SOLVED I think I need a different BIOS (990fxa-ud3)

[knoober]

Ive been working with this 990fxa-ud3 (r4.1) with a 955BE and im starting to get a bit frustrated. On the latest BIOS (I forget which one but there are only 2) I coulnt overclock at all. I checked to make sure I had the latest drivers, reset the cmos, reflashed the bios and tinkered with all the settings until I was blue in the face. The last thing before I brought a post in here was to roll back the bios to the only other available version. This one is ... OK. I can OC reasonably, the settings are near identical, but there is one little problem: I cant boot twice with any of the stable OC's I achieve!

My last run in prime95 ran for 4 hours and I got a couple of degrees to high (57C) but only for a minute before I was sitting back at a cooler temp (53-54C for most of the run). Near the end of the 4 hours temps were creeping back up towards 56-57C again so I cut the test and went back to see if I could trim some voltage somewhere and get a little lower temp. It turns out that I might not be able to. Every bit of voltage that I could trim from anywhere led to a non-boot situation. So I did what anyone who values their sanity would do and went back to the last stable config. The problem is that I cant boot into the OS twice in a row. I get the boot failure message and the option to reset to optimized defaults or enter the bios, but if I enter the bios and save->reboot (making no changes) then I *usually* get a normal boot. Any idea what is going on here? I did save a screenshot from my 4 hour run if it would help, but Im leaning towards something being funky with the bios. The latest one was a complete flake so I cant imagine an older one wouldnt have atleast a hint of some problems as well. I am tempted to try differeing bios versions from different revisions of the board but there are 2 problems there

1) Im not so sure thats a good idea and havent got much of a clue how to choose winners over duds

2)I only did a quick look when I first got the board, but I think most of them only have the same options for a bios versions.

As always , Thanks in advance

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

All I can say is get a FX chip. Like a FX-43xx or FX-63xx if you don't need 8 cores, or if you do FX-83xx

 

[knoober]

All I can say is get a FX chip. Like a FX-43xx or FX-63xx if you don't need 8 cores, or if you do FX-83xx

2 things: 1st is that I absolutely agonized over wether or not to get an FX and the compromise was to get the UD3 and upgrade later after seeing what Zen was going to bring to the table. I really want to though. If the price would drop on the FX's .... but wait and see is what I was planning there

2nd: An FX would be a more viable option if I could rule out the board as the source of the issue. For instance , all other components are known working ( psu gpu and ram) but the proc and board were a put in together. And unfortunately I put my spare mobo and proc into another machine so they arent available for testing. My gut says to blame the bios though because of the way the board has acted after the bios change and the fact that I got through 4 hours of prime with no temp issues. It was actually kind of a beautifull OC.... temps would try to rise and tehn gently guide themselves backinto place. I pumped the other fans up to high just to see how low I could go (50C) and the temps gracefully dropped - and then rose back even more slowly when I set the fans back. Its a damn shame that its gotta have this little problem

 

[Mandrake4565]

Knoober I'm just trying to wrap my head around the issue, so let me know if I'm clear.

You can pass 4 hours of Prime but after shutting down the Pc will not start back up without giving you the "overclock failed message"?

What Prime 95 are you passing 4 hours of, blend ?

Post some screen shots of Cpu-Z with the following tabs Cpu, Spd and Memory at the Oc settings just to give us a peek under the hood.

 

[knoober]

Knoober I'm just trying to wrap my head around the issue, so let me know if I'm clear.

You can pass 4 hours of Prime but after shutting down the Pc will not start back up without giving you the "overclock failed message"?

What Prime 95 are you passing 4 hours of, blend ?

Post some screen shots of Cpu-Z with the following tabs Cpu, Spd and Memory at the Oc settings just to give us a peek under the hood.

Yep. Just like you said: passed 4 hours and then the overclock failed message. small fft, not blend



Like I said I grabbed a pic just in case you guys would want to see this pic is from about 3.5 hours when I was considering shutting it down because of the temps. The temps stabalized back into the acceptable range and I let it go for awhile more until the temps started to creep up again, but didnt seem like they were going to head south of 55C anymore. After that I tried to reduce the voltages to have lower temps but could not boot, so I went back to the "known good" settings. I can boot about once in every three tries - but when I get the failed OC message I just jump into the bios and hit F10 + enter --> then it boots into windows and can run prime95 (small fft) like champ. Once I restart I have the same troubles all over again.

Edit: Also I am not reaching for a super high OC because I think the amount of RAM ive got might be a stress on the IMC.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Well small FFT doesn't stress the Ram or IMC much, so that may be where your issue lies. Running 32g of ram may be putting too much stress on the Imc and you may need to give the Cpu Nb vid a bump in voltage. I would try and run Prime Blend 2+ hours or Memtest for a minimum of 4 passes

 

[knoober]

Well small FFT doesn't stress the Ram or IMC much, so that may be where your issue lies. Running 32g of ram may be putting too much stress on the Imc and you may need to give the Cpu Nb vid a bump in voltage. I would try and run Prime Blend 2+ hours or Memtest for a minimum of 4 passes

I guess I thought that having a large chunk of ram was moire stressfull on the IMC and limited your OC as a whole. Just the impression ive gotten from reading I have done

speaking of reading : http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1712813/gigabyte-990fxa-ud3-problems.html gave me the idea to check the XMP profile and it seems to have solved the issue. I just enabled it (I usually leave it disabled because it hasnt ever had a visible effect before) and havent had the problem since (about 5 reboots in a row) If the problem starts to re-occur I will run memtest like you suggested. I think I might see if I can push a little higher too...

 

[Mandrake4565]

Yes having more ram does put more stress on the Imc which can limit the Oc. From the 955 Be I've seen come through here most will do near 4.0 on Air, albeit with a good heatsink. Before you go pushing further run Prime Blend 2+ hours, if you have a known stable Oc it makes it a bit easier to push. Also not I have seen PII chips that will get a bit wonky around 55c on the cores so you may be at your limit unless you can get more cooling. What case is this setup in, does it have good airflow?

 

[knoober]

Also not I have seen PII chips that will get a bit wonky around 55c on the cores so you may be at your limit unless you can get more cooling. What case is this setup in, does it have good airflow?

I suppose it is about time to update the sig huh? Watch for it, it'll get done

Its in a corsair 230T with plenty of good cooling. I cant quote the brand or CFM on the fans but Ive got 2 pushing in from the front, 1 from the bottom, 2 on the ceiling pushing out and 1 in the back for exhaust + the one on the Megahalems (all 120mm fans). I get good flow over the ram and I think the VRM gets flow from the cpu cooler , but Ive tossed around ideas for what I will do if I need to actively cool the VRM or throw a fan on the back of the socket - but as of now I have no plans to push that hard.

Ive read varying accounts as to wether it is more important to force cool air into the case or to pump heated air out - but I can tell you that with this set up it is much more important to pump the heat out. I can leave the front fans on Low (my fan controller only has Low/High/Off settings, but it looks cool )and throw the ceiling fans on High and get much better results than throwing htem all on High.

I will take your advice about running blend because I can appreciate anything that helps confirm stability. If I dont have anything else running I will throw it on memtest before I crash tonight as well just to be sure. Thanks for the help guys as I was dreading having to start the RMA process

 

[Mr.Scott]

It's bios related brother.
The more updated bios's favor the FX chips and not so much the PII's.
Roll back to an early bios for better PII performance.
Pretty much all the 990 boards are like this BTW.

 

[knoober]

Well I'm on the earliest bios listed for my revision. Any opinion on how far back in the revision history I can go?

Edit: passed the blend test for 3 hours and Im sure ill get to memtest (I hate memtest )

 

[Mr.Scott]

Well, I wouldn't go crossflashing between revisions. If you're on the earliest bio's for your particular board, then you're as far back as you can go.

 

[knoober]

Sounds like the safe answer, now for the fun answer! Which one?

I kid, of course. I might be a little more bothered about it if I didnt have a working solution. At this point it is just academic.