Strange crash with i7 920 + UD3R + 280GTX SLI

Hi guys, sorry for my first post here to be asking for assistance, im a long time lurker so I hope you will forgive me!

I built myself a new rig a couple of weeks ago, specs are:

i7 920
6GB GSkill 1333MHz DDR3
Gigabyte X58-UD3R-SLI mobo
2x 150GB WD Raptors RAID0
2x GTX 280 SLI
OCZ 900W Modular PSU

Basically, i was playing Left4Dead, and on several occasions after about 20-30 mins my system froze up. Complete lock, I couldnt ctrl-alt-del and the sound was looping. After a few seconds the video shut off and I was left with a black screen. This happened in DiRT aswell.

First things first, I thought it was my overclock I had applied (who here has a stock CPU? :ROTF:), so I set the system to stock speeds on the GFX and CPU/mem, but hte problem still occurred.

I thought it might be the PSU at fault, but I dont want to spend lots of money on a replacement PSU (I don't have any spare ones that are powerful enough), so I thought of another stress test to perform. I ran the crysis warhead benchmark on a loop at 1920x1200 with 16x AA, with Prime95 blend in the background (8 threads), so I was stressing my system to the max. I ran 50 loops of the test, 1.5+ hours, and it STILL didn't crash, so i'm completely stumped as to the problem. I also tried updating nVidia drivers but it's still happening

If anyone has any suggestions PLEASE tell me, any information is greatly appreciated as im completely stuck

Regards
Ben (SBB)

Its obviously not a hardware problem.

Ok, I gathered as much, but is there anything else I could do other than update drivers, windows settings etc that could be causing it?

Update steam. Don't use any betas.

What OS?

A hard lock like that seems like a memory issue to me. Have you run memtest at all? I find linpack to be pretty good to picking up memory and MCH problems as well.

its a hardware proble.. maybe a RAM problem.. check your RAM...

I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with Service Pack 1.

I didnt think of running memtest, so i've burnt it to a CD and will run it while I sleep and report back in the morning

Thanks for the help so far, it's much appreciated!

You may want to run Memtest 86+ one stick at a time to check for a bad stick. I've found it pretty useless with 8gb of ram and I'm sure that 6 is no different. Memtest 3.8 is much more stressful plus you can run 8 threads of it which will really stress your ram. Sometimes that won't even fail but if your rig starts acting funny during the test you'll know that you have issues. Intel burn test might be your best bet. I would give that a shot, first. Good luck man. I was having very similar problems when I upgraded to 8gb of ram. Ran Crysis fine but was having odd freezing and the occasional hard lock when gaming. A bios update fixed my problem.

I ran a couple of instances of memtest 3.8 and left it overnight and it didnt give any errors even after 800% tested (I assume thats 8 complete tests). I've also updated the bios

Any more ideas?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SBB

I ran a couple of instances of memtest 3.8 and left it overnight and it didnt give any errors even after 800% tested (I assume thats 8 complete tests). I've also updated the bios

Any more ideas?

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Intel burn test it seems to do a better job of stressing the MCH than memtest. Just make sure you manually set your timings since that can cause problems, too.

intel and memtest doesnt stress enough on vdimm.
i can run lower vdimm and vtt with it.

try this so far the highest stress and will show errors

run prime95 25.9 64bit set large fft and then set custom, change run fft to to max mem around 5.4gb in diagnostic mode
if hang ( could be either ioh/ich voltage or inssufficient vtt)
if more than one thread error.. insufficient vdimm
if one thread error vtt insufficient or vtt/vdimm ratio wrong ( one of them is overvolted or undervolted)

I started IntelBurnTest on "Maximum Stress" last night, turned off my monitor and went to read in bed. After about 45 mins or so i heard the PC restart, so I went back to it and checked system events but i couldnt see anything. Im not sure what to do next but clearly I have a problem!

After the crash/reboot/whatever I tried memtest86+, but this ran for 8 hours with no errors.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SBB

I started IntelBurnTest on "Maximum Stress" last night, turned off my monitor and went to read in bed. After about 45 mins or so i heard the PC restart, so I went back to it and checked system events but i couldnt see anything. Im not sure what to do next but clearly I have a problem!

After the crash/reboot/whatever I tried memtest86+, but this ran for 8 hours with no errors.

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Like I said Memtest 86+ is pretty much useless. IBT will stress your rig far more than any other program, I'm sure tons of retail pc's would bsod in linpack. If you don't have loadline enabled you will get a little more vdroop and that lower vcc will cause a bsod in linpack from what I've seen. I would try those prime settings as well from the above poster, too. I'm going to try that out myself. It sounds really useful. Detecting mildly unstable memory or mch is a b***ard.

Also, with IBT do not use error detection since it will make you wait to finish the whole test to see any errors.

Edit: I just ran cstkl1's settings in prime and failed on a thread in 2 minutes. That seems like the way to go. I have some tweeking to do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cstkl1

intel and memtest doesnt stress enough on vdimm.
i can run lower vdimm and vtt with it.

try this so far the highest stress and will show errors

run prime95 25.9 64bit set large fft and then set custom, change run fft to to max mem around 5.4gb in diagnostic mode
if hang ( could be either ioh/ich voltage or inssufficient vtt)
if more than one thread error.. insufficient vdimm
if one thread error vtt insufficient or vtt/vdimm ratio wrong ( one of them is overvolted or undervolted)

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+1 :up:

Would someone be kind enough to post a screenshot of those settings entered correctly? I'm a little confused by the instructions

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SBB

Would someone be kind enough to post a screenshot of those settings entered correctly? I'm a little confused by the instructions

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http://i4memory.com/112680-post27.html
look at the setting for prime

also run all of this one after the other

if u can do this ure good to go.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cstkl1

http://i4memory.com/112680-post27.html
look at the setting for prime

also run all of this one after the other

if u can do this ure good to go.

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This advice worked wonders for me, thanks. I let it run for 2 hours, is that enough?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BababooeyHTJ

This advice worked wonders for me, thanks. I let it run for 2 hours, is that enough?

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u can run extended versions of one test
or a multiple of both

i usually do multiple of boot with cold boot, reset, shutdown and on.

after i pass this i will end it with extended test with linx.

prime and hyperpi 32m will sort out any mem, vtt issue with the x58

for 775.. hehehe try this set fft to min 4096,max 4096 run max mem..
u be suprise last time in the Rampage Extreme thread, a lot of ppl who can pass linx even 100 runs cannot pass more than 2 hours of this. reason is this because this will test gtl for cpu,nb, dram vtt, nb dram vtt, dram skews. tough man. max i ever got with x48 was 5 hours at 4.5ghz 565fsb 1800mhz CL8 4gb

for i7
since the only immediate concern is vtt and dram . prime + hyperpi with repeat test under different condition will sort it out pretty quick
linx will settle the vcore and mobo voltages aka ioh and ich.
hence y i always say run linx on a lowest ram multiplier and dram to take the vcore out of the equation first. then do the prime then the hyper pir
then retest a few times under different condition. then run linx again
then retry linx under a few conditions..

with this method i have ran linx max 50 runs on my i7 perfect.. usually this will involve some ioh/ich tweaking.
which is not that important.. i use sleep mode a lot and the prime and hyperpi is the most important to get that working everytime.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cstkl1

for 775.. hehehe try this set fft to min 4096,max 4096 run max mem..
u be suprise last time in the Rampage Extreme thread, a lot of ppl who can pass linx even 100 runs cannot pass more than 2 hours of this. reason is this because this will test gtl for cpu,nb, dram vtt, nb dram vtt, dram skews. tough man. max i ever got with x48 was 5 hours at 4.5ghz 565fsb 1800mhz CL8 4gb

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Wow no kidding I "thought" my settings were 100%. I had prime95 blend stable for 4 hours. IBT 30 pass etc.

I got 1 hour 40mins before error on one core lost a 2nd core 1 hour 50 mins with this 4096 min max test.

Great info cstkl1. Based on above I should increase vdimm.

hmm u need to take off cpu/nb gtl from the problem also

to do this

set blend then custom . change to max mem and change from 15 mins to 1 min.

2 hours or so should do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cstkl1

u can run extended versions of one test
or a multiple of both

i usually do multiple of boot with cold boot, reset, shutdown and on.

after i pass this i will end it with extended test with linx.

prime and hyperpi 32m will sort out any mem, vtt issue with the x58

for 775.. hehehe try this set fft to min 4096,max 4096 run max mem..
u be suprise last time in the Rampage Extreme thread, a lot of ppl who can pass linx even 100 runs cannot pass more than 2 hours of this. reason is this because this will test gtl for cpu,nb, dram vtt, nb dram vtt, dram skews. tough man. max i ever got with x48 was 5 hours at 4.5ghz 565fsb 1800mhz CL8 4gb

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Wow my computer like stalled with this haha worked fine though for an hour. :)

It's a driver problem, lots of users with 260's and 280's get this problem over in the L4D forums.

Have u tested if you get this problem in Windows XP. I would see if you can get a copy of TinyXp or something and just install on a spare hardriver and test to see if you get the same problem. It wouldn't surprise me if it was Vista screwing up once again. It could also be like someone said in an earlier post: a driver problem. XP might also sort that as they have much more stable drivers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Godofwar424

Have u tested if you get this problem in Windows XP. I would see if you can get a copy of TinyXp or something and just install on a spare hardriver and test to see if you get the same problem. It wouldn't surprise me if it was Vista screwing up once again. It could also be like someone said in an earlier post: a driver problem. XP might also sort that as they have much more stable drivers.

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i have two 285's on one rig and another with two 260's
no problem so far and still using 182.50 drivers only for l4d

all using dfi dk/ut i7 920 at 4.2-4.4ghz dram at 6gb 2000-2100 ht off
with vista 64

Forgot to reply to this, turned out to be memory voltage, ram needs 1.65 so I set it to 1.66 (had it at 1.64 before) and it's been fine