Build from Hell!

[Hawkstorm]

I've been struggling with this system for over 2 weeks now after buying the board, cpu, ram and a new PSU and cooler, and 2 960GB SSD's from amazon.

At first all looked okie then the system started powering itself off, and power cycling as well as other problems, such as stability and problems with the Corsair 3300Mhz 16GB kit, and getting it to run at its XMP profile were unsuccessful, then the system started powering itself off at random.

As I was unable to diagnose effectively what the issue was as it could be from any of the components, I contacted amazon and they were kind enough to replace the entire set of components and send advanced replacements. Not a small thing considering they were well over £1400 in value, can't really ask for more.

I promptly rebuilt the machine with the new components but started to see some of the problems with the memory kit, and being unable to get it working on its XMP profile of 3300Mhz on stock settings it simply wouldn't boot, or if it did it would hang at OS loading at AE q-code.

I just couldn't get the 16gb kits to work over 2133Mhz reliably without generating errors when tested with memtest.

I ordered the Corsair 32GB 2800 CL16 kit as it was listed in the manual by its Part code on the QVL list.

I've tried installing windows fresh onto the SSD's in raid 0 mode only to find that windows install hangs when accessing the array, this happened on both boards. (Microsoft were kind enough to invalidate my Windows 10 Key 3 times because of hardware changes forcing a reinstall.)

I was forced to install onto a single SSD, which isn't what I wanted as I wanted 1 large volume, after I install the 32 GB kit all seemed well for a hour then the system stopped detecting half of my ram, all the sticks on the right of the CPU weren't being detected, after re-trying and booting up with a 16GB kit installed on stock speed, all the slots seemed to be functioning okie, I replaced the 32 GB kit, which then started to be detected again, which was strange as I had already reseated the kit several times before.

At which point the System SSD stopped being detected, only one out of the two I had installed was, again I changed channels power & sata cables only to find that the SSD appeared to have died.

Whats really concerning me is that the other one which is also new (Sandisk Ultra II's) also keeps dropping out of bios and the system keeps loosing the boot order, the system is in Raid mode, there seems to be some strange behaviour when using a 125mhz strap and the Disk controllers on this board. I've heard that people have had issues with Raid on this board, with dropping disks I don't know if tis is the same issue, but windows refuses to install onto a SSD raid array, though this may be now due to one of them being faulty I don't know.


I've also had issues with both the boards I've tried, with PCI slots and not detecting my SoundBlaster ZXR in many of the slots unless the GPU's are located in set positions, I couldn't get my 2x SLI setup to work in 16/16 mode in the 16x slots with my soundcard in the machine, it would either not detect the card properly, or when installed into the slots it would detect it, it would drop the config to 16/8.

I've read all the guides on ROG and I'm still having problems getting my 32MB kit to work stable at its XMP profile of 3000MHZ, and getting my system to run at a overclock of 4.2GHz or above without silly voltages, which I don't believe are because of the CPU I have, as I've tried 2 with similar results.

I've tried increasing the system agent voltage also the vcore, the system will boot into the os you test the ram and do stability tests, all will pass then the system will hang loading the os again at a reboot and hang at AE Q-Code.

Also I'm having issues with the Vcore adding alot of voltage like 0.120 volts under load pushing my vcore up to 1.36-1.37 underload which is causing my cpu to get too hot at a modest overclock of 4.2ghz and go over 84 degree's on a H100IGTX water cooler.

The voltages are all set on manual, speedstep and turbo are disabled, and I can't seem to find the cause of the Vcore increase underload, anyone got any ideas?

Also I could use some feedback from those using Corsair 32GB kits and 5930k's as to what they set their voltages at, system agent etc and any other advice as far as voltages and bios settings, especially to try combat the auto increase in Vcore which is unwelcome.

At 1.24v Vcore it seems somewhat too much required for a 4.2ghz overclock, and the Vcore not staying set at a stable voltage which I would expect with speedstep etc off, I can't find out whats causing it.

I'm very experienced as far as system building goes and have built thousands over the past 30 years but this one has really done my head in, and I continue to struggle with it as far as getting a stable system with what should be a simple 4.2ghz overclock on a 5930k

The boards latest trick is dropping out sticks of ram when its detecting in the bios, even though they are seated correctly, you suddenly loose a chunk of your ram.

Ram voltages and Timings are set correctly for the speed profile according to manufacturers specs.

So far I'd have to say I wouldn't recommend this board to anyone if it were the last board on earth based off the experience I've had with it.

Rampage V Extreme/3.1 1502 bios
Intel 5930k on H100iGTX water cooler.
Corsair 32GB 2800Mhz CL16 kit XMP 2800 and 3000Mhz on 125mhz strap. (timings set to manufacturers specs)
1000w Supernova PSU
2 Asus 760GTX in SLI
SoundBlaster ZXR
Sandisk Ultra II 960GB SSD
2 HD's

[supprimendi_tyr]

I could not read all that because it was breaking my heart (seriously).

I call on one of the several people here who actually know what they are doing with PC's to help you out and get your PC running as it should.

Hope is not lost, friend--their are a few people here who can help you succeed in making your PC dream come true.

"Ask and you shall receive."<-----I know you are listening, ASUS forum overseers, so help this person not want to die for investing so much in something that is supposed to work. I literally cried my eyes out when I was at my wits' end--if not for you guys, I would have failed . . . in more ways than a dozen. . ..

[supprimendi_tyr]

Ouch . . . um, I just saw that you only have a 1000W PSU with two graphics cards. I don't like that--at least get a 1200W PSU, and make sure that you have the EZ_Plug header connected to that 1200W (at least) PSU.

[lordo59]

supprimendi tyrannidem wrote:
Ouch . . . um, I just saw that you only have a 1000W PSU with two graphics cards. I don't like that--at least get a 1200W PSU, and make sure that you have the EZ_Plug header connected to that 1200W (at least) PSU.

On the first part, dont be daft. He couldn't possibly be drawing over 700W with both cards insanely overclocked.

The EZ-Plug is important but wouldn't be causing any of the behaviour, aside from random reboots under load.

[lordo59]

I'm sure you'll get help here. You have a multitude of issues obviously.

The RAM should rub 2800Hz at 1.2v on XMP. Fiddling with the system agent shouldn't be needed.

I also had an issue with manually entering voltage using XMP as a timer only to see it raise itself regardless. But it went away when I started a fresh with a new profile. And also stopped fiddling with the RAM timings, frequency or voltage.

[Hawkstorm]

Thing that's really driving me nuts is the Auto increase to the Vcore, I can't figure out what's causing it, its causing excess voltage and heat that's very unwelcome, looked in the digi power management can't see anything there that maybe causing it, its like turbo voltage is being applied even though turbo is disabled.

It 'seems' to be stable at 4.2ghz at 1.26v which seems excessive for 4.2ghz, and it auto increases to 1.36v which is insane on manual voltage and the ram also seems to be stable at 3000mhz but then you do stability testing etc then it'll hang at AE on booting windows.

Driving me insane, if I set the voltage manually it should damn well stay there, I'd expect it to droop under load if anything not add massive amounts on it own.

Oh and a 1kw PSU is perfectly acceptable for a 2 way SLI setup, this system is rated at around 760w full load so 1kw should be fine, and the E-Z plug is in and by the way ASUS its in a stupid position whereby its rammed against the psu if you have a case where the PSU is at the bottom like many are.

And the first set of components were randomly powering off even at idle, overall this motherboard hasn't been a easy ride and for the price I expected a lot more.

[Menthol]

Sorry to hear you are having issues, you should clear cmos and start fresh, leave turbo and speedstep on, leave memory at default speed and satet by getting your video cards and sound card working at the correct pcie speeds then start on overclocking your CPU, then your memory, if you know which brand of memory chips are on your modules you may want to try one of the memory presets in the bios, one of the bonus's in ASUS ROG bios is memory presets.
Your GPU's should be in the first and fourth RED pcie slots for both to run at X16 pcie, your sound card in slot 3 so it will not interfere with the pcie lanes of your video cards, maybe best to use on board sound until you get all other issues resilved.
You should enter the CPU multiplier you want and leave all voltages on factory defaults the see what voltage the motherboard decides your CPU needs at the multiplier you select then change to adaptive voltage and enter the value thay was set by your motherboard into the adaptive setting
Adaptive voltage only works with a blck of 100, it will not work with a blck of 125 taht many memory kits set when a XMP of over 2400 mhz is set. but worry about this last, many memory kits can manually be set to the XMP speed with a blck of 100 but again get all your other issues worked out then let's overclock your memory
Your power supply is plenty for the 2 GPU's you have, if they were 980ti's or Titan's then you would need something bigger

[Hawkstorm]

Menthol wrote:
Sorry to hear you are having issues, you should clear cmos and start fresh, leave turbo and speedstep on, leave memory at default speed and satet by getting your video cards and sound card working at the correct pcie speeds then start on overclocking your CPU, then your memory, if you know which brand of memory chips are on your modules you may want to try one of the memory presets in the bios, one of the bonus's in ASUS ROG bios is memory presets.
Your GPU's should be in the first and fourth RED pcie slots for both to run at X16 pcie, your sound card in slot 3 so it will not interfere with the pcie lanes of your video cards, maybe best to use on board sound until you get all other issues resilved.
You should enter the CPU multiplier you want and leave all voltages on factory defaults the see what voltage the motherboard decides your CPU needs at the multiplier you select then change to adaptive voltage and enter the value thay was set by your motherboard into the adaptive setting
Adaptive voltage only works with a blck of 100, it will not work with a blck of 125 taht many memory kits set when a XMP of over 2400 mhz is set. but worry about this last, many memory kits can manually be set to the XMP speed with a blck of 100 but again get all your other issues worked out then let's overclock your memory
Your power supply is plenty for the 2 GPU's you have, if they were 980ti's or Titan's then you would need something bigger

LOL tried all this weeks ago didn't work.

As for needing a bigger PSU if I had 980's that's not really true there's only 25w between them so most people will be just fine with a good quality 1kw PSU in a 2 way setup like mine, 1.2kw is safe but not really required for most, and 1.6kw well think nuclear powerstation or a 4 way setup.

Also leaving turbo and speedstep on while overclovking isn't a good idea as it pushes your frequencies and voltages all over the place when your trying to get a stable overclock.

GPU's have to be in slots 1&2 16/8 and the soundcard in slot 4 to work correctly I've tried every combo under the sun and that was the first I tried didn't work, and with a 40 lane CPU not what I was expecting.

I'm actually trying Adaptive now on a 125 strap, so far *touch wood* things are looking stable though the cpu voltage is still going all over the place under load which I don't like for a static overclock, and 100mhz straps with high frequency memory tend not to go as well I've read.

I've had to add some to the system agent voltage too, Had problems with disks dropping out of bios and the boot order along with Ram sticks not being detected correctly and only partial ram being made available, though all were seated correctly, they would just 'pop' out at random.

I already tried 100Mhz strap that wouldn't even post, and I've tried 2 other Corsair 16GB 100 strap kits with the same hair ripping out experience, well worse actually they are going back this one is on the QVL list by its part # and uses 125 strap, so far this one seems better.

Though to be honest I'm wondering exactly how good the testing was on these boards.

The Disk and ramstick dropping issue are concerning though it seems to have settled down, and the Auto overvolting is annoying as hell but I'm controlling it better with Adaptive volting, though getting a stable low end voltage is more probmatical without it humping on too much voltage and pumping out too much heat, or becoming unstable at lower loads before it piles on all the extra volts.

Thing is I don't understand why its putting on extra voltage when turbo is disabled as that is its function TMK, I've looked at cpu load controls and set it on 1 but that doesn't seem to stop the ramping up on vcore. Norally I'd expect loadline calibration to stop droop not dump 0.120 volts on your voltage just for the fun of it and screw you over.

I'd prefer proper manual voltages like I had on my old gigabyte board, where you could set a stable voltage and it would be glued there even underload.

This one it doesn't seem possible unless I've missed something and its messing up my TDP, and I could easily get 4.5ghz out of this chip if it weren't for the insane auto overvolting pushing my temps out of my 80deg comfort zone.

[Pleot]

I also have corsair 3300 ram 16 Gb. I found out running my sticks at 2800 with tight timings (14 14 14 33 1t) will give me identical performance as with its native speed and timings.
My cpu is also a 5930 k and im working on volts/stability for some time trying to get down as possible with a 105 x 41 OC (4300 mhz)
The vcore is very stable with 1,19 and im still bringing down ram voltage with stress testing 8 hours each time. Im already with 1,31 ram voltage but still coming down.
Dont forget to use eventual ram voltage for your mem sticks this is key factor ...
Then maybe I can go higher after finding the sweet spot of my pc.
Keep on trying I think R5E is a good board - bad luck streak it seems 🙂

[Hawkstorm]

Pleot wrote:
I also have corsair 3300 ram 16 Gb. I found out running my sticks at 2800 with tight timings (14 14 14 33 1t) will give me identical performance as with its native speed and timings.
My cpu is also a 5930 k and im working on volts/stability for some time trying to get down as possible with a 105 x 41 OC (4300 mhz)
The vcore is very stable with 1,19 and im still bringing down ram voltage with stress testing 8 hours each time. Im already with 1,31 ram voltage but still coming down.
Dont forget to use eventual ram voltage for your mem sticks this is key factor ...
Then maybe I can go higher after finding the sweet spot of my pc.
Keep on trying I think R5E is a good board - bad luck streak it seems 🙂

LOL ya its a child of Satan but I think I killed it finally, though the goalposts with this board seem to shift daily, so by tomorrow I fully expect it to have gone unstable again. lol

I actually managed to get that kit working at 3300mhz today on a 100mhz strap using the correct timings, and upping the system agent voltage to 1.26 and a bit more Vcore,cache and input voltage, though it would occasionally stop at AE when loading the OS though I think that was due to me manually undervolting the cpu for its speed.

But system agent voltage will vary according to your cpu and I'd suggest reading the 3000mhz kit guide on here, but to be honest considering all the time I spent getting it to work I'm going to stick with the 32GB QVL one as its twice the ram and only £100 more but slightly lower speed so its better value for money I think, providing it stops dropping Dimm banks of Bios along with HD's. lol