ASUS Z77 Motherboards - Official Support Thread

[Cecil]

About to try my 3770K with SS. Anything else I should try to get the memory up before I do?

Ive tried for about the last hour to get 2400Mhz or 2600Mhz to post. Most recent attempt was,

CPU 42x100 @1.15V (only 1.1V needed)
Memory Frequency - 2400Mhz
Timings,
11-13-13-33-2T
RAS to Ras Delay 7
Ref Cycle Time Auto
Refresh Interval Auto
Write Recovery Time 16
Read to Pre Time 8
Four Act Win Time 32
Write to Read Delay 8
CKE Minimum Pulse Width Auto
CAS# Write Latency Auto
RTL (CHA) Auto
RTL (CHB) Auto
IO-L (CHA) Auto
IO-L (CHB) Auto

tWRDR (DD) 3
tRWDR (DD) 7
tRWSR 8
tRR (DD) 3
tRR (DR) 3
tRRSR 7
tWW (DD) 5
tWW (DR) 5
tWWSR 7

MRC Fast Boot Enable
DRAM CLK Period 10
Transmitter Slew (CHA) 5
Transmitter Slew (CHB) 5
Receiver Slew (CHA) 5
Receiver Slew (CHB) 5
MCH Duty Sense (CHA) Auto
MCH Duty Sense (CHB) Auto
Read Additional Swizzle Auto
Write Additional Swizzle Auto


DRAM Current Capability 120%

VDimm 1.675V
VCCSA 1.1V
Auto everything else




I set everything at 2200Mhz, save and reset. Get back in BIOS to change to 2400Mhz or 2600Mhz, reboot and it takes about 6-7 seconds before the PSU clicks everything off, then fans spin, and then hangs with the red LED by the memOK button on. Have to switch off PSU and wait a bit before trying to get it to post again, and it gets to "Overclock Failed, Press F1". I started with slightly tighter timings and less voltage, and slowy loosened them and increased voltage to this point.

[Raja@ASUS]

1) I've enabled ErP, but unfortunately the Power LED is still blinking annoyingly during Sleep. Isn't it possible to add a BIOS option to just keep it off?
2) Here's everything the P8Z77-I Deluxe has in the APM section:



Note: when enabling ErP, the last two "Power On By..." options get automatically disabled and vice versa, but no "Power On By Keyboard/Mouse" option in sight

1. Flashing LED will have to ask HQ. Leakage to 5VSB from PSU (USB etc), nothing can be done about that.


2. Put the board in S3 from Windows and see if it will power on from mouse/keyboard, EFI hands this all off to OS.

-Raja

[Raja@ASUS]

About to try my 3770K with SS. Anything else I should try to get the memory up before I do?

Max out all third timings to see if it will POST. Then tighten individually if it does.

-Raja

[Bitgod]

Are you still using two memory kits together (4 sticks) or a single kit? Keep posts in one place I think, helps with debugging not to have to chase back and forth for info.

But...do I reply here or not? Yeah, I know, I didn't want to be one of those people with posting the same thing in the sister threads. I'll keep it mainly over at HOCP. To answer your question though; yes at this point I'm running 2 2x4GB kits (that wasn't what was going on with the Corsair 4x4GB failing, that was an actual 4 piece kit)

[Cecil]

Tried these settings, still the same thing.






The ram posted and did Spi at 2600Mhz once, but cant get it to do it again. That was on a 3570K. Im now using a 3770K that I got from here that was able to do ~2800Mhz.



EDIT: Using the 22x multi and pushing the BCLK to 105+, I can run over 2300Mhz without issue. 10-11-11-25-1T with 1.65Vdimm. No other changes needed (though Im working on lower sub timings).

[Raja@ASUS]

But...do I reply here or not? Yeah, I know, I didn't want to be one of those people with posting the same thing in the sister threads. I'll keep it mainly over at HOCP. To answer your question though; yes at this point I'm running 2 2x4GB kits (that wasn't what was going on with the Corsair 4x4GB failing, that was an actual 4 piece kit)

Pick one place and I will keep my responses there, too. In any case your issues might well be down to 4 dimm stability. Putting two kits together is always tricky to get stable on ICs that are capacitive.

-Raja

[mav2000]

Hi Raja, seeing that your here, I thought I better put my query here rather than in the Asus M5G thread:

Hi guys am getting a post code of 25 and voltage is not helping anytime I try ram at 2600 MHz. I read Rajas guide and it says Imc may not be capable. This is with the new gskill trident x 8 gb kit as well as a 4 gb kit of gskill flares.

I also need 1.280 to run 4.5 ghz stable. Any help? Any other voltages to play with to get this going or to get CPU vcore down?

[ArCElM]

I also need 1.280 to run 4.5 ghz stable. Any help? Any other voltages to play with to get this going or to get CPU vcore down?

I am in a similar boat any advice on trying to stabilize 4.5 at 1.2v?

I should have probably come in here and asked Raja in the first place about this I guess if anybody will know he will.

Raja all I have done is loaded asus optimal form EZ BIOS, then save and exit, then gone into advanced mode and upped the multi by x2 for a x43 4429Mhz.

Then fixed vcore at 1.2v

I have literally done nothing else, any advice?

I have great stability at 4229Mhz fixed 1.1v
AIDA64 runs perfectly @ 4429Mhz fixed 1.15v - but everything else plays up, this is also the case at 1.17 - in the end I am trying 1.2v which seems pretty high from what I have seen for only ~4.4Ghz


ANY tips about BIOS settings and voltages would be awesome, specially the ones which seem very obvious to you, I assure you they are not to me

My RAM is well within spec also.


EDIT: I have just seen the 'ASUS Z77 UEFI Tuning Guide for overclocking' you have there, this looks GREAT! I will get reading that as soon as I get back!

[Raja@ASUS]

Hi Raja, seeing that your here, I thought I better put my query here rather than in the Asus M5G thread:

Hi guys am getting a post code of 25 and voltage is not helping anytime I try ram at 2600 MHz. I read Rajas guide and it says Imc may not be capable. This is with the new gskill trident x 8 gb kit as well as a 4 gb kit of gskill flares.

I also need 1.280 to run 4.5 ghz stable. Any help? Any other voltages to play with to get this going or to get CPU vcore down?

Hi,

Select the Samsung profile to start with. If still no POST, then use latency Boundary 14 and see if it will POST. If that does not work either then IMC is not good enough for it.

2400 with tight timings can be made faster than 2600 anyway. I will update the guides soon to help you guys out a bit.

As for Vcore, this is very much going to be CPU specific and to a certain extent is also fired up by DRAM frequency. Once you get the memory dialled in, tweak BCLK skew and see if it allows you to drop Vcore a bit.

-Raja

[mav2000]

Thanks Raja,
looks like I have a long way to go to get anywhere on this platform...

My first change to Intel in 15 years and must say I am quite happy with it till now.

[Raja@ASUS]

Give it some time, and work through things systematically and you should find an optimal OC.

[mav2000]

Well that's a no go so looks like the imc is not very good on this chip. Btw what does the blck do? And how do we tune it?

[ChronoDog]

1. Flashing LED will have to ask HQ. Leakage to 5VSB from PSU (USB etc), nothing can be done about that.
2. Put the board in S3 from Windows and see if it will power on from mouse/keyboard, EFI hands this all off to OS.

-Raja

First of all thanks for taking the time to respond to us all here at the forums, and your awesome UEFI guide - helped me a ton!
Secondly:

1. I'm not talking about sporadic flashing, but about the Sleep feature where the Power LED just blinks to indicate that the PC is in sleep mode. The easiest solution to my issue is just disconnecting it completely, but I'd still like to know when my PC is on, since it's otherwise inaudible.

2. S3 works well, but I sometimes do need to turn the PC off, and reaching for the power button every time is a chore with some case placements.
The last Asus boards I owned, the P5W-DH Deluxe (a board from 2005!) and the P5Q Pro both had the option to turn the PC on with any USB device (mouse/keyboard/remote), and any of the other boards I've owned had the option to at least turn it on using a USB mouse/keyboard. The 8Z77-I Deluxe is the first Asus board I own that doesn't seem to have this functionality

Both of these things seem like things that could be easily implemented on the UEFI level, similarly to what ASRock did on some of its' boards (H61M-VS for example) where they seem to have replaced the "Turn Off" function of the board with with an S5 hybrid of sorts, making turning the PC back on after having it "Off" achievable by means of USB devices and shortened boot times by skipping much of the reglar POST in the process.

Pass that idea on to HQ perhaps (if it's not patented), I'm sure many would love this functionality on their Asus boards

[Budwise]

Any word on the bios fix for the 6950's flashed to 6970?

[Raja@ASUS]

First of all thanks for taking the time to respond to us all here at the forums, and your awesome UEFI guide - helped me a ton!
Secondly:

1. I'm not talking about sporadic flashing, but about the Sleep feature where the Power LED just blinks to indicate that the PC is in sleep mode. The easiest solution to my issue is just disconnecting it completely, but I'd still like to know when my PC is on, since it's otherwise inaudible.

2. S3 works well, but I sometimes do need to turn the PC off, and reaching for the power button every time is a chore with some case placements.
The last Asus boards I owned, the P5W-DH Deluxe (a board from 2005!) and the P5Q Pro both had the option to turn the PC on with any USB device (mouse/keyboard/remote), and any of the other boards I've owned had the option to at least turn it on using a USB mouse/keyboard. The 8Z77-I Deluxe is the first Asus board I own that doesn't seem to have this functionality

Both of these things seem like things that could be easily implemented on the UEFI level, similarly to what ASRock did on some of its' boards (H61M-VS for example) where they seem to have replaced the "Turn Off" function of the board with with an S5 hybrid of sorts, making turning the PC back on after having it "Off" achievable by means of USB devices and shortened boot times by skipping much of the reglar POST in the process.

Pass that idea on to HQ perhaps (if it's not patented), I'm sure many would love this functionality on their Asus boards

Hi

1) Can't be changed, ACPI feature.


2) Maybe in future boards, don't think they will implement in this range.


-Raja

[Raja@ASUS]

Well that's a no go so looks like the imc is not very good on this chip. Btw what does the blck do? And how do we tune it?

BCLK = reference clock which is supplied to the clock synthesizer in the CPU from which the operating frequency for the CPU, IMC and DRAM is derived.

BCLK skew, in your case just try moving in upwards in steps of 1 and checking if you can lower Vcore. After that try negative, too.


-Raja

[Raja@ASUS]

Any word on the bios fix for the 6950's flashed to 6970?

Not yet, when I hear something I will update.

-Raja

[neo_rtr]

I do not know how to describe this , how can one stop the Mhz frequency from jumping up and down. one time is at 3.5 the other something else.
Where/what is the option in bios in order to have the frequency set to something.
if i do 100x 40 i expect 4000Mhz- i get anything from 3,5 up to 4.0.
apologies for the n00b question

[Raja@ASUS]

I do not know how to describe this , how can one stop the Mhz frequency from jumping up and down. one time is at 3.5 the other something else.
Where/what is the option in bios in order to have the frequency set to something.
if i do 100x 40 i expect 4000Mhz- i get anything from 3,5 up to 4.0.
apologies for the n00b question

You can set Windows to High performance mode in power options or disable SpeedStep in UEFI. TBH leaving it intact does not really hurt performance unless you are running competitive benchmarks so it is fine to leave it as is.

[DEFLORATOR]

BCLK = reference clock which is supplied to the clock synthesizer in the CPU from which the operating frequency for the CPU, IMC and DRAM is derived.

BCLK skew, in your case just try moving in upwards in steps of 1 and checking if you can lower Vcore. After that try negative, too.


-Raja

Where is BCLK skew in bios? Sorry but I can't find it...

[Raja@ASUS]

Where is BCLK skew in bios? Sorry but I can't find it...

ROG boards only

[neo_rtr]

Tried to disable speedstep but no joy.
I read that might need to disable the Intel C"s
(from bit tech Intel Core i7-3770K CPU Review)

With a decent quality motherboard all you should need to do is disable the Intel C-states (or adjust the CPU power levels up) and then increase the core voltage and multiplier.

I also get some sound destortion in like YouTube clips, game+Skype which I think comes from the CPU when it's adjusting the frequency (up or down). Maybe this is a different issue.
However it's an issue to be looked later on.
I admit last time I tried to OC anything was on a q68xx CPU
So starting new again, in need of some help pls.

[Raja@ASUS]

With a decent quality motherboard all you should need to do is disable the Intel C-states (or adjust the CPU power levels up) and then increase the core voltage and multiplier.

Hi,

Nobody has their boards setup this way, by default all of this is active and the paramaters have to be turned off if the user wants. Reason for that is because Intel have done a very good job of allowing low power modes to work, and they have no negative impact on overclocks. Many users are happy to utilize freqeuncy and power reduction when the system is not being taxed to save power and reduce heat output so we don't disable any of it automatcially but rather allow them to disable whatever does not suit them. Set the C states off also if you need to (it's in the same part of UEFI as SpeedStep) and or set Windows to high performance mode and the multi will not change (thats the easiest way really, and it is so simple to do).

Sound issue is likely something else. Without knowing what the setup is or the nature of the "distortions", it is difficult to say what the problem is. You may wish to contact support in your region for deeper help on debugging this if you are stuck or if there is some kind of compatibility issue.

-Raja

[neo_rtr]

Will double check the SpeedStep, It was turned off this morning. Will check as well the Win7 settings, the high performance mode was previously enabled, will check that as well.
Is there any relation between UEFI settings and asus ai suite in terms of the suite overriding any settings done in UEFI upon load?

[Raja@ASUS]

Will double check the SpeedStep, It was turned off this morning. Will check as well the Win7 settings, the high performance mode was previously enabled, will check that as well.
Is there any relation between UEFI settings and asus ai suite in terms of the suite overriding any settings done in UEFI upon load?

If you are asking about voltages and such. Ai suite will use voltages from UEFI as base. If you adjust anything in the OS, once you reboot the system will revert to UEFI again.