection enough to take measures about anything ESD related.
                            Main rig:
                            Gigabyte B75M-D3H
                            Core i5-3470 3.60GHz
                            Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 1GB GDDR5
                            16GB DDR3-1600
                            Samsung SH-224AB DVD-RW
                            FSP Bluestorm II 500W (recapped)
                            120GB ADATA + 2x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB
                            Delux MG760 case

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                              Yeah, I still have the board - it's "ours" so I'm free to play with it however I want. I guess I could probably rip a similar IC from a dead board instead of bothering to buy one, can't I ?
                              Wattevah...

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Re: GA-H87-HD3 replacing an IT8720F

                                Originally posted by Dannyx View Post
                                Yeah, I still have the board - it's "ours" so I'm free to play with it however I want. I guess I could probably rip a similar IC from a dead board instead of bothering to buy one, can't I ?
                                As long as it fits and doesn't go bang, sure.
                                Main rig:
                                Gigabyte B75M-D3H
                                Core i5-3470 3.60GHz
                                Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 1GB GDDR5
                                16GB DDR3-1600
                                Samsung SH-224AB DVD-RW
                                FSP Bluestorm II 500W (recapped)
                                120GB ADATA + 2x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB
                                Delux MG760 case

                                Comment

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