Official GIGABYTE Forum
Overclocking, Benching, Events, Tweaking & Modding => Overclocking motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: Atomic_Sheep on November 30, 2010, 01:02:56 pm
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Hi guys, I have a X58A-UD3R Revision 1, i7 930 and 12 gigs of Gskill 12800 1600mhz RAM. I overclocked the system pretty much from day one to 4Ghz and got my memory up to spec from 1066 and 7 7 7 20 timings which it was running at when the processor was at stock speeds. I recently rebuilt my system and I've been subsequently unable to overclock my computer at all. It was running perfectly well before the system rebuild and then I chucked in a 4th hdd to get RAID 10 (0+1) to work and decided to update my BIOS to F6 from F5 because I was having issues with my RAID configuration. Not sure if the BIOS upgrade was what has solved the issues or whether I was just unlucky with 2 of the drives going out of commission on the second day after the rebuild requiring yet another rebuild but since then at least the RAID 10 has been working although I've had the configuration degrade a few times but with only 1 HDD going there haven't been any problems in the way of simply rebuilding the RAID configuration and plowing on.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I'm almost certain I didn't bring the computer specs back to stock before upgrading the BIOS from F5 to F6 and subsequently, any attempts to get my system back up to the old overclock have failed with the computer failing to load windows. I've only been able to get windows to start loading by increasing vcore and vtt voltages a few notches above what they were at when overclocked but the result was a prompt BSOD during the loading process of windows and then the system switching off and reverting back to standard spec. I've been trying to figure out whether what has been causing what I've experienced and someone suggested on a forum that I might have screwed up the BIOS and I need to reinstall it from scratch to get it working properly again.
I just wanted to confirm whether this was a possiblity and if so, to get some links explaining how I would downgrade to the original BIOS and then upgrade back up to F6 or maybe F5 and then get my overclock back.
Just as a side note, my system did start to restart in the final few weeks before I rebuilt my computer but I wasn't sure whether that was viruses or the CPU degrading due to the overclock as somen people have suggested on forums. I've had the computer for 6-9 months and I've got a Megahalems Prolimatech cooler so temps never exceeded 70c during normal use, I got up to around 75 or something like that whislt running Prime95 to test the stability of my overclock during the overclocking process, but that was as high as I ever went and for as long as I ever went at those temps. It's been winter here for the entire duration of my overclock so basically, with no hot days I'm pretty sure temps never exceeded 70c.
Anyway, I just wanted to possibly also get other suggestions as to what might have been causing the sudden resets (not BSOD... just a reset like a power plug from a wall and then a reset).
I've got a Seasonic X-750 PSU and i had my initial one swapped out for a new one because I believed the first one was faulty which it very well may have because I was unable to install windows when I first built the computer and before overclocking it. With the replaced PSU it installed no problems although I still kept getting driver errors for my video card (GTX 260 SO but that has since been sorted with updated drivers - it used to turn off the monitor for a split second and then turn back on saying driver so and so failed and I thought it was due to a faulty PSU but looks like that wasn't really case).
Anyway, any help would be much appreciated.
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Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte UK forum.
It is possible that you damaged your BIOS when you updated it if you didn't return everything to stock settings before doing the flash. Also what did you use to flash the update QFlash or @BIOS ?
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Sorry, not really sure what you mean. To update the BIOS, I simply downloaded the F6 BIOS from the Gigabyte website, copied it to a floppy and then when I was in the setup menu after pressing delete, I pressed F10 I think it was, copied F5 to another floppy just in case, then simply updated from the same F10 menu from the floppy.
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Real old school way. I'm impressed! I didn't think there were any of us left who remembered how to do it properly. 8)
Did you reset the BIOS to Optimised BIOS Defaults before doing the update though?
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Pretty sure I didn't.
I don't really trust modding your computer through some program in an OS. I'm a first time overclocker and I was shocked to see some of the voltages that I was getting with the default Gigabyte software... it sets everything to auto the way I see it, so I was getting something like 1.7 volts on my memory and that was at something like 3.3Ghz? or whatever the highest amount you can overclock to in that utlitiy!!! After that I went the BIOS route straight away.
Either way, it sounds like I need to reinstall the BIOS? How do I do this?
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Yes totally agree with the doing it via the BIOS statement as does every other serious user I'm sure.
Right well you basically need to run the BIOS update again and this time make sure that before you do it you load Optimised BIOS Defaults in the BIOS and save and exit.
Do the update again and then when finished again load Optimised BIOS Defaults make any other changes to your BIOS setup that you want to do and save and exit.
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Ok, thank you, much appreciated, will do so tomorrow and returns with the results... hopefully favorable results.
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Well, I'm totally exhausted... I've spent the last 6 or so hours reinstalling windows, BIOS, overclocking, underclocking, you name it and nothing is working anymore. This is besides the 2 weeks that I've spent since I decided to reinstall the computer. Anyway...
Basically, first I tried to set to the optimised defaults and then also enabled the floppy drive, then save and exited the BIOS. Then when I entered it again, I went straight into flash (f8), put in the floppy with F6, installed it, reset, upon first boot, initially all I did was load the Optimised BIOS defaults and then save and exited, on the next restart I edited all the things like turning off the logo and changing a few other settings (not overclocked, I think all I did was change it to 64 bit and disable the logo) and then I realised I forgot to enabled RAID so had to restart again, anyway, after all that was done, I deleted the RAID volume because the system got deleted (no biggie I was prepared for that) and then I reinstalled it. After the reinstall, I tried overclocking... same result... resets.
I tried installing F6 again, this time I loaded everything not forgetting RAID this time and reinstalled the system again... same result.
Tried it again, this time I tried overclocking straight away, died straight away.
Did this a few times, but no matter what I tried, the results were the same and I just ended up reinstalling Windows god knows how many times in the process.
Anyway, eventually I decided to try to revert back to F5... so I plugged in the floppy with the F5 BIOS, did the same proceedures of loading optimised BIOS defaults blah blah... anyway, loaded it all, installed windows, went to overclock, the overclock didn't restart but it kept getting stuck at the DMI page.
So, I tried installing F5 again and this time overclocked straight away... installed windows, installed some updates, all was going good but as soon as I restarted the computer after the first updates d/l and installed, it got stuck on the DMI page, so I reinstalled the BIOS again, reinstalled the system but this time with a smaller clock (3.8 vs 4.0 Ghz)... same deal, installs fine with all the windows 7 restarts to get to the first windows screen, installed all the updates this time thinking that it was def going to work, then restarted, and once again, got stuck at the DMI page.
One thing I'm sort of confused about is why the F5 BIOS still has my old overclock programmed into it. I went f11 or whatever to see if anything was saved and there was my overclock from before so I obviously installed my exact BIOS that I had before with all the saved overclock values in there. Anyway I don't know what to do now... I just want to start again... will pressing that reset CMOS button at the back bring me back to F1 or whatever the original BIOS was?
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You need to clear the DMI data as you flash the BIOS so that it doesn't keep the old settings.
Pressing the CMOS reset button will only clear the CMOS and not touch the BIOS version at all. So if you have F3 installed when you clear the CMOS F3 will still be installed afterwards.
Remember to unplug the power and drain any residue from the capacitors first by pressing the start button for a few seconds after unplugging. I prefer to actually remove the battery for ten minutes to be sure rather than just use the clear cmos button.
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Um, so when do I do all this? I go into BIOS, select reset defaults, then I save and exit and turn off the computer. Turn off the power, remove the battery, wait a while, chuck the battery back in, plug it all back up, start her up, go into BIOS, reinstall a fresh copy and then away I go?
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Um, so when do I do all this? I go into BIOS, select reset defaults, then I save and exit and turn off the computer. Turn off the power, remove the battery, wait a while, chuck the battery back in, plug it all back up, start her up, go into BIOS, reinstall a fresh copy and then away I go?
I would say that is about it in a nutshell but make sure that you unplug the power not just turn it off and when you do the BIOS make sure you load Optimised BIOS Defaults
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so in other words:
I go into BIOS, select reset defaults, then I save and exit and turn off the computer. Turn off the power, remove the battery, wait a while, chuck the battery back in, plug it all back up, start her up, go into BIOS, reinstall a fresh copy (select optimised bios defaults) and then away I go?
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Yes
;)
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Ok, I just d/l a squeaky clean new F5, loaded it up onto a floppy, restarted the system, entered BIOS, loaded optimised settings and turned off the computer.
Unplugged the power cable, pressed the power button for a few seconds a few times. Unplugged the video card coz the battery is behind it, unplugged the battery for 10 mins, was pressing the power button just for kicks intermittently while it was out. Plugged it back in after 10 mins, then the video card, then the power cable, turned it all back on...
Went into BIOS, installed the fresh new F5 shut down the computer. Now I just started it back up and loaded optimised settings again...
question... should I just restart right now? or can I change 32 bit to 64 bit, IDE to RAID and turn the splash screen off and then restart? Or should I restart as I said first and then make these changes?
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question... should I just restart right now? or can I change 32 bit to 64 bit, IDE to RAID and turn the splash screen off and then restart? Or should I restart as I said first and then make these changes?
Firstly I would query what you mean by "can I change 32 or 64 bit?"
Load Optimised BIOS Defaults, make any other changes in the BIOS you want to and then Save and exit. Once you have exited you can boot as normal.
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under power management, theres a setting to go from 32 to 64 bit.
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Oh I see you are meaning the HPET settings. Yes you can change it to 64 if you want although it doesn't really make a lot of difference.
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Well, just loaded optimised settings, changed to RAID, HPET and switched off the logo thing. Restarted, system turned off, turned back on, got to the DMI page, and got stuck. I restarted, changed the boot order to CD first and put the windows disc in and it loaded my already installed system except now I've lost my registration with Kaspersky and I'm guessing my windows activation won't work anymore. Anyway, restarted changed boot order back to hdd first and cd second and now its stuck on DMI again. sigh.
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Well I have just been checking up on all the things that can cause this and I think the best thing is to remove all your drives apart form one and try and boot. If that is successful you can try adding more drives one at a time and testing as you go.
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Under CMOS settings, there are no drives listed however when I boot up the system, the RAID configuration is listed as Normal.
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OK next try disabling the floppy drive in the BIOS
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It (the floppy) wasn't disabled with a fresh F5 but I couldnt access the RAID configurator in F5 by pressing Cltr I no matter how many times I tried this time so I installed F6 again... went into Ctrl I and deleted the other raid volume and created a new one... installed windows again... looks like I forogot to change the date and time so Kaspersky didn't like that... changed the date and time to the correct setting now and its working again. However with the F6, I'm still getting the system which is getting stuck at the DMI stage and only goes past it if I have CD as the first boot device and the win 7 disc in there.
With the F6 update, it automatically disabled the floppy drive... but when I deleted and created a new RAID volume, after resetting the computer after the installation, the CMOS no longer had any drives detected... no HDDs no Blu ray no DVD. So I'm guessing CMOS lost all the devices when I deleted the RAID volume.
So basically... after installing F6 again straight after the fresh install, it had all my drives detected with the floppy automatically getting deleted i.e. its stated as "none" but as soon as I deleted the RAID volume and created a new one and installed windows, the remaining 4hdds and my blu ray and dvd dissappeared from the CMOS menu and I'm now unable to boot. Well... I'm booting via the dvd method atm.
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I think the only way we are going to get to the bottom of this is if we take it back to a basic configuration.
Pull everything off the board apart from the CPU/heatsink/fan assembly, one module of memory in each of the first three slots ( 6GB), the buzzer, the keyboard/mouse, the graphics card, optical drive and a single hard drive that you are going to load windows on.
You can do this in or out of the case whichever you prefer. I would suggest outside as it is easier to check and move things around if needed.
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1HDD, 1 video card, 1 cpu, 6gb of memory, 1 optical drive, 1 mouse, 1 keyboard, 1 DVI card slot taken in the video card to 1 monitor, no other usb devices connected... press power button... fans spin, blue case power led lights up, video card fan works at full speed but nothing else happens... screen doesnt turn on, BIOS doesn't load and the system is stuck in that pre loaded BIOS state.
Tried resetting CMOS, tried adding more hdds... same deal, doesnt boot bios anymore.
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Lets try booting from the Backup BIOS then and see if that helps in case this Main BIOS is corrupt.
You can kick in the backup BIOS by shutting down the PSU from the wall, then hold down your case power button in and then turn on the power supply button, a few seconds later the board will start, shut off the power supply then.
Then you can turn on the power supply again and power up the board normally and DualBIOS will kick in.
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Tried that proceedure a few times... nope nothing happens... same deal... fans working etc etc but no bios loaded...
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I will PM you shortly.
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The computer starts by itself the final time that I turn on the PSU.