My Overclocking experience... need help

[Atomic_Sheep]

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.

[Dark Mantis]

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 ?

[Atomic_Sheep]

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.

[Dark Mantis]

Real old school way. I'm impressed! I didn't think there were any of us left who remembered how to do it properly. 

Did you reset the BIOS to Optimised BIOS Defaults before doing the update though?

[Atomic_Sheep]

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?

[Dark Mantis]

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.

[Atomic_Sheep]

Ok, thank you, much appreciated, will do so tomorrow and returns with the results... hopefully favorable results.

[Atomic_Sheep]

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?

[Dark Mantis]

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.

[Atomic_Sheep]

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?

[Dark Mantis]

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

[Atomic_Sheep]

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?

[Dark Mantis]

Yes
 

[Atomic_Sheep]

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?

[Dark Mantis]

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.