Gigabyte Z97X-SOC boot failure

[Eclectic]

I recently picked up the Z97X-SOC and a 4790k to replace my ASUS P6T Deluxe and the mighty i7 920. Im seriously missing ASUS right now. I havent owned a gigabyte board in over 10 years

Now, I have that paired with G.Skill 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2400MHz TridentX using nothing more than X.M.P. (These damned 4790k's run freaking hot).

But frequently if I reboot the system Ill get the "Boot failure detected", it will then take a further 3 resets to be able to even use the motherboard/keyboard to select enter BIOS. Which is freaking annoying and makes me miss my P6T Deluxe.



In the BIOS I can literally F10, save and boot to windows just fine. Ive flashed the BIOS to F6, so it shouldnt be a BIOS issue. A google search has me seemingly alone on the issue. Which is why Ive turned to you fine folks.

Anyone using this board came across this issue or have any ideas on how to resolve it? I have "loaded optimized defaults" and yet the issues returns, not every reboot, just frequently. Its more common on a reboot than from a cold start.

Cheers,
Nige

 

[trents]

You might need to give the integrated memory controller a bump in voltage as your memory frequency is higher than what the controller is nominally rated for (1600 mhz). Most Haswells will do the RAM at 2400 mhz without a problem but some may need a little voltage encouragement. I think that setting in bios may be called System Agent Offset.

 

[Lvcoyote]

You might try a slight bump in CPU core voltage too, it looks like the CPU is running at the turbo speed of 4.4 GHz according to your picture. Default speed for that CPU is 4.0 GHz. ASUS boards do that too, but they automatically boost the CPU core voltage a tad to go along with that.

 

[Eclectic]

Thanks for the advice. I'll tweak these when I get home.

I've noticed the CPU is already at 1.263! And even with a full custom loop venting on a PA140.3 and an EK supreme HF cooling the chip, when I fired up Intel burn test to get a burn in and to see what overhead I had for overclocks, with turbo core on she hits 82c on one core!

I'm waiting on some liquid metal pro to be delivered, then I'll try a reseat. But I'm pretty confident the seating us fine and currently on AS5.

 

[trents]

Look at the Ring/uncore ratio and voltage too. These are the cache components. If too much separation develops between cache frequency and CPU core frequency it can contribute to instability.

 

[Eclectic]

Based on both your advise I decided to start overclocking.

So far no unstable reboots but its an early road. 5ghz seems unobtainable until 1.5vcore, and still not stable then.

Currently stressing 4.8 @ 1.28. Xtu 5 minute passed. With a max of 77c. Time to run prime95 26.6.

Wish me luck.