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nhall

Registered
Joined
Nov 29, 2012
Hey all, I am fairly new the manual overclocking world. I have used basic multipliers in the past with voltages under 1.4 with good results but this new board is not making things easy. Upgraded my case, mb, and memory and swapped to water cooling this last week. Here is the build:

AMD Phenom x4 955 black
Asrock 970M Pro3 MB
16gb ddr3 gskill sniper 1866
Samsung 250gb SSD
Caviar black 1.5tb HD
Lepa aquachanger 240mm all in one liquid cooler
Powercolor HD 7700 1gb ddr5 ghz edition

Problem:
If I change any setting in the bios OC Tweaker, the system will not boot and defaults back to the stock settings. The board is also limiting my bus speed to 185-190Mhz. I updated the bios to the most current version. Anyone have experience with this board? I was able to run 4.0ghz on this processor @ 1.25v with air in my last case/mb setup. Thanks for your help!

Here is the text that comes up after restart:

20160218_112525.jpg

Also just noticed that no matter what slot the ram is in, it will only run in single channel mode. CpuZ and windows both see 16gb but windows says only 8gb is usable. They are in a1 and b1 slots right now.
 
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Your issues with the bus frequency and not retaining values in bios makes me wonder if the bios chip itself is corrupted. I would take the CMOS battery out for 30 minutes or so and put it back in. That will do a deep reset of the bios.

Also, what frequency are you running the RAM at? The IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) of that CPU will not come close to running the RAM at full frequency (1866). The IMC on that chip is rated for 1333 mhz. So if you have it running faster than that you are going to have problems. See if you can manually set the RAM frequency to 1333 mhz in bios. This is especially true since you are running so much RAM (16gb). That puts extra strain on the IMC which is weak to begin with. Try just one stick of RAM to begin with.
 
Hard reset the bios by pulling the battery for 10 minutes. Started with one stick of ram in a2 and updated the bios again. Now the bus speed is 199.97 and multiplier works fine. I had both sticks running at 1333 before. So...is 16gb just too much for this board/cpu combo? Or could I downclock my ram and run both sticks? Would really like dual channel 16, as I use this a fair bit for video editing.
 
Hard reset the bios by pulling the battery for 10 minutes. Started with one stick of ram in a2 and updated the bios again. Now the bus speed is 199.97 and multiplier works fine. I had both sticks running at 1333 before. So...is 16gb just too much for this board/cpu combo? Or could I downclock my ram and run both sticks? Would really like dual channel 16, as I use this a fair bit for video editing.

It should not be too much at stock frequencies and voltages but it may be too much strain on the ICM if you overclock. Are you using two sticks of ram or four sticks to achieve 16gb total? Four sticks would place more strain on the IMC. It might also help to give the CPU/NB some extra voltage. The CPU/NB is basically the memory controller. Bump it up to about 1.225.
 
Using 2 sticks of 8gb. When they both are installed, the bios completely fails any overclock and boots off uefi defaults. I will see if nudging the NB voltage up will help.
 
Have you checked the integrity of the RAM? I would run memtest86+ for several passes to check the RAM. Memtest installs on either a CD or a flash drive and is self-booting. You run it not in Windows but from boot. It's a slow process but sometimes it will find RAM issues very quickly. Run it on both sticks for 3-4 passes and if it throws any errors then test each stick individually.

I would also try each RAM stick in each RAM slot before I ran memtest to make sure the problem isn't with the motherboard.
 
Ran memtest for a few passes. No issues with either stick. System will boot up fine and hold 4.0ghz at 1.4v on one stick in any slot but will not boot any custom bios setting with 2 sticks in any arrangement. I also found that I cannot get the system to move to dual channel mode in any arrangement or cmos reset. You think the MC could be cooked? Oh, and memory is running at 1333.

Would the easy fix be to just get an fx8230?
 
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Okay, here's what I want you to do: Run it with one memory stick for the time being. Download and install a free program called CPU-z. Run the program and post back with three pics from the program interface tabs labled "CPU," "Memory," and "SPD." That will give me a lot of information about your hardware and your bios settings. You mention that you formerly had run that CPU at 4.0 ghz on 1.25 volts. That is extremely low voltage for that CPU series to run that fast. It usually takes pretty close to 1.5v to get stable at that speed. So I suspect you really weren't entirely stable. More on that later. We have some pretty stringent tests around here that must be passed before we declare a CPU to be stable.

But for right now, get me those pics of the three tabs. Who knows, your memory timing may be not set correctly or your memory voltage for that matter. Your CPU core voltage could be too low. The pics will tell a lot. Relying on uncle "Auto" for hardware settings is not always reliable.

In the meantime, go into bios and set the memory voltage manually to 1.55. Stock is 1.5 but with that much RAM you may need a little more voltage push. Some of the timings may need to be adjusted. Often the Command Rate needs to be set to 2T when you are running a lot of RAM like that.
 
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Capture1.PNG Capture2.PNG Capture3.PNG

- - - Updated - - -

Been running prime95 for an hour so far on those settings. Single stick of ram.
 
Look at the Memory tab in CPU-z. It shows your DDR2 equivalent speed as 400 mhz. That would be only 800 mhz in DDR3 terms. Something is wrong there. You should be running your memory at the speed and timings shown in JEDEC column #6: 666/1333 mhz and 10-9-9-24-33. Your core voltage is about right for 3.9 ghz CPU frequency. But your ram frequency and timings are screwed up, as I said.

Oh yes, your NB at 2600 is probably way too high. Stock is 2000 mhz I believe. Lower that NB multiplier and the HT Link while you are at it. Get those both down to 2000 mhz. You will need to do this in bios. I hope you are not using overclocking software like Asus tweaker or AMDOverdrive.
 
Using OCtweaker in the asrock bios. A bit goofy but seems to have all the options. I was playing around with the NB multiplier and voltages to see if I could bump the ram frequency up. I pulled this cpu off an older MB that was running 8gb of ddr2 in dual channel, was working fine until the swap to this MB. Thinking the bios chip might be bad, nothing is seeming correct.
 
Well drop the NB speed down to 2000, same for Ht as Trents suggested. Then see if you can run the ram at 1333.
 
Alright, got the NB back to stock, changed the RAM voltage to 1.55, and got the ram running at 1333 9,9,9,24. Things are "stable" right now and running prime95. CPU Voltage is set at 1.475.

Capture1.PNG Capture2.PNG Capture3.PNG

After getting all that sorted, I tried to stick the second stick in, unganged mode. Still will not switch into dual channel operation and all custom bios settings are bypassed and the original screen shot I posted comes up. If I changed ganged mode to auto, the system will not boot at all and fails to even pull the bios screen up.

Would the stock timing on this memory be causing a problem 9,10,9,28?

And... thinking about just updating my cpu. 6300 or 8350? Somewhat worried this board cannot push an 8350 with the power design.
 
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Wasting your time. Board does not support 8 gig sticks in dual channel. Check the QVL.
Consider yourself lucky it runs with one stick.
 
nhall, is there some reason you need to use 16gb of RAM. Do you run applications that need that much memory? Do you do large photoshop projects or complex 3D image editing or CAD? Really, 8 gb is sufficient for all but the most demanding tasks and adding more memory than that will not improve performance. If you don't need 16gb of RAM I would sell it and get some GSkill 2x4gb so you can be in dual channel mode and not loose that performance advantage.
 
Correct, Mr. Scott, but 16gb might undermine his overclocking efforts unnecessarily if he doesn't need that much RAM.
 
I primarily use the rig for video editing and some 3d rendering. Light gaming and now overclocking as a hobby. I just ordered 2 4gb sticks and will upgrade the CPU. I think the 6300 is the most this board can handle. I had to go with the micro ATX as this computer will be taken to work and back and I needed something small and easy to transport.
 
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