SOLVED GA-890FXA-UD5 Reboot Issue

[SOLVED!] GA-890FXA-UD5 Reboot Issue

Ladies & Gentlemen:

First off, I'm a long time reader, first time poster. I think Overclockers Forum is the best. I've been reading up a lot about the GA-890FXA-UD5 and some of the problems with the Phenom II X6 CPUs attached to them.

My Components:
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1075T
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 BIOS IS F6
RAM: Crucial Ballistix BL2K25664BN1608
Hard Drive: (tbd)
Case: Thermaltake Soprano (OLD I KNOW!)
VGA: Asus EAH5770CuCoreG2
CPU Cooler: Water Cooling Kit by thermaltake (Big water is760 I think?)
Power Supply: Antec Earthwatts 850W PSU (not certain, if Earthwatt edition, modular with 8 pin EPS)

Its 3 AM in Cali and I have to work in a few hours, so I'm tired. Please excuse me if I seem incoherent. I will try my best to explain the situation:

I've had this setup since mid November which I upgraded my old rig due to COD: Black Ops. Since the beginning of my build, i have had problems. Specifically during a reboot of the system, the system slows down a great deal around testing memory and detecting hard drives and does not boot into the OS no matter how long I leave it for. I am forced to completely power off the board, ensure that all power leaves the board, and power on and boot in order to have a successful bootup. I have tried updating the BIOS and changing timings / speed / voltage on the RAM. Same problem occurs. It also doesn't matter what hard drive I have in place (or one at all for that matter) the problem still occurs on reboot.

This issue didn't bug me before because I wasn't powering it down very often, usually kept running 90% of the time and while running I generally don't experience issues. Unfortunately I'd like to eventually overclock the CPU / VGA / RAM and throw in an SSD drive, but I can't seem to figure out this reboot issue.

Lately I have tried to add in a couple of SSD drives from Patriot (different models, one PS-100 and another Torqx, the 32 GB edition). The PS-100 is just faulty and needs to be RMA'd as tried it on a couple of different systems with the same result. Controller doesn't work right and systems don't detect it properly. Whereas the Torqx doesn't always get detected by the system and when it does, crashes the system if I try to boot off of it. I have not tried the Torqx in any other systems yet so I don't know if it is just faulty or the motherboard is having issues.

I'm trying to determine if my motherboard is faulty or if I just have bad luck with SSDs (or Patriot's SSDs just suck).

Can you tell me what my BIOS settings should be in order to resolve the reboot issue I'm experiencing? I'm not interested in overclocking just yet, a proper functioning system is first and foremost.

I also need to know whether I should spend money RMA-ing this board or if you guys/gals have any suggestions or at least if anyone else is experiencing the same problems even before I starting bugging Gigabyte.

You said this was an upgrade. How old is the PSU? Have you tested the ram with Memtest86+ (at least 4 passes)? What are your core temps like? Have you tried a different video card or just using the onboard video, if it has that?

Please install CPU-z and upload pics of these tabs: "CPU", "Memory" and "SPD".

My apologies, I forgot to mention all of that:

Power supply was upgraded along with the motherboard, CPU, and memory and VGA. So its only a few months old at his point (November, 2010). I always upgrade the power supply with new parts such as these to eliminate older power supply problems.

I have not specifically ran memtest on the system just yet. I didn't think it would be significant at this point. All it would tell me is if there was a problem that some settings are off, or bad memory, in which case I'm already suspecting that. I just wish I had another set of DDR3 memory to test the system with.

CPU Core temps are on average 30-40 C. Motherboard temps go up as high as 50 C. I was running on a raid 0 setup but trying to swap that out for a single SSD (which problems are listed in the previous post). Is the motherboard temps too high? Does that indicate a problem with the mobo?

I'll upload CPU-Z pics shortly.

I posted the screenshots of the CPU-Z tabs that you requested but I'm waiting for a moderator to approve the post.

In any case, the motherboard has all default settings (none of the settings have been changed from optimized defaults). I have noticed that the RAM, and CPU have some overclock going on.

But I'll await to see what anybody has to say about this before proceeding.

FYI FOR LINKS OF PICS:
http://img848.imageshack.us/i/cpuzcpu.png/
http://img689.imageshack.us/i/cpuzmemory.png/
http://img64.imageshack.us/i/cpuzspd.png/
http://img13.imageshack.us/i/cpuzmainboard.png/

Will wait for the moderator to approve posting of the images. I hate having to follow links when interacting on forums. It is so much less convenient than being able to see what you need right there in the post itself. By the way, I think there is a file size limit on the uploads so sometimes that is why they don't work.

Is your reboot issue being caused by your raid configuration and switching to an SSD drive? Raid can be problematic when the drives aren't identical or at least very similar.

What is your bios set to for the drive configuration? RAID? IDE? AHCI?

This may or may not apply but you cannot reformat a drive that has been used in RAID until you remove the "meta data" from it. There is some Linux software that can be used for this.

Speaking of Linux, have you tried booting from one of the "live" Linux distros that does not install on the hard drive but boots from a CD? That would help you eliminate some problems related to hard disk or SD disk issues.

I'm also a little perplexed by your saying you have not tried Mem Test86+ because it may just tell you what you are already suspecting, namely that you may have bad ram. Wouldn't you want to know that for sure? That could be at the heart of your problem. You could be ignoring the proverbial elephant in the living room.

trents said:

Will wait for the moderator to approve posting of the images. I hate having to follow links when interacting on forums. It is so much less convenient than being able to see what you need right there in the post itself. By the way, I think there is a file size limit on the uploads so sometimes that is why they don't work.

Click to expand...

I think the images are not loading due to hosting a image shack and not using the correct URL.

trents said:

Is your reboot issue being caused by your raid configuration and switching to an SSD drive? Raid can be problematic when the drives aren't identical or at least very similar.

What is your bios set to for the drive configuration? RAID? IDE? AHCI?

Click to expand...

I wouldn't imagine that the switch from RAID to a single SSD would cause the problem. This problem occurs even when I completely reset BIOS settngs, whether raid is configured or not. In fact, I don't even have the same raid hard drives even connected to the computer at this point in time. I also know that if I change the hard drive configuration that the BIOS needs to be changed to NOT boot up using RAID mode and that for an SSD it SHOULD be AHCI.

trents said:

This may or may not apply but you cannot reformat a drive that has been used in RAID until you remove the "meta data" from it. There is some Linux software that can be used for this.

Click to expand...

Yes, I was well aware of this issue. I intend on formatting the drives once I get everything else situated.

trents said:

Speaking of Linux, have you tried booting from one of the "live" Linux distros that does not install on the hard drive but boots from a CD? That would help you eliminate some problems related to hard disk or SD disk issues.

Click to expand...

I'm not even concerned about the SSD drive at this point. I just want everything else working correctly.

trents said:

I'm also a little perplexed by your saying you have not tried Mem Test86+ because it may just tell you what you are already suspecting, namely that you may have bad ram. Wouldn't you want to know that for sure? That could be at the heart of your problem. You could be ignoring the proverbial elephant in the living room.

Click to expand...

Memtest will give me issues if the settings are bad in the BIOS [AND] if the memory is bad. If I can eliminate having bad settings in the BIOS, this would ensure that if I get bad memory errors in memtest, it will more likely be bad memory than BIOS settings.

Images are attached. Should be fixed now.

A Quick update. I managed to borrow some DDR3 memory, although I don't specifically know if it is in the QVL for this motherboard. However the same thing happened. Upon reboot the system was practically locking up, and extremely slow. For sh*ts and giggles, I went and swapped out the graphics card to an older card I had on hand. Same thing.

I now know at this point the RAM I'm trying to use is not affecting the state of this problem, nor is my video card.

I don't have an AM3 CPU available to swap out and test. I know that with the newer AMD CPUs at least, not sure about older ones, that the memory controller is integrated with the CPU. Could this be whats causing the system to slow down / lock up after a simple reboot? Again, powering off the system completely and turning it back on brings it completely back to life with no problems what-so-ever.

The integrated memory controller on the newer AMD CPUs actually speeds up performance.

Perhaps the ram slots on your board are bad. CPUs are very, very rarely defective. Do you have the latest bios installed?. This could easily be a bios issue.

Your memory timings look correct. How much voltage are you giving your ram? Should be somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6. Make sure you set it manually. Don't trust "auto".

Your CPU core voltage is tool low. Try putting it to 1.35.

trents said:

... Perhaps the ram slots on your board are bad. CPUs are very, very rarely defective. Do you have the latest bios installed?. This could easily be a bios issue.

Click to expand...

Yes I do have the latest BIOS installed. One of the first things I tried before posting the thread. I tried the other RAM slots on the board as well. Same result. If the ram slots were bad, wouldn't there be more symptoms than just problematic restarts? Shouldn't I also encounter BSODs, etc.? I don't get that when I boot into the system on cold boot.

trents said:

Your memory timings look correct. How much voltage are you giving your ram? Should be somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6. Make sure you set it manually. Don't trust "auto".

Click to expand...

I have learned my lesson on previous builds about "auto". So when I start to have problems, its typically the first thing to go. I have the ram voltage at 1.65 v, which is what they are rated for @ 1600 MHz. Probably overkill for 1333 at the moment but I'll worry about that afterwards.

trents said:

Your CPU core voltage is tool low. Try putting it to 1.35.

Click to expand...

I'll give that a try right now...

cgfresno said:

I'll give that a try right now...

Click to expand...

I'm looking in the BIOS at this moment (typing from my laptop instead), and it says Normal CPU Vcore is set at 1.3750 V and I cannot adjust it. Right above it, it says CPU Voltage Control [NORMAL] so when adjust it, it basically does -0.025V and a blue number to right comes up to 1.3500 V. However from my understanding thats basically under volting the CPU in comparison to what is set on CPU-Z.

I have attached an image of the BIOS so you can see what I'm talking about.

Suggestions?

Hit the "+" or "-" key to change CPU voltage. It actually says your are .25 v undervolted if I am interpreting your bios correctly (-.25). I think you should slow your ram down to 1333 mhz and tighten the timings a bit. What is rated at 1600 is usually just extra good 1333 that will run at 1600 with extra voltage and/or looser timings. Besides, a lot of people will tell you that AMD CPUs do not benefit much from ram speeds above 1333 but do benefit more from tighter timings. As a side note, AMD CPUs' ICM are rated at 1333. Try it at 1333, and put your ram voltage at 1.55.

trents said:

Hit the "+" or "-" key to change CPU voltage. It actually says your are .25 v undervolted if I am interpreting your bios correctly (-.25). I think you should slow your ram down to 1333 mhz and tighten the timings a bit. What is rated at 1600 is usually just extra good 1333 that will run at 1600 with extra voltage and/or looser timings. Besides, a lot of people will tell you that AMD CPUs do not benefit much from ram speeds above 1333 but do benefit more from tighter timings. As a side note, AMD CPUs' ICM are rated at 1333. Try it at 1333, and put your ram voltage at 1.55.

Click to expand...

My ram is at 1333 MHz, it even shows that in the screenshot. With all the research I've done I know the ICM does't benefit from 1600. I'll back down the voltage to 1.55 but I KNOW that will not solve the problem. I'll try it anyways.

In regards to the vcore voltage, the -.025 v that shows in the screenshot is an example, as the "NORMAL" setting basically gets the voltage which you suggested. Perhaps vdroop is required? I know that was a problem for some socket 775 intel cpus. The BIOS setting for vcore in this case is set 1.35 V but CPU-Z screenshots early in this thread are reporting different.

Yep same result. Nothing different.

Hmm.... ?

You are correct about your bios interpretation but you still should be able to change the CPU voltage with "+" and "-" keys. At 1.35 you are still under-volting it since "normal" is 1.375. Why don't you try that setting.

I believe your are wrong about your ram not being rated at 1600:

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=BL2KIT25664BN1608

Also, look at your pic from the CPU-z "SPD" tab in post #6. Note the XMP-1600 (800) column on the far right. Its reading that from info stored on your ram modules. Supposedly, it will run at 1600 speeds at those timings on some systems, emphasis mine.

Having said all that, you do have the latest bios so its beginning to look like you have bad ram slots and need to RMA the board.

trents said:

You are correct about your bios interpretation but you still should be able to change the CPU voltage with "+" and "-" keys. At 1.35 you are still under-volting it since "normal" is 1.375. Why don't you try that setting.

I believe your are wrong about your ram not being rated at 1600:

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=BL2KIT25664BN1608

Also, look at your pic from the CPU-z "SPD" tab in post #6. Note the XMP-1600 (800) column on the far right. Its reading that from info stored on your ram modules. Supposedly, it will run at 1600 speeds at those timings on some systems, emphasis mine.

Having said all that, you do have the latest bios so its beginning to look like you have bad ram slots and need to RMA the board.

Click to expand...

I completely agree with the ram settings and I get what you're saying. I was afraid it might come to the board being a problem. I'll do some further testing just to rule out any problems (like trying a different PSU just to be safe) and get in contact with Gigabyte on Monday for an RMA.

I'll keep this thread updated with what happens. One thing I hate is when people don't come up with a solution to their problems, especially when other people can utilize the information. Thanks anyways trents.

I agree with your sentiments about taking pains to come up with solutions to problems that might help others. That's what this forum is all about. Good spirit. Get back to us.

...

I am having the exact same problem cgfresno is having with the ga-890fxa-ud5, although my vcore is solid at 1.4v.

My system POSTs at normal speed if I power cycle it using the PSU switch, or if I unplug it for a moment before powering it back up, but if I reboot the system, or go into the BIOS and save with no changes made (which also restarts the system), it is back to starting up incredibly slowly.... I swear, it takes more than 5 minutes just to POST, and if you go into the BIOS with the system in that state, every key-press lags like a *******.

Here's my build for what it's worth:

CPU: Phenom II X6 1100T
Mobo: ga-890fxa-ud5 (tried both F5 and F6 BIOS, no change)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB DDR3 1866 (also tried spare Mushkin DDR3-10666, no change)
Video: Sapphire Radeon HD6970 2GB (Also tried spare Asus HD3800, no change)
PSU: Corsair Professional Series AX1200
Case: Silverstone TJ10-BW
HDD: 300Gb Velociraptor

My build is pretty straight-forward really, and it does run fine once you've managed to get the blasted thing to boot.

I personally don't believe any combination of BIOS setting or mix-and-match of my existing components will help... At this point I'm going to blame BIOS compatibility with the Phenom II x6, or damage/defect to the board.

I'll keep watching this thread to see how things turn out. I'm very curious.

Howdy all. I have the jiggy 890fx-ud5 with 1055t. I have run into similar boot problems but only after ocing and particularly when messing with the ram speed and timings. The OP shows his ram @command rate 1t and Jedec shows the timing @2t. More importantly for this mb and Phenom 1055t, ime, is speed of ram. I use 3 different types for different clocks.
1. G. Skill F3 1600Mhz PC12800CL9D 9 9 9 24 33 2t
2. G. Skill Ripjaws 1600Mhz PC12800CL8D 8 8 8 20 33 1t
3. AData XPG 2000Mhz PC16000 8 8 8 24 33 2t

The reason I use 3 types of ram is because I found out, at least for my system, that it is very picky about ram frequency/speed more than timings, but they are important also. I'll use my chip for example, the 1055t.

Stable at 2.8Ghz, ram 2x8@1600Mhz 8 8 8 24 2t, 200 cpu/freq, 10x ht/nb. Follow me so far?

Stable at 3.64Ghz, ram 3x10@1733Mhz 8 8 8 24 2t, 260 cpu/freq, 10x ht/nb 2080Mhz.

But, not stable at 3.5Ghz, or 3.9Ghz, or a few others. And it is because of the ram not the cpu. Some airplane engines/props have a range of rpm's that cause destructive harmonics, above and below that rpm is fine. The same seems to be true of these mb's and Phenoms. My mb/ram doesn't like 1492Mhz, 1533Mhz, some others in high 1600s, 1800s.

The 3 types of ram I use all work best at different speeds even though their range is similar or the same. I've run the AData at 2100+ but it hates 1800. The Ripjaws runs fine at 1666 but not 1492 or 1333 even. I tried all the bios versions, half stepping, full stepping, chip drivers, etc. The only thing that worked for me is to drain the cmos; clear your cmos and start fresh. My bios would hang and never post or hang for minutes. So clear cmos, then go from there. Mine runs best at 3640Mhz. You may have to find your best settings and they may not be stock. It was almost always my ram speed, not timings if set at factory timings; 8 8 8 33 24 2t for G. skill CL8D. Clear cmos, do it. BTW the Ripjaws X series is made for intel P67 afaik.

You know it seems to me the majority of motherboard issues we deal with here on the forum are with Gigabyte boards. They seem to have a lot of quirky products these days. Maybe its just because there are so many of them in use.