Z87-GD65 Gaming: shifting problems - too many external devices?

[erikb]

I've been having continual problems since getting an RMA replacement board two months ago (my first board had a defective chip).  The problems include the BIOS sometimes not recognizing the external hard drives attached to my two eSATA brackets and sometimes not sending a video signal to the monitor.  Recently I posted a question here about USB 3.0 external enclosures acting unpredictably (I returned the enclosures but now believe they were not at fault).    i've also had other strange problems like my boot drive not being recognized in BIOS and Linux DVD's sometimes not booting (but booting other times).

My external devices include four external drives (two USB 3.0 and two eSATA), a scanner, two printers, and I send second display output to a video capture card in a separate computer (for filming machinima).  When i move all these devices to my four year old Asus Sabertooth X58, they behave flawlessly, but when I connect all of them to the MSI, I quickly have problems.

I use this computer in my work.  I'm on it all day.  I can't afford the amount of down time I'm having because of these problems and am wondering whether the board is defective, in which case I should RMA it (again), or if it's not defective, maybe my usage is just wrong for it and i should just sell it on ebay and replace it with another Sabertooth, which has been a fantastically reliable board.

This is my first MSI board.  I'd love to get opinions of people with more MSI experience than I have. 

My system:
- Win 8.1 (non-UEFI)
- i7-4770
- 300GB WD Velociraptor boot drive
- two Intel 120GB SSD's in RAID 0 for video motion capture
- DVD drive
- Blu-Ray drive
- EVGA GTX-760 video card
- two external USB 3.0 drives (320GB and 2TB)
- two external eSATA drives (3TB each)
- Intel network card
- Epson V-700 scanner
- Brother HL-2270DW printer
- HP Office Jet Pro 8100 printer
- second monitor output (duplicate display)
- microphone, speakers, webcam, etc

 

[rhradacut]

What brand and model power supply do you have in it?

 

[erikb]

The PSU is a Corsair TX-750, 750 watts.  It's about two years old.  It was powering my Sabertooth X58 before I installed the MSI and there was never any sign that it was a problem.

 

[erikb]

In case it helps anyone with similar problems, I think I know the cause of my trouble: a Rosewill RX-358 U3C USB 3.0-eSATA hdd enclosure.  i posted a question about it several months ago when I was suspicious that it was causing problems.  I ended up returning those two enclosures, assuming they were defective, but I've had really good luck with the older USB 2.0 version of that enclosure and I was still hoping I could switch from using eSATA to USB 3.0 for my external drives, so I took a chance and ordered another RX-358 U3C.  It works fine on the Asus Sabertooth X58 motherboard in a computer I built four years ago and still use in my work, but for reasons I can't fathom, it causes all sorts of problems on the MSI.  After I removed the enclosure and replaced it with one of my four year old USB 2.0 version of it, the problems with the MSI completely vanished.

I've ordered a two port PCIe eSATA card so I can can continue to connect my two old enclosures with eSATA to free up the internal ports I'm currently using for eSATA brackets.  Hopefully this will work.  I really like this motherboard, but this problem has been a real headache.