Maximus VIII Hero with some very weird behaviour

[JorisS]

Hi all

After a couple of years without stationary build, I recently purchased new equipment and spent the better part of this weekend assembling it with acrylic H2O cooling and all.
Quite fun, up until it was time to get going with the system...

Components:
* CPU: i7 6700K
* Mobo: Asus Maximus Hero VIII
* Minnen: Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4 PC24000/3000MHz CL15 4x4GB (HX430C15PB2K4/16)
* GPU: 2 x Asus GTX 780 (sitter i PCIE8x1 och PCI8x2)
* PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 1000W
* SSD på 480Gb

Initially the PC booted fine and I was inside the BIOS, changed memory speed to 3000Mhz (couldn't find the setting to enable XMP so simply changed the speed - probably wrong way to go about but anyway.
I found out that I actually had an (old) clean Win 8.1 install on the SSD I used for the build, so it booted into Win 8.1 and all looked ok.
When I came back to the PC a while later, it had frozen up with some error msg relating to the memory I believe. It said it would restart but never did.
This is when the trouble truly started, with PC not POSTing and getting stuck on various different Q-codes. If I recall correctly it POSTed one more time and I could get into the BIOS, which then looked really weird
with mixed languages and missing menu parts (See attachments).

In short I tested Mem-OK, Clear CMOS, removing battery and all that. To no avail,
I couldn't get the PC to POST and display and image at all anymore. Tried using the BIOS Flashback which initially failed, but then with another USB drive it passed successfully.
After this I rebooted and got a message that BIOS was updated. Then it rebooted and got stuck again... the q-code most often showed 60 or 62 when it got stuck, sometimes 78 or 4F or something else.
All basically related to initialization of the various components, nothing specifically indicating a fault anywhere. The LED lights for VGA/mem/Boot device were unlit at some times,
lit at others (red or white or orange, randomly).

Finally I thought I'd check CMOS battery, and it was only showing 3.015V whereas a fresh battery shows 3.25 or thereabouts. I swapped it out, did the USB Flashback once more and then started making progress.
Initially I only had 1 DIMM in slot A1 at the time (had tested with A2, A2+B2, A1+A2+B1?+B2 and all before already). I got a POST logo and BIOS on most attempts, but still looking as per pictures above with the weird language and all.
At least I managed to get into the EZ mode, chose XMP so memory was running as per specs (1.35V) and save. At some point here, the BIOS then reverted back to fully English and showing all menu items. It has been that way since, haven't
seen the weird BIOS since. I then tested with 2 DIMMs (A1 & B1) - seemed ok. Tested with 4 DIMMs and got stuck on 55, meaning "No Memory installed" or something of the likes.
Tested removing A2 -> worked fine without
Tested putting A2 back -> code 55 again
Tested swapping the module from B2 to A2 and running with A1, A2 and B1 -> worked fine
Tested putting in DIMM nr 4 in B2 -> worked fine (?!?!)

Tested memtest with all four DIMM in -> works fine, no errors

WTF!?!?

What's left now is that I'm having issues with installation of Win 7 complaining about missing drivers for CD/DVD, whilst installing from USB 😕
Searched a bit on this and doesn't seem uncommon, but the suggested fixes of swapping USB and making sure I'm using USB 2 don't work.


I'm at a loss here. It seems that the PC is running ok now (except for not installing Win 7 as of yet, but I'll try dl the drivers and see where that gets me).
I can't really pinpoint one specific "action" my end that solved the instability though, so I feel like I'm threading on very thin ice here. It's better to find out a specific fault/cause, solve it and rely on
the system after. I tried so many things and had so many different errors and issues here that I really have no idea what was/is going on.

What would you guys suggest? Anybody ever seen the weird BIOS language/incomplete menus before? Simply start using the PC and hope for the best, or send the motherboard in for repairs/checkup seeing as it was behaving very erratic?
Problem is that I'm using the acrylic H2O cooling, meaning it's basically impossible to do any error searching in terms of removing components without first draining and disconnecting the cooling... not to mention
I can't run the system longer than a couple of seconds without the water cooling.

I've also included a picture of the build, for the fun of it 🙂
(It's leaking on one connection so I'm going to have to drain the loop and redo that tube regardless of what I do with the motherboard I'm afraid 😞 )

Cheers
//J

[Nate152]

ROG Realbench, good job getting windows installed.

http://rog.asus.com/rog-pro/realbench-v2-leaderboard/

Does the bios look ok, all english no missing menus?

[JorisS]

Nate152 wrote:
ROG Realbench, good job getting windows installed.

http://rog.asus.com/rog-pro/realbench-v2-leaderboard/

Does the bios look ok, all english no missing menus?

Thanks, will give that a go this evening.

BIOS is and has been looking all good since I managed to get it back to all English 🙂
No crashes, lockups or whatsoever...

Wow, was really close to sending this back in for RMA!

[Nate152]

Great JorisS

Good to hear you have your pc working as it should. 🙂