My new RIG won't work right, PLEASE HELP

KuntaKinte · Oct 3, 2007

So I just built new rig and I'm experiencing some very strange happenings.
First off, here are the specs

Proc: Intel Q6600
Mobo: Asus P5K premium
RAM: Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 (1GB X 4)
Graphics: Sapphire x1950 pro (x 2 for crossfire)
PSU: Corsair 620hx
HDD: Western Digital 160gb (sata II)
HDD2: Western Digital 500GB (sata II)

After assembling everything, I installed all programs and went straight to ocing. Rig was stable at 3GHz. Now this is what started happening

At any random time, the machine would freeze on a window/ application for anywhere between 5 to 60 seconds. It seemed to be occuring more with IE7 but firefox made no difference. I then began to see that it was application specific, the machine would just "hang" at random times.......then all of a sudden continue working fine at lightening speed.

Since I am new to ocing and couldn't narrow things down to anything specific, I reset my bios to default settings and reinstalled Vista Ultimate. Did I mention that the installation took over an hour and a half? I had to walk away and do other stuff before returning (both the initial installation and the re-installation took that long.)

So I started afresh with the intent of taking things slow and moving step by step. No sooner had I logged into vista for the first time (after the reinstallation) and I got "Not Responding" from the welcome page. This is before I installed any drivers whatsoever.

So this is where I'm at. Windows explorer, Internet explorer, dialogue boxes etc.....anything and everything can freeze or "hang" at any given time without notice. I ran the memory diagnostic tool on the Vista media to check if my RAM was ok because random freezed usually stem from that......but the report said all was good.

I'm not running raid....no ocing ....nothing fancy.....yet all this is happening......please help.....It took me months to convince my lady to drop $1800 on a new system........now she just walks by and stares at me as I loose hair over a box that won't function.

Maverick0984 · Oct 3, 2007

What is your RAM voltage set at?

I can only assume that the PC2-8500 requires at least the same volts as the PC2-6400 which I have and which is 2.2v. Along with that, manually set the timings per factory specifications.

Most any motherboards will default it at 1.8v (and for certain the P5K Premium, which is also what I have). In theory it should work but can cause intermittent problems like you describe.

Tell your wife/lady everything is fine, too early to assume anything serious is wrong.

Also, take out one of the cards in crossfire and 2 of the RAM sticks just for testing purposes if it keeps happening after you have the voltage and timings right.

Additionally, don't OC a single thing until you are stable at stock.

TheCheat · Oct 3, 2007

What ratio is the ram on? Try 1:1 if you haven't yet.

I had heard something that the p5k was a little quirky in the locking process of your PCI-E bus....have you tried this? :

http://aphnetworks.com/reviews/asus_p5k_deluxe/11 said:
Our Asus representative informed us regarding the PCI lock issue. According to the R&D department, by setting "PCIe Spread Spectrum" in the BIOS to 'Disabled' will automatically engage PCI locks to be 33.3MHz.

trickson · Oct 3, 2007

KuntaKinte said:
So I just built new rig and I'm experiencing some very strange happenings.
First off, here are the specs

Proc: Intel Q6600
Mobo: Asus P5K premium
RAM: Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 (1GB X 4)
Graphics: Sapphire x1950 pro (x 2 for crossfire)
PSU: Corsair 620hx
HDD: Western Digital 160gb (sata II)
HDD2: Western Digital 500GB (sata II)

After assembling everything, I installed all programs and went straight to ocing. Rig was stable at 3GHz. Now this is what started happening

At any random time, the machine would freeze on a window/ application for anywhere between 5 to 60 seconds. It seemed to be occuring more with IE7 but firefox made no difference. I then began to see that it was application specific, the machine would just "hang" at random times.......then all of a sudden continue working fine at lightening speed.

Since I am new to ocing and couldn't narrow things down to anything specific, I reset my bios to default settings and reinstalled Vista Ultimate. Did I mention that the installation took over an hour and a half? I had to walk away and do other stuff before returning (both the initial installation and the re-installation took that long.)

So I started afresh with the intent of taking things slow and moving step by step. No sooner had I logged into vista for the first time (after the reinstallation) and I got "Not Responding" from the welcome page. This is before I installed any drivers whatsoever.

So this is where I'm at. Windows explorer, Internet explorer, dialogue boxes etc.....anything and everything can freeze or "hang" at any given time without notice. I ran the memory diagnostic tool on the Vista media to check if my RAM was ok because random freezed usually stem from that......but the report said all was good.

I'm not running raid....no ocing ....nothing fancy.....yet all this is happening......please help.....It took me months to convince my lady to drop $1800 on a new system........now she just walks by and stares at me as I loose hair over a box that won't function.

Ok start with RAM take out all but one stick . take out one video card . Put all setting in the bios to default or factory settings .
once you have done this check the Bios again making sure that the RAM voltage is at the factory recommended spec's .2.2-2.3 I think.
Test all your RAM sticks one at a time .
Test you video cards this way as well .
once you have done this let us know what you fined .

jmorgan · Oct 3, 2007

Sounds like ram, download memtest 86 and have it run, if you get any errors your mem is not stable, it will need higher volts or losser timings. Also might bump vcore up some to take that out of the equation

Also how about you put your rig to stock everything, and read an overclocking guide
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=515316

I like to find stable memory settings first, take notes at what FSB and volts your using and work, and also the ones that dont work. If your memory is not stable your system never will be stable and it will screw up your windows install. If you pass memtest and then still have problems with your overclock then its probably your cpu and you probably need to up the vcore. 3.6ghz will probably take 1.45-1.5 and watch your temps you should be fine under 70c but most dont like to go over that.

crosshairs · Oct 3, 2007

Based on your explanation, my money is on the hard drive the OS is on, or a problem with the hard drive interface.

trickson · Oct 3, 2007

crosshairs said:
Based on your explanation, my money is on the hard drive the OS is on, or a problem with the hard drive interface.

Well once you rule out the RAM CPU and video then you move to the HDD . :bang head

Maverick0984 · Oct 3, 2007

crosshairs said:
Based on your explanation, my money is on the hard drive the OS is on, or a problem with the hard drive interface.

I disagree. Chances are a DOA harddrive wouldn't even have let you install windows, let alone boot and do anything at all.

I really think it is just a RAM settings issue.

I'm only going on probability here but what he is experiencing *could* be caused by a dying harddrive but a brand new one is usually working or not, no in betweens. That would mean such a problem would only happen on an established installed system, not a brand new one. Again, probability, not certainty.

trickson · Oct 3, 2007

WELL???
What is the word???

jason4207 · Oct 3, 2007

The P5K Premium has known issues w/ WD HDDs. I have 1st hand experience w/ this. Just visit the Asus forums to see what I'm talking about.

RAID didn't work for me on this board. Installing Windows took forever, & boot time was atrocious. Lots of BSODs. Eventually the RAID failed. I'm working fine in AHCI mode right now, but from what I've read there are many issues w/ IDE mode as well.

trickson · Oct 3, 2007

jason4207 said:
The P5K Premium has known issues w/ WD HDDs. I have 1st hand experience w/ this. Just visit the Asus forums to see what I'm talking about.

RAID didn't work for me on this board. Installing Windows took forever, & boot time was atrocious. Lots of BSODs. Eventually the RAID failed. I'm working fine in AHCI mode right now, but from what I've read there are many issues w/ IDE mode as well.

Sounds like this was a mobo they should have recalled them .
Why the heck are they selling CRAP to us ?

Maverick0984 · Oct 3, 2007

jason4207 said:
The P5K Premium has known issues w/ WD HDDs. I have 1st hand experience w/ this. Just visit the Asus forums to see what I'm talking about.

RAID didn't work for me on this board. Installing Windows took forever, & boot time was atrocious. Lots of BSODs. Eventually the RAID failed. I'm working fine in AHCI mode right now, but from what I've read there are many issues w/ IDE mode as well.

trickson said:
Sounds like this was a mobo they should have recalled them .
Why the heck are they selling CRAP to us ?

I'm running 2x150GB Raptors in RAID 1 and never had a single problem.

I'm always skeptical when people restrict something like this to a single brand. I highly doubt that is the case, and more a case of a spurious correlation where people just happen to buy more WD's or something.

jason4207 · Oct 3, 2007

trickson said:
Sounds like this was a mobo they should have recalled them .
Why the heck are they selling CRAP to us ?

B/c we keep buying it!

This particular quirk isn't too bad for me personally, b/c I plan on getting some Barracudas (Seagates seem to be immune to this problem) and setting up a serious 4-6 drive Matrix RAID0/5, but it was definitely frustrating trying to figure out the problem when it was occurring.

To OPer - I have a feeling you're in IDE mode. Get the AHCI drivers for ICH9R from the Intel website, and create a floppy. Put your BIOS into AHCI mode. Re-install Windows, and press F6 to install the AHCI drivers. Hopefully this will fix your problem.

DaPoets · Oct 3, 2007

IMO here are the steps you should take.
Format your HD.
Install from scratch.
Install your drivers.
Run win update a billion times until you are fully updated.

If at this point you have already experienced your problems then it could be a number of hardware issues.

Run Prime95 to see if it fails while you are at stock speed... if it does then you have some bad hardware.

Run Memtest but not all your ram at once. Use 2 stick at a time.

Make sure you have enough volts going to your ram.

Try taking out just one of your video cards (I would actually do this before anything) and if it still happens, swap cards and if it still happens, go ahead and run w/ both in there anyway...

It does sound like a ram issue... but your Q6600 could also be corrupt and give these same symptoms (statistically possible but not probable)

I would say it's either your Ram or HD though... I have a rig where I replaced everything but my HD and evertime I boot, it hangs on the boot screen for a good 30 seconds. It also does this very rarely but randomly while xp is running mainly when I am pushing the cpu using BOINC. But it happening when I'm runing Ubuntu on it hasn't happened yet.

Maverick0984 · Oct 3, 2007

jason4207 said:
B/c we keep buying it!

This particular quirk isn't too bad for me personally, b/c I plan on getting some Barracudas (Seagates seem to be immune to this problem) and setting up a serious 4-6 drive Matrix RAID0/5, but it was definitely frustrating trying to figure out the problem when it was occurring.

To OPer - I have a feeling you're in IDE mode. Get the AHCI drivers for ICH9R from the Intel website, and create a floppy. Put your BIOS into AHCI mode. Re-install Windows, and press F6 to install the AHCI drivers. Hopefully this will fix your problem.

Just my personal preference, but if I was going to set up an array like that I'd just get a hardware RAID card. Something from 3ware. Gives you the option to transfer to you next system if you intend to store a lot of data and will perform much better. Obviously though, the downside is cost.

jason4207 · Oct 3, 2007

Maverick0984 said:
I'm running 2x150GB Raptors in RAID 1 and never had a single problem.

I'm always skeptical when people restrict something like this to a single brand. I highly doubt that is the case, and more a case of a spurious correlation where people just happen to buy more WD's or something.

Raptors are immune as well as older WD HDDs. It seems to be the newer SataII drives that are affected most. Not only WD, but they are the most prevalent.

In the Asus forum there are many threads dedicated to this problem. In particular there is a thread that is currently in its 3rd rendition b/c Asus has a limit on how many posts per thread. P5K Premium SATA Controller Problem must be Confirmed, Part III

Have a read if you have time. The problem is real and Asus is dragging their feet to come out w/ a solution...if they even can short of a recall.

trickson · Oct 3, 2007

jason4207 said:
Raptors are immune as well as older WD HDDs. It seems to be the newer SataII drives that are affected most. Not only WD, but they are the most prevalent.

In the Asus forum there are many threads dedicated to this problem. In particular there is a thread that is currently in its 3rd rendition b/c Asus has a limit on how many posts per thread. P5K Premium SATA Controller Problem must be Confirmed, Part III

Have a read if you have time. The problem is real and Asus is dragging their feet to come out w/ a solution...if they even can short of a recall.

And this is why I stay away from ASUS !

jason4207 · Oct 3, 2007

Maverick0984 said:
Just my personal preference, but if I was going to set up an array like that I'd just get a hardware RAID card. Something from 3ware. Gives you the option to transfer to you next system if you intend to store a lot of data and will perform much better. Obviously though, the downside is cost.

Cost is too high for me, but the ICH9R scales very well when adding drives. 400MB/s w/ 4 Seagates in RAID0. With the ICHxR you can also bring it w/ you to your next system if you stay w/ ICHxR. If you have a RAID setup on an ICH7R system you can just plug it in to an ICH9R system, and it will work (you may need to install some drivers for the OS).

I don't need the capacity so much, as I want the performance. I'm sure a RAID card will give better RAID5 performance, but the ICH9R is no slouch. The RAID0 on the ICH9R is blazing fast, and w/ the Matrix option you can slice out a nice RAID0 portion that would not be possible w/ other RAID cards.

My plan is to get 6 (or 4) of the super-fast 250GB single-platter Seagate drives. Slice out 25GB from each drive for use in a 150GB RAID0 OS/programs drive. The rest of the space will be put in RAID5 for redundancy, and I will image and backup the boot drive to the RAID5 array in case of a single drive failure. That way I can rebuild rather quickly. I will also backup the RAID5 data drive to a HDD in my wife's PC, or an external HDD, or both.

Spade · Oct 3, 2007

well. its simple then. IF you have a way to test the HD and the RAM then do so.
(second pc?) even if not, test each stick of ram seperately, then test as well as you can the HD. seems it has to be one or the other. .. has anyone suggested using an old ide HD and then slaving the WD HD? would that work? maybe use an old *** ide for the OS then use the sata drive as file storage? i have no experience with that board, just throwing ideas out there to try to help. i think it's the memory though.

KuntaKinte · Oct 3, 2007

Thanx for the input evryone.....I'm learning a lot through this process.
Well I set my DRAM voltage to 2.2 (instead of Auto) and checked my default timings which read 5-5-5-15. The situation hasn't changed. I also unplugged the crossfire cable and took out one of the graphics cards.....to no avail. I did all that while running on only 1 of my RAM sticks (1gig) Nothing changed.
I downloaded memtest and its currently scanning through the RAM. The test isn't over yet, but if this RAM passes the test, can I then assume that RAM is not the issue, since the freezing has been happening all along even after I took out the other 3

Again I appreciate all the input

My new RIG won't work right, PLEASE HELP

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