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2 broken boards Any Ideas

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Johan45

Benching Team Leader Super Moderator
Joined
Dec 19, 2012
I'm making this post as a last ditch effort before I declare my board busted. Actually I'm having trouble with two boards a Crosshair V Formula and a Z version of the same. Two different issues but ironically they both happened when trying to run PCMark7 with a 4x SSD Raid 0 .
The Formula
Itried to run the bench with 2600 memory and the bench finished but the score out put was 9xx compared to 5xxx where it should be so I rebooted. That's when I noticed only 1 stick of ram was showing in the bios. So the problem solving began, I know for certain in both cases it's the board and not the CPU just to get that out of the way. CPUs tested and functioning normally. Tried different BIOS first, no change. Tore it down and let it sit overnight without battery and CPU removed just incase of moisture. No change , have flashed BIOS multiple times with different methods , no change. Tested RAM slots and found that only A1 and B1 are functiong. If A1 and A2 are populated only shows half the ram. If only A@ or B2 are populated =no boot..
Formula-Z
This one may have been moisture related but not definite. Running bench and score comes back at half what it should be. Find that my multiplier is stuck at 7x. Different CPU same thing. Different BIOS same thing. Sat overnight w/o battery still the same multi stuck at 7x. No it's not power saving or similar under stress test multi will not change and output for benches shows that it's not running full tilt. I even uninstalled the driver through device manager re-install ,reboot no change.
One other thing, I broke the array and tried a fresh vanilla copy of windows on both boards as well with no luck.
Any ideas, I'm all ears. I just find it very coincidental I lost 2 different boards running the same benchmark with raid.

EDIT: at this point I think the CHVF is done for , I still have some hope for the "Z"
 
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Pretty sure they're both out of the 3 year warranty period. The CHVz may have a chance but not likely. I can still put the Formula to use in the HTPC just no dual channel so I'd lose a bit on memory but it should still be fine for Gaming I would think. I'll swap it out for the Sabertooth R2 , may have to finally test that on out cold and see what it can do. I still have my fingers crossed for the Z but ...........
 
One thing broken boards are good for is spare parts.
from capacitors, to ATX power ports for projects.
>.> I'm still looking for an ATX power 24pin female, for a PSU to Bench Test conversion.
 
I'm making this post as a last ditch effort before I declare my board busted. Actually I'm having trouble with two boards a Crosshair V Formula and a Z version of the same. Two different issues but ironically they both happened when trying to run PCMark7 with a 4x SSD Raid 0 .
The Formula
Itried to run the bench with 2600 memory and the bench finished but the score out put was 9xx compared to 5xxx where it should be so I rebooted. That's when I noticed only 1 stick of ram was showing in the bios. So the problem solving began, I know for certain in both cases it's the board and not the CPU just to get that out of the way. CPUs tested and functioning normally. Tried different BIOS first, no change. Tore it down and let it sit overnight without battery and CPU removed just incase of moisture. No change , have flashed BIOS multiple times with different methods , no change. Tested RAM slots and found that only A1 and B1 are functiong. If A1 and A2 are populated only shows half the ram. If only A@ or B2 are populated =no boot..
Formula-Z
This one may have been moisture related but not definite. Running bench and score comes back at half what it should be. Find that my multiplier is stuck at 7x. Different CPU same thing. Different BIOS same thing. Sat overnight w/o battery still the same multi stuck at 7x. No it's not power saving or similar under stress test multi will not change and output for benches shows that it's not running full tilt. I even uninstalled the driver through device manager re-install ,reboot no change.
One other thing, I broke the array and tried a fresh vanilla copy of windows on both boards as well with no luck.
Any ideas, I'm all ears. I just find it very coincidental I lost 2 different boards running the same benchmark with raid.

EDIT: at this point I think the CHVF is done for , I still have some hope for the "Z"

Man, two broken boards of that calibre are a severe hit to any overclockers arsenal. Hopefully the "Z" has some life left in it.
 
Find that my multiplier is stuck at 7x

This I would bios recover and see if that helps. Use the original disk (likely has an old or original bios) so you may need to chek support list for compatible cpu (All should be supported except 9 series).

Unplug all HW except the DVD reader. Slap the original disk in and load bios recover.

A bios can take a dump just like any other HW.

Can also find biosdepot on ebay and have them send you a bios with requested version for a reasonable price.

GL

ShrimpBrime
 
Just hooked it up now to try again. Weird though after 18 hours minimum without the battery and a push button CMOS clear there are still settings saved in the BIOS. Namely ignore voltage and fan speed. Maybe my bios chip is wonky. It would be nice if it's that simple.
 
This I would bios recover and see if that helps. Use the original disk (likely has an old or original bios) so you may need to chek support list for compatible cpu (All should be supported except 9 series).

Unplug all HW except the DVD reader. Slap the original disk in and load bios recover.

A bios can take a dump just like any other HW.

Can also find biosdepot on ebay and have them send you a bios with requested version for a reasonable price.

GL

ShrimpBrime

I have already looked at them on ebay. Cost is only about $20 for me in CDN. Quite reasonable. I did have a crazy thought. What if I pulled the chip from the formula and stuck it into the Z. They look the same and the Z has the ability to do a dry flash from the ROG port. Any thoughts on that?
 
Basically a hotflash. Sure, you can try it, but if a regular bios flash isn't working, neither will that. The problem isn't that the bios is borked, the problem is the bios chip or board itself.
 
I'm thinking the formula has a physical defect and the Z is a bios chip problem. Tar's my thinking at this point so I think the bios chip on the formula is good. Maybe , at this point it's hard to tell but it may give it more of a complete write andcould also help me determine if the chips is bad or not, no?
 
Try it. Take the Formula chip and flash the Z bios to it and try it in the Z board.
Report back. I'm interested.
 
It wouldn't take it. The chips look the same but were numbers on them. All I got was a red light but no blinky. Put the olcd chip back in and still the same.I tried to get S_Bs DVD thing to work last night but it wouldn't start the recovery program All I got was a utility to get the drivers for win install. Am I doing something wrong there?
 
I dunno. Here's the operators manual instructions

3.10.3 Asus Crashfree Bios 3

The Asus CrashFree BIOS 3 utility is an auto recovery tool that allows you to restore the BIOS file when it fails or gets corrupted during the update process. You can restore a corrupted BIOS file using the motherboard support DVD or a USB flash drive that contains the bios file.

1. turn on the system

2. Insert the motherboard support DVD to the optical drive.

3. The utility automatically checks the devices for the bios file. WHen found, the utility reads the bios file and enters Asus EZ flash 2 automatically.

4, The system requires you to enter BIOS setup to recover the bios setting. To ensure system compatibility and stability, we recommend that you press F5 to load default BIOS values.

!! Do not shut down or reset the system while updating bios ect. ect. ect.

Basically this Support DVD is supposed to start the utility automatically.
 
need to swap bios chip with the board booted up\on then swap bios chips while in the bios then flash it-loosen the original chip so it just making contact to make easy to switch chips- wait think you need to be in windows to do a hotflash can you flash the chip from windows?

EDIT- if you can't flash in windows make a bootable usb drive as if you were going to flash it with the usb once you are booted in the usb then swap out the chip the flash it
 
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need to swap bios chip with the board booted up\on then swap bios chips while in the bios then flash it-loosen the original chip so it just making contact to make easy to switch chips- wait think you need to be in windows to do a hotflash can you flash the chip from windows?

EDIT- if you can't flash in windows make a bootable usb drive as if you were going to flash it with the usb once you are booted in the usb then swap out the chip the flash it

Switch bios chips while the board is powered up? Wouldn't this possibly fry the chip?
 
I would think that the board is done with the BIOS chip after it boots. Power / read chip- load bios/ move on to next stop in boot. Im not saying my 2 cents here are worth anything, but it would make a little sense that you could accomplish that with the board on.

Alternately,I read a post a while back about a gpu that had desoldered itself because of the amount of heat it was handling. Is there any way something like that is happening here?
 
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