Low Voltage Warning Problem

[Fenrir]

Hey,

I have been getting all kinds of low voltage problems with my system lately, and I don't know how this can be when you have a 1000 watt power supply. But I have had to turn off all kinds of accessories in my system just to feed the basics figuring that would solve my problem and it hasn't. I have attached a screen shot to show you what I mean:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53843754/Voltage%20Error%202.png

Anyway, this problem has now really started to piss me off because twice today my system just powered itself off while I was playing Smite. I had 3 virtual machines going (2 of windows xp, and one of ubuntu 12.10) while smite was going on, and had my toons streaming off of shoutcast through one of the VM's. For some reason, keeping all this stuff going without over clocking this system seems to cause problems, and it shouldn't not with this kind of power in a system. Infact I know I have posted here last year a lot because of all kinds of issues this board has caused, but I have never over clocked this system yet, I never had the chance to because it has already blown 2, 1000 watt power supplies on me.

[Raghar]

Would you list all three PSU?
And have you plugged in all connectors, especially that one near RAM?
Also at what voltage in BIOS are running these sticks? They are 4 kits of 2x4 GB, right?
Also remove half sticks and post 3.3 V rail voltage.

[Fenrir]

- I went through two Koolance PSU-1000ATX-12N power supplies and one Corsair HX1000W power supply
- I have all the connectors but the one near the RAM, reason being is that it seems to be drawing more energy from the power supplies then they were capable of delivering. I can't understand why, but leaving it disconnected is saving the life of this power supply I have now.
- Yes there are 4 kits of 8 GB, but I don't know how to access the bio in windows to get you that information, booting up into the bios requires me actually disconnecting my monitors and putting on an old CRT monitor on a different port of the GTX video cards. It sounds silly I know, but this system wont let me view the bios without doing stupid things to my monitors. Windows only likes my monitors connected to the card not near the CPU and I don't get any video till it finishes booting windows up, and I need an older monitor to view the bios which I do not have at the moment connected to the card closest to the CPU with the other monitors disconnected.
- And last but not least, I cannot remove any sticks of RAM and I will show you why...


The liquid RAM coolers are fragile to touch, removing them, or even touching them may destabilize the coolers. I already had one accident with them were in a previous suggestion to fix some weird cpu problems about 11 months ago and chrome metal flakes broke off one of the coolers and fell a RAM bay socket. I brought it to my old college and brought the board into there biology lab so I could use the high precision microscope to look over every micron of all 8 slots to find all the metal flakes that broke off into the slots. It took me 7 and a half hours to scan over everything, and I had to use some high precision tweezers and pliers that I use for surface mount soldering on all the circuit boards I work with to remove the flakes. To prevent this from ever happening again, I used some special adhesive and lined it up against all the coolers so no chrome could ever flake off again. I know it worked because I was able to see 32 gigs again, not 24 gigs. And I still see 32 gigs of RAM, and the case was sealed shut to make sure it would never get handled or bumped or anything. I have to solve this problem, without removing any RAM or this might be the last time I ever get to handle this system at all before it fails completely, I don't think ASUS is going to send me another one of these boards because it's kind of old technology now. This means that all the cooling blocks that are in it get scrapped because they are not designed to fit any other motherboard other then an R4E.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

If I had to bet my liver I'd say it's just AI suite playing up!

AI suite plays up if you have any other program that polls the sensors installed or running......

However, the shutdowns..... I would look at memory first off. Vengeance has a terrible record on X79. are you running a single kit or two kits of the same type? Have you Memtest86+ed the memory at F5 defaults and at XMP or your manual OC?

But two PSUs blown?! I would not reckon on the board I would look at my supply....

[Arne_Saknussemm]

When you say 4 kits of 4 GB and then 32 GB total I am a bit confused....if you are running 4 different (though same make and model) kits of Vengeance RAM I would say that is quite probably your Problem right there....are you running XMP or have you set them up manually?

If you can't remove RAM though troubleshooting is going to be pointless pretty much.

The other thing is quad SLI is difficult to run too and coupled with RAM challenges your CPU might be giving up some times...

Also I would be looking at 1200w PSU or above to run all that.....

[HiVizMan]

Simple thing to do with the PSU readings, have only one application that measures voltages. Remove what ever you have (unless it is the application I am going to recommend) and install HWMonitor.

[Raghar]

Oh yes, it's this problem. Chrome snowflakes fell into the socket.

Well if you are using your HX-1000 you might like to disconnect power from one GFX card (these switches on RIVE might be actually useful), the one that eats power from 12v2 line. If that solves the problem with 3.3 voltage, you might want to overclock a little to see if all problems went away.

When you looked at it with a microscope, have you looked into that socket that gives you problems? These snowflakes might fallen into it if there wasn't a plug when that happened. Have you did shake shake dance? (For these who don't know how do it, it's take MB put it upside down, hold it with both hands above your head, then gently shake it and move around as dancing including siting down on your feet. Well, watchers might call psychiatric clinic, but if there was something inside, it would be in your hair. Do it gently to avoid damaging the board, and the CPU must be locked into the socket to avoid pins falling out.) There is still some chance something remained at position it shouldn't be, or there is some slight contact with a metal at wrong place.

You can order new RIVE even now. I seen 2 pieces being delivered to local shop near me, and I guess some shops would have some still in stock. Thus when you would like to preserve your cooling system and have a new RIVE as a backup, or when you would like to spend 3 days by removing the old one and trying to solve your problems by replacing it with the new one, you still have a chance for about 4 months, then they'd be probably sold out completely (if they are not manufactured anymore).

One GTX 690 eats about 337W of power, or more. This means you have only 300 for the rest of your system. How 12 V voltage looks like when system is going at full power? Can you read RAM voltages without going into BIOS, are they 1.5 V? What's voltage on your CPU on load?

Normally the high amperage vaporizes out these snowflakes (assuming all visible were removed), or blows up the board.

[Fenrir]

When you say 4 kits of 4 GB and then 32 GB total I am a bit confused....if you are running 4 different (though same make and model) kits of Vengeance RAM I would say that is quite probably your Problem right there....are you running XMP or have you set them up manually?

Each kit comes with 2 sticks of 4 GB, which makes 8 GB for 1 kit, then you add 4 kits. That's what I mean. Also, I'm not entirely certain if I am running XMP or not. How do I check for this and adjust for this? Should I be running XMP?

Simple thing to do with the PSU readings, have only one application that measures voltages. Remove what ever you have (unless it is the application I am going to recommend) and install HWMonitor.

Just to be on the safe side, because I avoid installing anything on this system (I don't even surf the web using the main OS, it's all done inside a virtual machine to avoid crap from building up on my system), but just to confirm, is this the program you want me to install?
http://download.cnet.com/HWMonitor/3000-2094_4-10793486.html
or
http://download.cnet.com/HWMonitor-Pro/3000-2094_4-75173047.html
Personally I would like the pro version cause I will go big or go home lol

When you looked at it with a microscope, have you looked into that socket that gives you problems? These snowflakes might fallen into it if there wasn't a plug when that happened. Have you did shake shake dance? (For these who don't know how do it, it's take MB put it upside down, hold it with both hands above your head, then gently shake it and move around as dancing including siting down on your feet. Well, watchers might call psychiatric clinic, but if there was something inside, it would be in your hair. Do it gently to avoid damaging the board, and the CPU must be locked into the socket to avoid pins falling out.) There is still some chance something remained at position it shouldn't be, or there is some slight contact with a metal at wrong place.

Yes, it's the main thing I looked at, you would never believe in a million years what it took to get the flakes out of the socket without bending any of the pins. It was like building a ship in a bottle, extreme patients were required for this operation. Some flakes were stuck into the socket that I could get out with really small pliers. However, there were 3 flakes that actually fell behind some of the pins, even the tweezers I had could have bent the pins if I just pushed them in. So, I ran to the college snack shop chewed some react 5 gum then put it on a tiny pea-tree dish. Then I had to brake off a tiny peace of the gum and mold it with the tweezers to be small enough to fit in between the pins without actually touching the pins. I was then able to grab the flakes and carefully snake them around the pins without touching them. Then to remove any conductive saliva that could have got into the socket, I use this stuff to remove it http://www.tiptopelectronics.com/home.asp?ProdDetail=4140-400G and of coarse this all had to be done under a microscope. As for putting it over my head and shaking it, there was no way in hell I was going to do that. The first thing I did to try and shake out any flakes was use a lab table and cover it with fresh paper towel. Then I would shake the board on that so that I could see anything that comes out of that board, it would land onto the paper. It did get rid of some flakes.

Normally the high amperage vaporizes out these snowflakes (assuming all visible were removed), or blows up the board.

Well oddly enough, it destroyed a RAM stick and not the RAM socket because the R4E was able to see the new replacement stick that got placed into the socket nicely without any trouble at all or configuration.

You can order new RIVE even now. I seen 2 pieces being delivered to local shop near me, and I guess some shops would have some still in stock. Thus when you would like to preserve your cooling system and have a new RIVE as a backup, or when you would like to spend 3 days by removing the old one and trying to solve your problems by replacing it with the new one, you still have a chance for about 4 months, then they'd be probably sold out completely (if they are not manufactured anymore).

That is good that they are still selling it, because that board was out for over a year now, thank you for letting me know

One GTX 690 eats about 337W of power, or more. This means you have only 300 for the rest of your system. How 12 V voltage looks like when system is going at full power? Can you read RAM voltages without going into BIOS, are they 1.5 V? What's voltage on your CPU on load?

I guess there is a way to look at that information, HiVizMan mentioned before that I should look at some program called HWMonitor.

Well if you are using your HX-1000 you might like to disconnect power from one GFX card (these switches on RIVE might be actually useful), the one that eats power from 12v2 line. If that solves the problem with 3.3 voltage, you might want to overclock a little to see if all problems went away.

Ya you can't just disconnect one of the cards power supply cables, I tried that before. In fact I got made fun of on this forum earlier when I said my system wasn't booting up and I checked over all my cables. I turned my head to one of the monitors and it said on the screen in 1 single sentence "Please connect all power cables to this video card". The card has to be completely removed before the system will allow you to continue booting. It looks like it's some kind of over power consumption fail safe placed into the card hardware.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Fenrir wrote:
Each kit comes with 2 sticks of 4 GB, which makes 8 GB for 1 kit, then you add 4 kits. That's what I mean. Also, I'm not entirely certain if I am running XMP or not. How do I check for this and adjust for this? Should I be running XMP?

Hmm I'm amazed this has worked at all especially with 2 690s your CPU must be pretty strong!

I would say no, don't run XMP. You would have to get into BIOS and make some adjustments. Have a look at the end of the second post in this thread for setting the RAM up manually and tweaking some voltages etc. http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?25510-Rampage-IV-Extreme-RAM-Guide&country=&status=

[Fenrir]

Arne Saknussemm wrote:
Hmm I'm amazed this has worked at all especially with 2 690s your CPU must be pretty strong!

I would say no, don't run XMP. You would have to get into BIOS and make some adjustments. Have a look at the end of the second post in this thread for setting the RAM up manually and tweaking some voltages etc. http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?25510-Rampage-IV-Extreme-RAM-Guide&country=&status=

Ya, the only problems I have ever had from Intel hardware is me causing them to over heat and having a failure with a cooling system to cause that. Other then that, Intel products have always been able to deliver. I can be rough on my computer stuff based on all the projects and things I do, so I need to make sure the hardware can deliver the performance I ask for. It doesn't surprise me that the CPU can handle all kinds of stuff, I payed over $1000 for the core in itself.

Thank you very much for linking that stuff, it looks like I will have some reading to do