Foxconn Black Ops problems

[Chris_redfield]

Hey guys, I've had the Foxconn Black Ops for a while and I have been really happy with it's overclocking ability.

However, I have had a problem with mine that seems to be getting worse. The problem has been there for around two months now but as stubborn as I am I really like the board and I have just finished spending three months getting an Asus RMA'd. (I don't like Asus's RMA procedure for motherboards in the UK which is why I went with the Black Ops.)

The system seems to crash at random periods of time during any program. I have played COD4 for seven hours solid before crashing and sometimes it just takes a matter of minutes.

When it crashes, the screen freezes and the speakers start crackling at me as if possessed. At first I just thought it was a GPU problem and have tried it with a 1950 XTX, 3870, 4870 and today a 4850 and it still crashes.

I have run mem test and it passes and have tried running the memory in different slots.

I have tried just about all the different BIOS's and it crashes whether OC'd or not. I have tried both an E6600 and an E8400 in it.

I thought that maybe the HDD's were shorting because I have mounted them peculiarly but it crashes whether inside the case or on my bench desk. (well it's just an old dining table but calling it a bench desk makes it sound more impressive.) And have even tried different HDD's.

I know it's not an overheating problem because sometimes it crashes when the CPU is idle, and also whenever I've had a component overheat the system tends to beep and then just shut off. This will give off the god awful speaker crackle and hang until switched off at the PSU (I left it dl'ing one night and it crashed with the sound and scared the hell out of my younger brother I think he thought freddy kruger was going to come out of my computer.) There is no keyboard response or anything and the only way to exit the crash is to switch it off at the PSU.

It's also definately not overheating because I use watercooling, but I have also tried it with air coolers.

It never BSOD's it just suddenly crashes, the picture hangs (occasionly distorts as if trying to render the next frame but doesn't quite get there.) And I get the god awful crackle from the speakers.

I know this has been a long post but I am a desperate man who really really doesn't want to have to lose my main rig and have to wrestle with another RMA process. So I have wanted to give as much info in the hope that someone knows how to sort this though having switched every component but the memory (and I have tested that and it has passed multiple times,) I'm pretty sure it is something terminal with the board. I have tried at least four different sets of drivers for each of the four cards I have tried. I have even tried re-installing Vista. I have also tried XP and I get the same crash. I even tried taking out the sound card that comes with it and putting in an old Audigy 4 that I have. Again no difference eventually it crashed.

If god is in his heaven and the board is bust then I'll see if the supplier I bought it from will swap it as there are a couple of other boards that I want o try and that'd be quicker but after having to for a couple of months I doubt they will do this.

[Chris_redfield]

I'm trying to send it back to the supplier but I have a horrible feeling they are going to be less than helpful.

I really could do without this.

[Sailindawg]

I have been playing around with my BOps board and have it clocked at 9x363. I had been playing with my memory timings for a bit and started seeing COD4 display symptoms as you have described, minus the speakers crackling. I tracked it down to my Performance Level timing for my RAM. I was trying to run it too tight. I was running PL = 6 and had problems. I backed it down to 7 and COD4 started to behave. COD4 is pretty RAM intensive. Check your RAM timings again. Try a more relaxed PL. Also, are you running your RAM at high voltage?

[HDCHOPPER]

ya and wiggle your ram sticks shouve up or down on em too
it only takes a few 1000 of an inch to be out of alingment with the socket

have seen it on other boards but not the BlackOps


good luck

[Chris_redfield]

Will have another play around with it tommorrow before calling the supplier again.

The board crashes with settings at stock though.

Memory doesn't really like to run at anything other than voltage of 2v when overclocking, it will just refuse to even post half the time if I oc with the volts lower than that.

Its not just in COD4 that it crashes, its in everything. Dawn of War, Crysis Warhead, DiRT, Tomb Raider Aniversary, World in Conflict, UT3, Kane and Lynch Portal. It even crashed when I left it downloading in steam. I think the only game I've succesfully managed to complete without a crash recently was Lego Indiana Jones and thats only because its like ten minutes long.

A lot of these titles I have tried in both Vista and XP and I get crashes in both.

[Sailindawg]

ya and wiggle your ram sticks shouve up or down on em too
it only takes a few 1000 of an inch to be out of alingment with the socket

I can vouch for that one! :up: I moved my box around the other day and one of the RAM sticks came loose. When I booted the pc, everything ran like scheiss. :shocked: I checked my RAM sticks and sure enough one stick was was loose. These DDR3 ram slots are not real snug like the older DDR slots.

If reseating the RAM sticks doesn't help, download and run MemTest HCI (http://hcidesign.com/memtest/download.html). It's a version of Memtest that can run inside Windows. If your RAM is going bad, you will be able to see the test generate errors. Run one stick at a time. All those games you mentioned are pretty RAM intensive. Sounds like your timings are off or one of the sticks is going. If you ran them at 2.0V or more for an extended period, they could be dying.

[Chris_redfield]

Cheers, I'll try that first thing tommorrow morning as I am about to go to bed now. They are supposed to be able to cope with 2v though according to the sticker on them and they ran 20 succesful tests consecutively in memtest 86. They have been running at 2v for ages as its my 24/7 rig. Am having to use my media PC at the moment though.

I hate to sound really ignorant, what is the difference between the memtest and metest HCI?

I wouldn't be surprised if the memory has gone as it is OCZ and I don't really get on with OCZ. I only bought it because it was cheap.

[HDCHOPPER]

memtest in windows

[Chris_redfield]

Ah OK.

[Xello]

Isn't this the excuse you've been waiting for to ditch that terrible ram and go with something more reliable :D

[Chris_redfield]

Alright mate,

Well, it would be but I can't actually guarantee its the RAM thats the problem as it is running at stock settings and passed 6 hours under prime 95 at stock just now, had 20 consecutive passes in Memtest and ran clean for 2 hours in mem test HCI.

I did nearly buy the black Cell Shock DDR3 kit a few weeks ago from OcUK as it was on special offer and kind of wish I had just so that I could test with it, but the memory tests all come up with nothing and I have tried jiggling it, different slots etc. As soon as I spend ten minutes in a game the system just crashes and they have become more persistant. I realise this could be a software problem but its happening in the same titles in XP and vista which are on two different HDD's. This is all happening at stock settings, but when I was originally overclocking the motherboard I do remember having quite a few crashes of this nature, however I just thought it was an instable OC at the time and thought nothing of it.

EDIT: I'm able to RMA it thankfully, it just crashed on the fifth run in 3D Mark (I dont have a full licence so I have sat at my comp with Dr Who playing through my media centre pressing start test every time it finished lol. I really need to get out more.) Whenever the first test loaded I could hear a high pitched whine come from the motherboard. It wasn't the HDD as that is practically silent and I'm pretty sure it wasn't the GPU as the fan speed didn't increase and after trying this board with four graphics cards now I'm almost definite this isn't the result of a faulty GPU.

[HDCHOPPER]

check out post 4646 :

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=173999&page=186

[Catz]

Did you check if it might be your psu?

If all the other hardware comes out clean these might be your only option to check.

[Chris_redfield]

I checked the PSU I went from using a tagan 520 to a coolermaster 700. Made no difference.

Cheers for pointing the CPU thing out to me HDCHOPPER. I have tried it with my E6600 as well and I'm getting the same problem. And whats annoying me is that the its doing it at stock settings. I wouldn't mind if the CPU died though. That would at least give me an excuse to upgrade. If your Black Ops dies where do you go from there?

[Catz]

If your Black Ops dies where do you go from there?

Rma and a new one ;)



Send me an email (info@coolclocks.nl) where you describe the problem as thoroughly as possible.

I'll check in with Maurice over at foxconn for the options you have. It might be the board after all :)

[Chris_redfield]

Cheers man,

I sent it back to yoyotec where I got it from late last night so hopefully they should get it tommorrow, they said they would have a look at it. They've been quite helpful so if the problem doesn't replicate for them I'll buy a new DDR3 kit from them to check out. If it is bust hopefully I can get it fixed or replaced ASAP. Otherwise I'm going to have to build a new 'basic,' rig:yepp:. I can't afford to fall behind on my gaming. Not with C&C Red Alert 3, Dawn of War 2, Far Cry 2, Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway and Fall Out 3 all on their way:rolleyes:.

[saaya]

damn, i envy you man... i wish i had the time to play all those games and really free my mind of all the work for at least a week :D
hope it all works out and you can have a nice week or more like a nice month with those games! :toast:
if you still have issues let me know :D

[Chris_redfield]

Hmmmm, well I got a call from the guys over at yoyotec and after vigerously testing the board they can't find any problems with it. I was afraid of that, because a) it makes me look like a noob and b) I'll end up paying just to send my board travelling.

They have offered to take my CPU and memory even though I didn't buy them from there though which was nice of them and I may take them up on it. However, before I do I'm going to conduct some further testing of the CPU (would love to test the memory further but the Black Ops is the only DDR 3 board I have.) I ran it in Prime 95 a lot of yesterday and found no problems. I am also investigating the possibility it might be the hDD's as they were mounted funny in the case (well wedged sideways beteen the radiator and the side of the case. Though I did use rubber washers to screw them into place.)

I'd rather not send everything off to yoyotec as I am aware that I may just need to adjust a BIOS setting (though everything is runnning at stock I am aware that motherboards don't always automatically get the best settings. The Gigabyte P35 I am testing the E8400 in set the multiplier of the CPU to 8 instead of 9 as the default settings. It wasn't doing this as part of the Intel Speedstep either, as whether or not the CPU was under load or not it kept the muli at 8. Which I didn't realise until after a few hours of my prime testing last night so I am inclined to write those results off.)

So what I'm probably going to do, is if I can't find a problem with the CPU is buy a kit of Corsair from yoyotec and just get them to send the motherboard back to me and carry out more testing. Its just irritating that they don't stock the Cell Shock memory or a 1600mhz kit of corsair that isn't 4gb I only have 32bit OS's so I would be wasting memory. But I have also been made aware in the post above that the 45nm CPU's can be a bit finickety ingames. Though the system was crashing without overclocked settings.

Cheers for offering to help Saaya it is looking increasinlgy more likely that I'll have to pick your brain soon. I wouldn't envy me for having so much spare time, I'm curently between jobs at the moment and finding a new one sucks. I hate writing CV's and there aren't that many interesting jobs around these parts and I'm terrible at lying, so in interviews when I am asked 'what makes you want to pursue a career with us?' I may as well just retort, 'well I don't but it'll be better than starving wont it!?'

[saaya]

lol :D
there are always good jobs, trust me :)
you just dont find them easily on monster.com and many jobs appear sucky at first but are actually quite nice.
just take any lame OK job for now, and the more it sucks, the more you will have the enrgy and time to look for a better one :D
just waiting for a good job to come by isnt a good strategy imo...

ive always had great experiences with just thinking about what id like to do, then just calling up or walking up to the shops/offices and a)checking if its really as much fun as i thought it would be b) if yes, offer them to work for them.
every job has its drawbacks... and even if you make your hobby your profession, like me, work is still work and itll always suck and be exhausting... but my philosphpy so far has been, if you spend most of you life working, and you need to work hard to make someting out of yourself, you might as well look for work you actually enjoy :D (as much as its possible)

in the end one of my favourite jobs was at dhl sorting letters and packages according to their weight, size and post code :lol:
it was a zombie job, but after a month you got it all memorized and with an mp3 player the hours just fly by, nobody tells you what to do, no colleagues that go on your nerves or mob you or people below you sucking up to you...
and all i did was work 3 hours per day anyways, and it was from 5 to 8 pm, effectively meaning im free all day, and im free all night :D
that job was awesome... :lol: the salary wasnt good, but i got enough to live of easily... and considering all the free time i had, i was free to do another job, work project based on other stuff, or just slack off if i didnt feel like it...

so that job sucked as salary wasnt good, but the freedom it gave me was amazing...
think about that when you look for a job! salary and working hours isnt everything!
id prefer a 10 hour shift job that is easy and slacky over a 3 hour work shift that makes you feel like you ran a marathon and your braindead the rest of the day.

noooow about the system...
again, think about time and the annoyance factor...
if they offer to check the whole system, id recommend you let them do it...
or go to a local pc shop and have them check your configuration.
it really doesnt make sense trying to save a few quid for shipping and then you end up spending a week or two sorting the problems...
see what i mean?

[Akrian]

Hey Chris , did you find the source of your problem ?
I'm having extactely same issue here - stable primer etc , random freezings with possed sounds in games .
Thankfully when i tested my stock last time - no such problems occured , but still any ideas ?
BTW I also have an ATI card , and what I found is that those sounds will dissapear when you use 9.1 catalyst instead of older onces , and PC wont hard freeze , but still it will freeze the game after a while , and you need to manually close them .

[Slyde]

Not sure if this will help you guys. I've had a few problems in games, mostly COD4, random crashes with and without the strange sound from the speakers. My issues were and are all related to my sound card. It's a Sound Blaster Xtreme Gamer card. Their drivers don't seem to play well with some games. What I've done is un-install all the Creative software and drivers. Started the comp and let the Windows installer install the drivers from the CD. So far it hasn't crashed... Like I said, this is what has worked for me so far. But time will tell because it has been a random crash.

Slyde

[Slyde]

Well, back to the drawing board. It crashed again with the strange speaker sound and vertical static lines across the top of the monitor.
Slyde

[saaya]

yes akrian, i remembered somebody else had those problems when i read your thread...
ill pm him and see what the problem was.

[Akrian]

yes akrian, i remembered somebody else had those problems when i read your thread...
ill pm him and see what the problem was.

Thx , I bet that'll be helpfull
I've zoomed through his other posts that hi wrote , and I get the impression that it was his memory ....

[Chris_redfield]

Hey guys sorry about ignoring this, I honestly didn't notice this thread being revived.

After checking different CPU's, HDD's, (everything was switch except for memory though the memory wasn't crashing in memtest.) I sent the board back to yo yo tech where I bought it from. Yo yo tec tested it with a kit of OCZ memory and couldn't find a problem. I found out they had been testing with a Q9450 CPU so asked them if they would conduct another 24 hour stress test with a dual core CPU prefrably an E8400, they were really helpful and did just that however they still could not find a problem.

So a bit peeved I decided to accept the cost of courier and made a few AMD purchases to make the shipping costs worthwhile. I got the board back, hooked everything back up. After half an hour I got the horrible electrical sounds again. At this point I was at the edge of dispair and after days worth of testing I abandoned the board for a week or two because of a barrage of job interveiws. However I then bought some Cell Shock DDR 3 in order to test the board with that. It was the 1600mhz kit. Set everything up and it worked fine on the test bench. Stress tested for 6 hours with Prime and 3d mark 06 ddim prob.

So I set up an overclock on the CPU of 3.6mhz nothing to taxing, still on the test bench everything ran for 12 hours without crashing. So I loaded it all up into the case (with the watercooling which tbh is a chore to take apart and put back together which I've had to do four times in total now.) And ran Warhammer for a quick game to see if everything was alright and, the horrible electrical sound of doom coursed through my ears and the system crashed.

I honestly felt like someone had thrown me off a cliff. I honestly didn't know what to do, I tried the Cell Shock in different slots and everything seemed to be fine again until I got a few BSOD's. In a complete state of dispair I did the only thing I had left to do and that was re-install vista. And surprisingly it worked, I played Fallout 3 with catalyst 9.1 on my 4870 the other day with an OC on the E8400 at 3.6GHz for 9 hours (wasn't nine hours straight but I left the game puased when i went out to lunch and stuff and when i came back there were no horrid electrical noises or anything.)

If I'm completely honest I'm not 100% sure what the problem was or if it was totally fixed. I think OCZ is just a no go because even though yo yo tech had no problems with the OCZ there's was a different model and so might have been using chips. I had also been doing some ridiculous OC's in the past so I think the instability issues from the memory and the constant OC'ing abuse I had dealt vista might have also not helped and maybe corrupted something along the way. But with the OCZ on I had tried vista on different HDD's and was still suffering from the same problem.

Apart from re-install vista and switch the memory the only other thing I did was to stop watercooling the NB but tbh I can't see how that would affect anything. At one point I did think it might have been the accompanying sound card becuase it seemed to crash with the electrical sound on games with known issues with the realtek drivers, but I tried it with a sound blaster card as well and found the same results.

I would heavily recommend some memory investigation for this board. I'll peel the heatsinks of my OCZ some point this weekend and see what chips it is because as far as I can tell the DDR 3 OCZ it self isn't faulty. If any of you are using OCZ I would try another brand of memory. Cell Shock and Corsair from my limited experience and talking with other who have had this board seems to work out fine.