PROJECT LOG Katana

I am happy to announce that I have built another rig! MY first is still in my signature below. It has not been retired but rahter has changed hands to a friend of mine. He had shown some interest in buying a PC some time ago and I talked him into buying mine since I wanted a new one but did not have the funds. I must say though that I think he will be completely satisfied with that rig (Zenmaster) for some time to come. Enough with the nostalgia let me move on to the reason that you are here.

Here is the build list for this rig:
i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost)
GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 Mobo
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II
G.SKILL Ripjaw 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 (PC3 12800)
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD
2X Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 RPM HDD
Corsair TX650 PSU
NZXT Phantom White
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit

While I admit that there is nothing truly special hardware wise about this build I must say that I really do like the setup that I have. I am glad to have moved into this build with Sandy Bridge being out and tested for a little while. I must admit however that I thought long and hard about going AMD for this build. I really wanted to, sorry AMD fans.

The Gigabyte mobo was a change for me. I had the ASUS P5Q-E for my last build and really liked it. I put it though the first time OCer treatment and it kept trucking. I love/d that board but I guess new things come along.

I had heard good things about the Twin Frozor II and during the decision process someone mentioned that it is flashable to 6970 if I remember correctly.

During the decision process there was a time when I was trying to cut costs. Go figure that it did not work... so I stuck with the OCZ Vertex 3 instead of going with the Vertex 2. As all things go though I saw the Vertex 3 with a mail in about a week ago. Oh well...

Enough with here are some pics of the initial hardware install. Please excuse the blurry/bad quality. While I may have enough money for a new comp, getting a camera seems to keep falling to the back burner. Just don't look to close and they look great!















So there you have it for now. I do have more that I want to post but I am going to take a quick break for now. BBL if you see this before I get the chance to edit.

Reserved for future updates!

A New Beginning
Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011
4 days away from my birthday.
I have finally gotten a start on this mod. I have had this case for a little while now as you can tell and things have settled to where I am feeling good enough to tackle this endeavor. There are a few things that I want to do to this case so I will lay them out for you. As always I welcome any and all suggestions/thoughts and constructive criticism.
You will also be happy to know that I got a new phone, therefore a new camera. The pictures don't turn out so... swimmy now.

At the Mercy of the Wind
Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011

Mounted
Monday, Oct. 24, 2011
Finally got around to posting the piccs from mounting the rad. I have a few questions that I will need to outline and ask. You will hind a post about fans as well. If you get the chance take a look and let me know what you think.

Damn I feel like I am drunk when I look at your pics..

TorqueRanger said:

Damn I feel like I am drunk when I look at your pics..

Click to expand...

Yea the camera that I have is a really old one. I didn't realize they were that bad until after I uploaded them. I think next time I will just use my phone. It is at least a little less blurry.

BSOD: Kernel_Data_InPage_Error

Well I hate to say it but I have run into an issue. At first I thought that it was a setting that I either had or had not enabled but seeing that the BSOD keeps happening no matter what I try I have decided to turn to all of you. I am a first time SSD owner so there may be something that I am missing in the BIOS or other setting. I read on the OCZ site that ACHI was not recommended by OCZ and may cause some issues. I have since tried with and with out ACHI enabled still the same issue occurs. I tested the RAM first and didn't get any error messages so I am leaning towards the SSD as the HDDs are just for storage.

Symptoms:
The computer will be fine for a long period, say 24-48 hrs, then it will BSOD for no reason. I have seen it do it while in a game and also while idle. I can't recall all of the BSOD messages that I have gotten but if I remember correctly they all point to a fault in a storage device.

When the crash occurs during idle/mild usage the computer will begin to become sluggish to respond, stop responding, then after 3-5 secs BSOD. It will never completely restart after the BSOD. I have to hit the reset button or hold the power button. When it POSTs it will sometimes not recognize the SSD though all of the other SATA devices are listed. It will load into Windows fine and be in great operating order for some time.

What I have tried:

I checked the Gigabyte site about a week ago for a BIOS update hoping that would provide a fix but no dice.

I made sure that I have the latest chipset drivers for my Mobo.

Ran UBCD to try to test the SSD but no dice there. I couldn't get GWScan to recognize the SSD. This could have been due to operator error.

I am at a complete loss as to where to go from here. I do not know of a good way to test the SSD for faults; such as a benching program as I have not read up on benching it. I am an open book here, thanks for any help in advance.

Check your rams placement.

Here is a proper way...

SamSaveMax said:

Check your rams placement.

Here is a proper way...

Click to expand...

I am running two 2GB sticks. I had them in the Channel B configuration. I have now switched them to the Channel A config to see if there will be any difference. I forgot that I had done this before but I had switched the RAM from Channel A to B and there was no difference. Just to clarify my two RAM sticks now exist in the the left had slots that are labeled 2 and 4. Going to run some LinX to see if I can get a BSOD.

EDIT: Well I guess that this is a good thing. I switched the RAM around and ran 20 passes of LinX and passed. Not that this means that the issue is solved but at least I know for now that the RAM is stable. Here is the just cause.

So far so good on the RAM. I could have sworn that I had already tried that.

TorqueRanger said:

Damn I feel like I am drunk when I look at your pics..

Click to expand...

i LOL'd

nice hardware btw!

Spoke to soon about the RAM. Had a BSOD when I walked in today. Anything else that could be causing it? I have the pic and will upload it in a sec.

That's not how to set up rams in channel A nor B.
Did you put them in the correct way as shown in slot 1 & 2 or 3 & 4 in the attached picture?
Ideally, put them in slot 1 & 2 if you have 2 sticks. Do read your manual

I have the exact same board as you.

SamSaveMax said:

That's not how to set up rams in channel A nor B.
Did you put them in the correct way as shown in slot 1 & 2 or 3 & 4 in the attached picture?
Ideally, put them in slot 1 & 2 if you have 2 sticks. Do read your manual

I have the exact same board as you.

Click to expand...

I see it now. I do have them RAM in the wrong places. On the board, where the yellow squares are, it says: left side: 2 and 4 right side: 1 and 3 and when I looked at the diagram I looked at the columns and not the rows thinking that the RAM had to be in either channel A or B; not A and B. Thanks for the help! Though please don't mention this to anyone else.

SamSaveMax said:

That's not how to set up rams in channel A nor B.
Did you put them in the correct way as shown in slot 1 & 2 or 3 & 4 in the attached picture?
Ideally, put them in slot 1 & 2 if you have 2 sticks. Do read your manual

I have the exact same board as you.

Click to expand...

Who makes that 120mm fan????

On the Frio with its original fan.
92mm PWM ball bearing 4600rpm high output (OEM from my old HP computer...it's freaking loud)
Antec 120mm clear case with blue LED - 3 speeds switchable. (in the front)
Cooler Master 120mm with blue LED by the rear.
Cooler Master 120mm with red LED by the top GPU cooling area
for the Raidmax cooler, I'm using a dual 120mm PWM rifle bearing red LED from a Cooller Master V10 unit.

Still BSOD

My thread has been hijacked!

Bad news is bad. Seems like I am still having the same issue. This time it happened while I was away from my comp. It looks like it is the same error code however. I will have to look at the picture that I took to verify.

0x000000F4

EDIT: It appears to be the same as the one above. Any thoughts?

New Install, New BSOD

Ok so I thought that I saw the BSOD reference a .sys file so I decided to reinstall. I had some difficulty after installing the drivers and such. I downloaded all of my necessasry programs from Ninite and after restart the computer was not sponding to keyboard commands, I could still move the mouse. The computer then froze and eventually after ~2-3 mins came back to full operational speed. Everything seemed to be fine after that so I shrugged it off and moved on. Played video games for a bit and nothing went bad. I started getting XBMC setup again and began watching some MASH, paused the video for a little while, came back and there was the BSOD. I can not figure out what is causing it. Here is the latest screen.



Any help is as always appreciated!

I have tried the RAM in every configuration, I think, as suggested above none of which produce a different result. I have also changed from IDE to ACHI modes and neither seem to be better than the other. I still get a BSOD either way.

Coreyoliseffect said:

Symptoms:
The computer will be fine for a long period, say 24-48 hrs, then it will BSOD for no reason. I have seen it do it while in a game and also while idle. I can't recall all of the BSOD messages that I have gotten but if I remember correctly they all point to a fault in a storage device.

When the crash occurs during idle/mild usage the computer will begin to become sluggish to respond, stop responding, then after 3-5 secs BSOD. It will never completely restart after the BSOD. I have to hit the reset button or hold the power button. When it POSTs it will sometimes not recognize the SSD though all of the other SATA devices are listed. It will load into Windows fine and be in great operating order for some time.

Click to expand...

I am having exactly the same problem on a new build. I posted at techsupportforums but so far nothing. Here is a link to my post:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f299/blue-screen-on-brand-new-build-589949.html

kwong said:

I am having exactly the same problem on a new build. I posted at techsupportforums but so far nothing. Here is a link to my post:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f299/blue-screen-on-brand-new-build-589949.html

Click to expand...

I have actually had some success. I found out that, or so it seems, that the newest AMD drivers were causing a crash at first. So I downgraded those and that helped some. The other day I decided to reinstall windows just to see if that would help. I loaded the drivers from the Gigabyte CD then went to the site and made sure that I had all of the latest HDD/SSD drivers from their page. It seems like that has fixed it. I have not had a BSOD since then. I did however have a freeze last night but I think that was from the vid card. I started Bitcoin mining and I think that it may conflict with the vid drivers that I currently have installed.

Do you a problem with this board woken from sleep mode to have your overclocked turbo multiplier automatically resetted back to 34 or 35x?

===
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EDIT:
I happy to report that Gigabyte's lastest F8 Bios update has FIXED the sleep mode problem.

It's now functions normally. Turbo clock multiplier resumes as intended set in bios originally.

SamSaveMax said:

Do you a problem with this board woken from sleep mode to have your overclocked turbo multiplier automatically resetted back to 34 or 35x?

Click to expand...

I have not messed with ocing yet as I have not set up my wcing so I have not experienced that issue yet. I can set the turbo multi and see though once I get back to the house. ill have to set my power options to allow sleep mode as well. I usually have everything set to neversleep because I have programs that run overnight or while I am away and usage found that sleep modes sometimes interfere with those programs.