Z87 Sniper - sudden instability

[Kaiketsu]

Hello,

I've been using OCed i5-4690k (@4.4 ghz, customcooling so it had like 60 degrees max when stressed) and Gskill Trident 2400mhz for months. Completed a couple games.Everything worked. The ram and mobo aren't compatible, but it didn't give me any issues.

And suddenly the system fails to boot. The little display on the mobo shows 15, 32, then resets and goes 15, 32 again ad infinitum until shut down. I try three times and this pops up:



I enter setup, change nothing from my OC settings, and it boots normally.

Today, situation repeated.

Any ideas how to get rid of this annoyance? The system obviously works, I just have to boot three times and enter setup to change nothing for it to work.

Keep in mind that the system worked stably for a couple months on those settings. I changed nothing 

[absic]

Hi,

I had a similar situation with this occurring, funny thing is I wasn't O/C'ing anything in my system.

Turned out that there was a firmware issue with one of the SSD's I had installed. Once I removed the offending drive, no further issues.

I would check other devices, especially SSD's (if you are using them) as there are well documented issues with certain drives and the Z87/Z97 chipsets.

Another thing to check is, are your two BIOS chips running the same BIOS version. If they are using different ones then it might be a good idea to synch them to the same version, as this too, can cause this type of glitch.

If none of this helps than can you post back with FULL system specs to aid with further trouble shooting for you.

[Kaiketsu]

thanks for the answer. I know my mobo has dual bios, but I'm not sure how to check which bios is which.

my SSDs are here from the beginning (I didn't change them) and the boot failure happened yesterday & persists. I have no clue why something like that just HAPPENS after 0,5 year of working fine. All I know is that I fiddled with AHCI/IDE modes to accomodate winXp/win7, but I changed it back to AHCI... and I used a different boot order, I think. That's the only thing that changed. The boot issues started right after that, so my guess is that something up there is screwed. BUT I used "restore to default" upon one of the boot failures and re-entered all values again to match what has been working for 0,5 year and I still get boot failures.

What is interesting is that they don't happen 100% of the time. On cold start, they do happen pretyt much always, and on restart (from windows) about 20-30% of the time. It's akin to an USB problem (certain USB devices not working on cold start, requiring replugging) I used to have when I first installed this MoBo. It actually magically fixed itself over time (!??!!?).

Sometimes I have no clue what's going on anymore haha.


My setup is:

 Computer Type PC/Desktop
OS Win 10 (now also win7 on 2nd SSD)
CPU i5-4690k
Motherboard Gigabyte Z87 Sniper
Memory G.Skill Trident 8GB 2400 Mhz
Graphics Card EVGA Geforce 1060GTX
Sound Card AIM SC808
Monitor(s) Displays Dell u2412m
Mouse Roccat Savu
PSU EVGA G2 Supernova 650W
Cooling Grandis XE1236v2
Hard Drives Plextor 128M5S 128GB Crucial MX200 250GB Toshiba External USB drive 2TB

my processor is set lazily @ 4.4 Ghz on auto because I didn't bothered to properly OC it when I noticed that auto is stable. I lowered that to 4.0 GHz to test whether its the case but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

my RAM is OCed to match the box values of 1,65 V, 2400mhz and 10-12-12-31 timings, as per ram specification.

[Kaiketsu]

Sorry to bump this, but it's getting really annoying.

I got rid of all overclocked settings from the bios and it still ALWAYS fails the first cold boot.

I tried updating my SSD's firmware, but it didn't work either.


Could it be something like CMOS battery dying? Because it literally started out of nowhere (and persists).

[shadowsports]

Greetings,
Its not your CMOS battery unless you also lose date/time settings in addition to anything else you've changed.

What BIOS rev are you running?

Were you using any saved "Profiles" in BIOS or in EZTune for your OC?

Have you performed a BIOS reset and/or Battery Pull?

Please revert Memory to 2133Mhz operation  during your troubleshooting.  CPU at stock speed.

Check voltage on 5v and 12v rails for stability.  I'd use BIOS and SIV for this to get a average between the two.

**  Also, please disable Fast Start Up In Power Management  >  Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\System Settings
 
The point that absic made in regards to boot device FW is valid.  If FW on boot device is not compatible with ME firmware in BIOS, boot failures can result.  Our not knowing if you have updated the BIOS recently leaves this as a question?   


 

[Kaiketsu]

Hey, thanks for answering:)

I'm using the latest bios (1.4) according to Gigabyte's download site for my mobo. MoBo's rev 1.1.

I don't have any profiles.

I did revert to defaults (didn't work) but I didn't do a BIOS reset/battery pull. I'll try the battery pull. Can you tell me how to reset the BIOS, too? It almost feels like I'm booting from the 2nd BIOS and the first is corrupted, or smth.

I'll lower the memory as suggested. Lowering the CPU to stock didn't help sadly.

Voltage stability seems excellent. The PSU is highest "tier", too (EVGA G2 650W)

I'll make sure fast start is turned off.

My SSDs are updated to latest FW (Plextor - 1.5, Crucial - 1.4).

Keep in mind that this problem came out of thin air and the system was working perfectly for a couple months, on overclocked settings which leaves me confused and puzzled.

[Kaiketsu]

Hey, I managed to solve it. I removed the CMOS battery, fully drained the capacitors and put in a new one. The problems ceased.