Help, started getting BSOD's like crazy. Bad Board?

[Broken]

Solved

[negev]

Sorry to point out the obvious, but have you tried running memtest?

Do the crashes ever happen in safe mode?

[negev]

Can you post all your settings, particularly ram timings and voltages?

All the memory I have ever used on my Blackops did not run at stock with timings on auto, they had to be set manually or prime would fail. It's very aggressive on auto ;)

Also what error message is on the BSOD? Is it always the same or changing?

[Broken]

One time is was ATIMKDG or close to that , but I was trying to dump my Rom with Winflash. Didin't do it with GPU-Z so I chalked it up to fluke. The most rescent was Memory Management error. Can't remember how to check older BSOD's.. It is in the Event Log right?

The thing is I would agree it was a setting like my Mem being to tight at auto at stock everything, mem at auto at 1333 when it is 1600 ram, but the kicker is it has been stable up until a couple days ago with mem at 1T, well for months. I have never had a BSOD with this board, ever. I think fate is screwing with me because last week I was bragging about how great and stable this board was compared to my 680i's and 780i's.

One thing I have noticed is with G30 the ram defaults to 2T Command Rate where G28 and P05 defaulted to 1T. So I have my video card back to going VGA to my Sony and using the onboard Sonar to go optical to my receiver, pretty much how I had it before except I was using my X-fi. Going to run around windows and the internet and see if it BSOD's or locks up, If I can make it a day I am going to go back to running everything over HDMI and see if it is indeed some video card issue.

Right now I am running:
E8400 stock, stock voltage where before I was 4.05 at 1.35v
OCZ Platinum DDR31600 at 1333 auto, 1.8v
4870 1GB running stock Cat 8.9
Motherboard is everything else running auto or default.

Now these same setting were rock solid in my Blue slots, then started getting weird crashes/reboots. Found out my Blue slots went to :banana::banana::banana::banana: and switched to the white slots and everything was fine, well at least till now. Have not ran memtest in a while, but Vista memory check, Prime95 Blend and IntelBurnTest have all passed with everything stock and I was still getting BSOD's. The last one I got yesterday evening was the Memory Management one.

[HDCHOPPER]

wow everything on stock default settings .. no wonder your on the edge and once in a while ya fall off

[negev]

Look here: http://www.xtremesystems.org/FORUMS/showthread.php?t=194629

Scroll down to memory timings and set them manually to the loosest settings in that table.

Default timings on the blackops are aggressive as f*ck. neither of the ram kits ive tried worked at stock without manually setting timings.

[negev]

Are you absolutely sure you didn't upgrade a driver or install something that might be causing this? Do you have a spare HD you can quickly install vista on just to see if its stable with a fresh install?

[Broken]

Wierd, Memis at 7-7-7-20 2T @ 1333 and that is aggresive? Or is it the other timings?

Ok will give it a try. Just find it curious how it has been stable ever since I got my board and now just a couple days ago started having issues.

[negev]

It's the other timings - all the ones that he sets in that post, you need to set manually and not leave on auto :)

My ram is 7-7-7-18 but it wont run anywhere near that without setting the other timings manually.

[Broken]

OK. So maybe my blue slots are good then.
:)

Here are my timing stock. Which ones are the important ones?
http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j241/Brokennails/Blackopstiming.jpg

[negev]

This is mine:

http://www.dontbeshy.net/ms.jpg


Currently 2h 35m prime stable, but its 24 hour stable if i use 8-8-8-22.

I do however recommend looking at that link I posted and setting all the timings there manually, as not all of them show up in memset.

[Broken]

Ok, going to fire up the laptop and boot this into Bios. Thanks!

[negev]

Good luck!

[Broken]

Well, try #1 failed. back at previous stable 4.05 1.35v and everything else set to that settings in the other thread failed. Running IntelBurnTest and got first result and was thinking it was taking a while to get the second one and moved the mouse. sure enough hard lock. Just rebooted and bumped my cpu voltage up to 1.375 :down:


Update:
Great, bump CPU voltage up and hard locks before I get my first result in IBT. WTF!

[negev]

Majority of the hardlocks I've experienced have been due to lack of NB voltage. NB seems VERY fragile on this board, I had settings the other day which were 24-hour blend stable, then I tried pushing harder and then later found that I needed an extra vNB notch to get stability back at the settings that were 24-hour stable before.

[Broken]

I had NB at 1.5v

Swapped memory into Blue slots and C1 error.


Ok, this wierd, swapping back to white slots and can't get into windows. Go back to bios and Memory is down to default and so is NB. Why would just those two go back to default? Now i can get back into windows. Going to try IBT again. Hopefully this time it is stable.

[negev]

Sounds like the OC protection kicked in.

Can you post all the timings you set? Did you use the uppermost (loosest) settings from that thread I posted? I.e. if he said 17-22 you set 22 right?

What is your vdimm set to? NB voltage sounds very high for the low fsb you're running at.. not sure if that would be an issue or not. Xello did say once that he found he needed to increase vdimm in line with vNB, so perhaps your vNB is too high for your vdimm.

Maybe try 1.9v vdimm and 1.4v nb? I'm assuming your dimms are 2.1-2.2v max.. Have you tried them one stick at a time to see if its just one of them thats causing a problem?

[negev]

actually, its probably worth resetting the bios using the microswitch and then programming the settings back in manually, thats helped me out once or twice

[Broken]

Well I was at 450FSB so I assumed the NB needed to be higher. I pretty much used all his timings.

As for the mem timing, yes, I used the more relaxed timings as the tighter ones wouldn't even boot at 1333.

Mem is at 1.84v. Newegg lists my mem at 1.9 with 1.95EVP but used to say 1.8v. Hmmm, just checked my dimms and it says 1.9v so maybe that is one of my problems, then again that is for DDR3-1600 and I am not close to that.

Holy :banana::banana::banana::banana:, just looked up and IBT was running and passed two runs so far. Hot damn I am back in the action.

[negev]

Wow 450? I thought you were just trying to get it working at stock... 450fsb will need more than 1.5v

check -> http://www.xtremesystems.org/FORUMS/showthread.php?t=194629&page=3

Scroll down to Xello's post with settings for 450fsb

[Broken]

I was, then I thought what the hell.... Keep in mind I am using a memory divider, 1:3 for a 1351.


Holy crap! That voltage to the NB is 24/7 stable?

[negev]

Dividers are strange.

Using 1:3.2 I can't boot at 430fsb even though ram is below stock, but using 1:2 I can boot even though ram is way above stock mhz.

[Broken]

Yeah, noticed that. And some dividers work in some bios versions, in other no boot. If I leave mine in auto it wants to default to 1800 for the memory and I don't really know what timings would be stable at that, and probably pretty loose so might not be any better than tighter timings with a lower clock.

[negev]

Well, I've personally seen the Blackops be fickle - i.e. needing the settings changed to get stability back at settings that were absolutely stable before - and at least one other person on here has seen the same thing.

On that basis, I think you should put everything back to stock, cpu & ram, get that stable and then start to overclock again.

I have no idea why the blackops would be fickle like this, unless the original 24-hour prime run was somehow a fluke.. .who knows. One for saaya or lardarse i think..

[saaya]

Dividers are strange.

Using 1:3.2 I can't boot at 430fsb even though ram is below stock, but using 1:2 I can boot even though ram is way above stock mhz.depending on the default fsb of your cpu and the spd profiles of your mem, a certain divider might work better, worse, or not at all : /
i complained about that to the BIOS engineers already and they are improving things... but it takes time : /


Well, I've personally seen the Blackops be fickle - i.e. needing the settings changed to get stability back at settings that were absolutely stable before - and at least one other person on here has seen the same thing.

On that basis, I think you should put everything back to stock, cpu & ram, get that stable and then start to overclock again.

I have no idea why the blackops would be fickle like this, unless the original 24-hour prime run was somehow a fluke.. .who knows. One for saaya or lardarse i think..hard to say, but keep in mind that the cpu and memory controller do some basic "training" on every power on, and then adjust themselves. so every time you boot those settings slightly vary...
this could be the reason, or, the bios was corrupt and one setting was actually set to something else than what you thought it was. ie higher voltage for the nb or cpu or vtt...

and it seems lower nb voltage and vtt sometimes works better than more... so maybe you actually used slightly less volts... :shrug:

[raptor1]

hard to say, but keep in mind that the cpu and memory controller do some basic "training" on every power on, and then adjust themselves. so every time you boot those settings slightly vary...
this could be the reason, or, the bios was corrupt and one setting was actually set to something else than what you thought it was. ie higher voltage for the nb or cpu or vtt...:

about the cpu and memory controller doing some basic training at power-on, i think that there are some settings that get changed

friday night: crysis ran perfectly

saturday: crysis crashed twice but ran eventually

sunday: crysis would not run at all, embarrassing as i had a friend over and was showing him my blackops running at 4Ghz

no settings were changed in the bios since friday night, just the board powered on from the switch on the power suppy and the c1 power off power on sequence

Raptor 1

[Broken]

Well, not a single crash now. Don't know why it started to crap out on me after all this time??? :shrug: Had to bump NB voltage way up. Blue slots still suck. Can't even boot with my DIMM's in there now. Sure hope I don't have to keep increasing voltage every couple months to keep this pig stable. Was plenty happy with this board and not planning on going X58, but now I just might do that.

[HDCHOPPER]

sounds like ram going south

[saaya]

more nb voltage helps the mem, so yeah, it could really be the mem...
more nb voltage means higher mem clocks stable for the same vdimm, or less vdimm needed for the same mem clocks.

another thing you might want to try raptor, is losening trd aka PL o 8.
either that or bump up your nb voltage (what are the temps)

[Broken]

You are not going to believe this... I think I found my damn culprit. Maybe card/driver issue or bios issue. So I was getting weird BSOD's as you all know. Been running stock to try and narrow down some stuff. Turns out when I run HDMI out with HDMI audio I get random BSOD's. Go back to VGA and optical out and no BSOD's. So is there possibly a bios issue here? I have not seen anyone else have this issue, at least that I can find. I would suspect the card but it plays fine over VGA. Been playing Dead Space and Silent Hill 3 with no issues at all. In hind sight, some of my issues did start happening around the time I decided to try HDMI, but who would think that would cause an issue??? Really love the sound with multi-channel LPCM though so hopefully I can find a fix...

***Update***

Nevermind, after a week of no BSOD's at stock I just got one after playing Dead Space for about an hour. Back to the drawing board.

[Broken]

Nevermind. Figured it out. Was playing with a config and forgot to change it back.

Back to the drawing board. At least now I don't BSOD running around windows.

[Broken]

Hahaha, should have figured it was something stupid. Changed PL from 7 to 8 and no more BSOD's....



Now I am noticing something else.

At the screen where it shows the Intel raid and AHCI info I keep seeing
Cannot invoke hardware yada yada yada device id yada
Cannot invoke hardware yada yada yada device id yada

Don't remember seeing this before and everything seems to working fine. Does everyone else get this or is something not flashing right?

Other than that and I am happy again. Got me a QX9650 coming and not worried about going Nehalem after seeing how much power they hog and heat they put out and little in performance for games they gain at higher resolutions. Sure they are huge gains at 1024x768 and 1280x1024, but who plays at that res?

[HDCHOPPER]

glad to hear you got a handle on it

and no eye dont see shuch a screen except once right before a bsod and had to reformat because of trying different ram's and not being completly stable with them lol

good luck

[Broken]

Here, this is what I am talking about:

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j241/Brokennails/th_IMG_2726.jpg (http://s82.photobucket.com/albums/j241/Brokennails/?action=view&current=IMG_2726.jpg)
(Click for larger picture)

Didn't see this before. I just flashed from G30 to P05 hoping it would fix that. Same thing on P05. It didn't touch the very first part of the bios when it flashed. Could that cause this?

[HDCHOPPER]

:shrug: thats a good question ... maybe it droped the cd/rom drivers :shrug:

[Broken]

Man, I just can't win. Got my QX9650 last night and after perusing the overclocking thread I got it up to 4.0Ghz. Trick is I have to run my OCZ Platinum DDR3-1600 4GB kit on a divider. I can not run it at it's native speed of 1600 , well unless I want to get a BSOD loading into windows. Set a 1:3 divider for 1200Mhz and I am fine. was running my Dimms at 7-7-7-24 2T PL8 1.9v. Anything else I should know/try? I am trying my darndest to get a holds of a set of G. Skill HZ's which I was going to get in the first place but someone said these OCZ's were good. Guess I should have went with my gut. Ever since I changed my PL from 7 to 8 and run on a divider I have been rock solid, but can not for the life of me run my Dimm's faster than 1351Mhz.

Oh, and the AHCI error I was getting seems to be associated with my E-sata/ide chip. If I change it to IDE the error goes away. If I change it to AHCI+ IDE or Raid+ IDE I get that can not be invoke error.

[Broken]

Well, gots me some G. Skill HZ coming. Woo hoo. Hoping this takes care of me problems..

:up:

[Broken]

Well, got my 4gb HZ kit this morning. Popped out my OCZ sticks and popped in the G.Skills. Fired it up and... beep, beep, beep... code 54. Crap! Nooooooo.
reset CMOS and crossed fingers. Click.... beep, beep, beep 54 again. Son of a b. Popped the sticks out an put them in the blue slots. Cross fingers and toes. Click...... Post. Woo hoo!. Running like a champ.. :) Can actually run DDR3 1600 now.

Much, much better. Now to get rid of my OCZ's to someone that can use them.