[SOLVED] ASUS Z97-A Overclocking help

Hello Overclockers,

I am quite a noob at overclocking and i need some help from you experts please. I currently have the following:
Asus Z97-A
Intel I-5 4690K
G.SKILL Ripjaws X 16GB(2x8GB) desktop memory
2xSamsung 840 EVO 250GB in Raid 0
Gigabyte GTX760 GDDR5 OC Graphics Card
EVGA Supernove 850W B2 PS
Enermax LIQTECH 240 CPU Liquid cooler
Arctic Accelero Hybrid II 120 Water Cooler for my graphics card

I plan on adding another Gigabyte GTX760 with Arctic Accelero water cooler

I want to get any kind of an overclock but im having a problem. if i use the EZ Wizard in the bios to overclock, its works great without my GTX760 graphics card with the attached water cooler(which does have a pump). The onboard graphics works with the automatic overclocking. Adding in a basic HD5450 graphic card in the PCIe slot(no extra power connectors needed) works also with the overclock. As soon as i connect the GTX760 graphics card with Arctic Accelero cooler and try to boot, i get no video on the screen and a series of a long beep followed by 3 short beeps which indicated a video problem if you look up the beep codes. To recover from this problem, i have to remove the GTX760, go into the bios, and reset to default settings. The GTX760 card works just fine with default(no overclocking) bios settings. As soon as i try any overclocking, i get no boot and no video and the beeps i mentioned above.
I've tried using the AI suite 5way optimization software to overclock and i get the same problem.
Could i have a power problem where i don't have enough wattage available with 850 Watt PS? Is there an issue with the graphics being overclocked when those cards are already overclocked? I'm not trying to OC the GTX760 and i've looked everywhere in the bios to find GPU overclock settings and i can't find any.

I hope you guys can help me. I've been stuck on this for a week.

Thank you in advance!

PSU should be fine. It's high quality.

Tried flashing the bios to the latest version?

EarthDog said:

PSU should be fine. It's high quality.

Tried flashing the bios to the latest version?

Click to expand...

+1 flash the bios. Do you know how to do that?

Are the power connectors to CPU 8 pin, 24 pin, and GPU PCIE power connected snuggly to the PSU and to the devices in question?

EarthDog said:

PSU should be fine. It's high quality.

Tried flashing the bios to the latest version?

Click to expand...

Yes i flashed the BIOS from version 1304 to 2012. Same problem occurs

Theocnoob said:

+1 flash the bios. Do you know how to do that?

Are the power connectors to CPU 8 pin, 24 pin, and GPU PCIE power connected snuggly to the PSU and to the devices in question?

Click to expand...

I flashed the BIOS to the latest version from 1304 to 2102. Im not sure what you mean by +1 flash.
The CPU has 8 pin power connected to it. The Gigabyte GTX760 OC card has a 6 pin and 8 pin connectors for power. I connect power to both those connectors and i make sure it is snug. The issue still occurs.

other things i have tried:
1. The Gigabyte GTX 760 OC card without the Arctic Accelero water cooler(i have one before i converted it to the water cooler) and it does the same thing when overclocking. No video and motherboard POST produces beep codes that signal a vga issue.
2. I've tried a EVGA GeForce GTX 465 PCIe graphics card that has two 6 pin power connectors. This card is not an already OC card. I am able to auto overclock the Asus Z97-A motherboard and the graphics works great.

I'm assuming that the GTX760 OC cards im using are somehow getting overclocked in the ASUS Z97-A motherboard Auto-Overclock and this isn't working? I'm not sure where in the BIOS to make sure this GPU is not getting overclocked.

Your GPU would not be overclocked by your motherboard bios. The only affect the bios can have on the GPU is the PCIE clock rate, which you should leave at default.

I don't think this is necessarily the issue, but do you have a spare, known to be good and working power supply you could try?

Also, have you isolated vcore from frequency as the possible cause of the issue?

In otherwords, have you tried just increasing vcore while leaving everything else stock?

Theocnoob said:

Your GPU would not be overclocked by your motherboard bios. The only affect the bios can have on the GPU is the PCIE clock rate, which you should leave at default.

I don't think this is necessarily the issue, but do you have a spare, known to be good and working power supply you could try?

Also, have you isolated vcore from frequency as the possible cause of the issue?

In otherwords, have you tried just increasing vcore while leaving everything else stock?

Click to expand...

i've ordered in a EVGA 1000Watt PS for troubleshooting this problem. It should be here tomorrow.

I've tried your suggestion and i am able to increase the vcore. under load with Cinebench the stock vcore is 1.05. I've increased the vcore to 1.10 and watched temps while running Cinebench. Everything works great. Then i ticked up the multiplier 1 above what it was at(went from 35 to 36 multiplier) and saved my bios setting. This booted with the GTX760 card installed. I ran Cinebench and watched the temp and everything looked good. I tried to reboot into the BIOS so i could tick the multiplier up to 37 and my problem reared its ugly head. beep codes and no video.

So my PS comes tomorrow and i'll try everything again with that new device. I'm also wondering if i should bring in a new motherboard.

any thoughts?

Wouldn't hurt to try another board.

I was able to resolve my issue. After extensive troubleshooting (serveral graphic cards, new cpu, contacting graphic card manufacturer, contacting motherboard manufacturer, etc), I was able to determine that any PCI 3.0 graphic card would fail to POST when any amount of overclock was performed on the CPU only, memory only, or both. any PCI 2.0 graphic card would work with overclocking. I acquired another exact same motherboard which is a ASUS Z97-A. on the new motherboard, overclocking worked with PCI 3.0 graphic cards. So, the ASUS motherboard was the issue. what's disturbing is ASUS support refused to give me any assistance.

Zorac12 due to the very weirdness of your problem and fact I have not heard of your symptoms and such a fix before...it would be nice if you would sign into your first post and put [SOLVED] as the first word in your original post title. That way your issue can be searched in forum as [SOLVED] and more people will read this thread and see how such a weird issue was actually the motherboard itself.

Thank you.
RGone...

EDIT:
Thanks Zorac12 for modifying the thread title. It should help if this type of thing affects more than one user.
END EDIT.

Similar Issue.

Hello Overclockers,

I have a similar issue to this with a similuar configuration. My conclusion it that the motherboard is faulty. Will RMA with Asus and see if that fixes anything.

I currently have the following hardware:
Asus Z97-A Rev1.03 Bios 2501
Intel I-5 4690K
Corsair CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9 (4x4GB) desktop memory
Crucial M500 960Gb Boot
GeForce GTX 980 Ti SC + ACX 2.0 (06G-P4-4995-KR)
EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2 (220-G2-0850-XR)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler

I have an issue where the system will fail to post because the TPU error light on the motherboard is lit up. Nothing on the monitors.

In order to get past this I have to pull the graphics card, unplug the computer, clear the CMOS, hook up the monitors to the onboard gpu and power it up.
I then get the message “Overclocking failed! Please enter Setup to reconfigure system. Press F1 to Run Setup.

MY COMPUTER IS NOT OVERCLOCKED. IT IS RUNNING AT STOCK SPEEDS.

At this point I reset my boot device and ensure that XMP on my memory is turned off and set PCI-E to gen 2. (If I leave it in auto it will fail to post again).

I can boot into windows and run off the onboard GPU.

At this point I will shut down, remove power and reinstall the discrete GPU.
I have tested with both an EVGA GTX 980 TI PCI-E gen 3 and an ASUS Radeon HD 6950 2GB PCI-E Gen 2.

I hook up the monitor cables to the discrete GPU. I turn the computer on.

Sometime it will POST, other times it will remain black and fail on the TPU light. Sometime on the CPU light. But if it fails I have to repeat the steps above. If I do get the system to boot. On my next reboot this will all happen again.

I have tried swapping memory with known good memory from 2 other computers. I have tried running on 1 stick of ram. Mem Test passed.

Both GPUs are know to work perfectly fine in my other computer and my friends computer, he ran the GTX 980 ti for me for 9 days.

I swapped out the PSU and issue still presents itself.

As this is a post issue that seems to only present it’s self when a device is plugged into one of the pci-e lanes. I believe that the motherboard is faulty.