Multiple attempts to boot i5-2500k & Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 REV. 1.3 Motherboard

Multiple attempts to boot i5-2500k & Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 REV. 1.3 Motherboard

Hello,

I'm new to the forum, but I've checked out several posts and found them quite helpful in my overclocking endeavors. Having a new issue after I thought all was stable on my system. Replaced a few parts recently and attempted some different overclocks and finally settled on a straight forward 4.5GHZ overclock with 2133mhz Ram on my i5-2500k with Z68XP-UD3 (rev 1.3) mobo. yeah, its a bit older but it is still performing pretty well, at least until I can afford an upgrade.
It seems stable in windows. Ran a few benchmarks and did the Intel Burn Test(tried standard, High, and Very High) and temps stay below 70 even under full load for extended periods of time.

However, I'm noticing that it has been taking several attempts to boot the last couple days. I'll go into the specifics of what my hardware is and what i've done with it recently, below.

So I'm currently running:
GA-Z68XP-UD3 REV 1.3 mobo
i5-2500k @ 4.5 GHZ (vcore set to 1.36v and LLC set to level 5. It was the lowest vcore i could set that it would be stable in windows.)
16GB Gskill Trident X 2400mhz DDR3 (set to 2133mhz and using settings to make it work from GSKill themselves, more on that later)
EVGA GTX 1070 SC Black Edition
250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD (recently swapped from a Corsair Force 3)
2TB Seagate Barricuda
Corsair H100i v2 Liquid Cooler
Thermaltake SMART m850w PSU (recently swapped from Corsair GS800 PSU)
Windows 10 Pro 64 bit

It all started when I was still using my GTX 580 SC and upgraded to the GTX 1070 SC (both Evga) and I was noticing some games (ie: World of Warcraft) weren't running perfect as i expected. I started to find out that i was actually getting CPU throttling and that Overclocking my 2500k and putting 2133 ram (vs my 8GB GSkill 1600mhz) would actually boost my fps in certain games that were more CPU bound. So I looked into upgrading my stock cooler and finding some 2133+ ram to use to give it a go.

I ended up finding a new Corsair H100i v2 from a guy off Kijiji and some Gskill Trident X 2400mhz DDR3 from a guy as well (used but confirmed working in my friends computer and now mine). So then I tried installing it and the RAM was giving me problems, it wasn't wanting to run at 2133mhz at all using the 2 XMP profiles it had. Only ran at 1600mhz even putting in the settings on the side of the ram. So, long story short, I contacted GSkill because it worked in my friends computer and I didn't want to give up on it. They told me to set it to 9-11-11-31 @ 1.6v and make sure the tRFC was maxed(255 on my mobo) and voila! It worked!

So, I ended up trying a few different overclocks from 4.3 to 4.6 ghz and even try for 5.0ghz (but the voltages were a bit high for my liking and it didn't boot right anyway). Finally found a simple guide for 4.5Ghz and it was the most stable by far. it basically said to turn up the vcore to 1.35v, Set the LLC to level 5, set the ram to the manufacturers specs (1.6v), and Enable PLL Overvoltage. It also said to turn off the power save functions like C1E and such, but I didn't do that because I wanted to try save power and keep temps lower at idle. I also asked GSkill if there was anything I could do to make my previous OC(4.6ghz using different settings and more manual control over PLL and VTT voltages) more stable with the ram. They suggested a slight boost to ram voltage or VTT voltage, but recommended I get the ram stable at stock first, then redo the overclock. So that's what I did.

Got it stable in windows, no more blue screens or anything even during stress tests and benchmarks and long periods of gaming at maxed graphics.

Another thing to quickly mention, I recently upgraded from windows 7 to windows 10, so it was a fresh format and install. got all the chipset drivers up to date and what not. Also I did just swap my old SSD from a Corsair Force 3 120 GB for a Samsung 850 Evo 250 GB and used samsungs data migration tool to clone the SSD and swapped it out(Just because I had recently done a reinstall and didn't feel like doing it all over again so soon). Windows is working fine at the moment, but just thought I should say I did that.

So, after all this I'm getting the issue where it's taking multiple tries to boot up. Anywhere from 2-5 times before it posts and continues with the boot. Just lights on and then powers off before anything shows up on screen.

I was noticing during my other attempts at overclocking, that my CPU vcore needed to be a little higher than most to boot after overclocking. So thats why mine is at 1.36 instead of 1.35 (as suggested by the guide) typically I'd need to bump mine 0.01 to 0.02 above most guides to get it to work.


TL;DR: Changed some hardware on my computer, working in windows 10 fine with overclock during stress tests, benchmarks, and gaming, but taking multiple attempts to post before booting properly. Any tips?

It's a bit to go through and I've been working at this for the better part of 3 weeks now, need some outside ideas/help. Thanks!

With running that much ram at a speed (2133 mhz) that is considerably higher than what the CPU's IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) (rated for 1600 mhz) you may need to give the IMC a littler voltage increase. Not sure what they called that in the bios of that generation of hardware but now it's called System Agent. If you can find what that is, try 1.2-1.25 volts.

Also, is your uncore/ring bus overclocked or did you keep it at st ock speeds? This is basically the cache.

trents said:

With running that much ram at a speed (2133 mhz) that is considerably higher than what the CPU's IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) (rated for 1600 mhz) you may need to give the IMC a littler voltage increase. Not sure what they called that in the bios of that generation of hardware but now it's called System Agent. If you can find what that is, try 1.2-1.25 volts.

Also, is your uncore/ring bus overclocked or did you keep it at st ock speeds? This is basically the cache.

Click to expand...

Yeah I see it in the voltage settings. It's called "System Agent" its at 0.920v at the moment.

Also, I'm not sure about the uncore/ring bus. Is that the same as the BClk? because its set to 100.0mhz and I didn't touch it. From what I've read so far, most overclock guides recommend leaving it alone and just increasing the Multiplier for the processor on the K chips.

If I've misunderstood you, I can maybe include some pictures of my settings in the Bios.
QPI/VTT and System Agent voltages might be what I need to adjust?

If it were my setup what I would do is start from scratch. Get the overclock stable with the ram at 1600 mhz first. What was once stable in Windows 7 may not be stable in Windows 10. Once you confirm stability at 1600 Mhz you can work on getting the ram stable at a higher clock speed. It may be a little give and take here. I have a 2500k on an Asrock Z77 Extreme 4. It has been running at 4.5 Ghz stable for the better part of 5 years without a hitch. That said, when I tried getting a set of Trident 2400 9-11-11 sticks to run stable at 2133 I couldn't without adding some voltage to the Cpu Oc. You may be better off trying to run the sticks at 1866.

So I noticed something when i was looking at the displayed values in the bios. It was showing that the bclk, though set to 100.0 mhz, was actually at 100.32 mhz and that was causing the ram to be clocked at 2140mhz. I know that my mobo only supports up to 2133mhz so I got an idea.

Since, after bumping the System Agent voltage a bit and the QPI/VTT and also adjusting the PLL voltage a bit to see if it would be more stable, it wasn't really helping. So I tried just turning the Bclk down just a tad. So I set it to 99.9 mhz and that brought it down to 2127 mhz on the ram. It reduced the cpu clock a bit too, but nothing major.

Well, I booted into windows and tried the Intel Burn Test again. I did the extreme test (that maxes out the ram usage) because It would only make it through 1 run before crashing before.
Now, after the change, it actually got through 3 runs and didn't crash (I stopped the test early because I wanted to try some other things and this was a pretty clear indication to me, that something I did worked.)

I turned my PC off and left it for a while and rebooted it again. Before, it would attempt to boot 3-5 times, but now it just booted first try!

So I'll have to test it over the course of a few days, but I think that may have been my problem. The ram was running a bit too fast for the motherboard and Sandy Bridge, so it would work until you really loaded it up and caused some instability.

I do have the System Agent @ 1.1v at the moment and the QPI/VTT @ 1.15v at the moment. I may try setting them to auto again and see if it stays stable with the slight drop in Bclk frequency.
But! So far so good. I'll keep you guys updated. Thanks for the input!