I am new to the Asus ROG forums, and new to ROG products. I have worked with computers in one way or another for many years, and my previous build was an overclocked Core2Quad EE on a DELL-rebranded XFX board using Dells H2C liquid cooling unit.
I picked up a used Rampage Extreme IV Battlefield Edition from a friend, and thought I could make a new build over the weekend with stock settings and no overclocking. That assumption seems to have been very wrong.
I spent almost two days getting a stable system. At first I suspected the RAM. I thought an XMP certified product built for X79 was good enough. I was unaware that even though my memory carries the official Intel XMP certification and both board and memory modules adhere to established industry standards, that is apparently not good enough. So my kit is sadly not on the Rampage IV "Positive list".
The RAM kit, a 4 module KHX1866C9D3K4/16GX from Kingston, is unable to run without errors in the R4E board with defaut settings. It only runs when the XMP profile is set, Asus compatibility has been increased (Rampage Tweak Mode 1), and voltage has been forced to 1.655 (a notch higher that spec'ed). Not tweaking it will make the board feed much too little juice (about 1,58 - 1,62) and the machine will hang or BSD within minutes; without any load on the CPU. This has me a bit baffled; any tips/explanations are welcome.
But what really has me troubled is the fact that the machine won't run stable unless I manually increase the vcore to 1.2, and the vccsa to 1.25. The default setting ("Optimized Defaults") will make the machine freeze or tilt with BSDs on any kind of CPU load. Even the Windows 7 installer would fail, as soon as the step involving copying and extracting files (2) was beginning. And the automatic vcore/vccsa voltages are way too low for this build to run.
The machine seems stable now, but I would have expected this to work with much lower voltages. I can't even begin to think how high it needs to be when I start OC'ing it.
Can anyone explain why I may be having this issue? And is there anything I can do analyse this, and hopefully achieve lover voltage settings? Is it really normal to have to crank it all up to 1,2/1,25 just to get a non'OC'ed stable machine with this combination?
CPU runs at 31,0c when idling with a Corsair H60, and about 29,2 with the H2C cooler. Underload it rises to well above 45. Ambient temperature is 21,5. I haven't done prolonged burn-in testing yet, since that really should'nt be necessary with a non-OC'ed system with quality components.
Thanks for your input.
Specs below.
- Jesper
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Build specs:
- Repurposed Dell XPS 730 H2C case
- Dell 1000W PSU
- Rampage Extreme IV Battlefield edition (BIOS updated to 2105)
- Intel Core i7 3960x
- 4x4 GB Kingston Hyper X memory (KHX1866C9D3K4/16GX)
- 2x Intel 330 SSD's in RAID-0 (currently changed to 1x Samsung SSD 830 256 GB for simplicity and stability testing)
- Powercolor 6870x2 graphics card (currently changed to 1x Radeon HD 2600 Pro for simplicity and stability testing)
Cooling is a re-purposed DELL H2C unit (fits the H2C case nicely) with new cooling fluid and a new EK cooling head. I have ordered the EK liquid-cooling kit for the Rampage IV Extreme, but the board is currently running with its factory cooler (the little noisy fan).
For testing purposes I went and purchased a Corsair Hydra Series H60 for the CPU just to be sure it was not a problem with the cooler. It isn't. The CPU runs a few degrees (approx 1,8 c) hotter with the Corsair.
Re-purposed DELL XPS 730 H2C casing | Rampage IV Extreme | i7 3960x | 4x8 GB 2133 Mhz Corsair | Dual Powercolor 6870x2 (4 GPU's) | Dual Intel 520 SSD 240 GB in Raid 0 (System) | Dual WD 1002 Caviar Black in Raid 0 (Storage) | Re-purposed DELL H2C cooling unit with EK cooling blocks | Specs currently altered for stability/testing | +4 other rigs in the household
