• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

My Maximus Formula needs help getting my QX6700 booted

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

benbaked

Folding/SETI/Rosetta Team Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2005
Location
WA
Hi all, I'm having some trouble with my Maximus Formula board. Here's the scoop: I run overclocked at 3.2 GHz (400x8) with 1.45v set in the BIOS. This is enough for me to fold rosetta@home on all four cores stably for weeks on end. However, getting the system to successfully cold boot is always a challenge. At every cold boot one of two things happens: either 1) it just sits there with the fans spinning and no video, or 2) the POST gives me two beeps with a message on the screen stating "Overclock failed". At this point when I go into the BIOS I find it has reset my FSB to 266, if I change it back to 400 and then save and reboot it will warm boot into Windows successfully and run quite happily at 3.2 GHz with full load.

Here's some further details:

It's cooled by a TRUE with a 2K rpm Kaze, average load temps during rosetta@home are in the low 60s celsius. In the BIOS I have enabled Loadline Calibration and have set the FSB strap to 400. I'm running regular old DDR2-800 and have the memory set to that setting in the BIOS.

I am at a loss why I always have trouble cold booting this rig. I will be connecting the LCD Poster to the board this evening to see if I can get some detailed error messages out of it when it errors out during the cold boot. Any suggestions you can offer to me on how to resolve this issue are appreciated.
 
Are u giving your RAM volts? My problems with strange behavior on this board were ALWAYS related to memory.

Upgrade to Rampage BIOS, u can squeeze some more out. :D:thup:
 
I've got the maximus extreme and I know that whenever I had problems a good place to start was that LCD poster. When you get it connected let us know what is says...Have you used it before?
 
I connected the LCD Poster and it is hanging with the message "DET DRAM". I've tried two different sets of DDR2-800 (one of which I have been running at 400 mhz 1:1 and stock settings in my P35-DS3R system for over a year without troubles). Both sets of RAM cause the board to exhibit the same cold boot hang. I've tried changing plenty of settings in the BIOS (raised voltages on fsb termination, cpu gtl ref, vdimm, turned off LLC, set RAM to 2T, slowed down RAM timings, raised memory controller and channel voltages, turned off transaction booster, set ai clock twister to light, turned off static read control) and nothing has helped. Only if I set ai clock tuner to auto and run my stuff at stock is it then able to cold boot successfully without requiring me to hold its hand.

It has BIOS version 1302 right now. I even tried changing out the power supply (Epsilon 700w) with a better one (Corsair 750w) just to rule that out.
 
Thanks for the link chawks2! I tried upping the PCIe speed to 105 MHz, it didn't solve the issue and gave me some light video corruption (slightly scribbly horizontal lines) upon a boot, so I've lowered it down to 101 MHz.

The techpowerup article mentioned problems with a fan plugged into the PWR FAN header, I don't have anything plugged in there but its good I read that as I had been planning on using that header when I go to push/pull on my heatsink (might have to rethink that strategy now). Another link to a nice thread on XS suggested tinkering with the Transaction Booster settings to resolve the most common cause of DET DRAM errors, I'll be trying that tonight, ambient heat permitting. ;)

Thanks again guys.
 
DET DRAM is a incorrect PL/timing setting...
it can be frustrating to find the sweet spot for you ram,
post your bios settings it will help to see what can be changed.
 
Back