i3 to i5 upgrade - acting weirdly, temperamental.

Morning all,

So I recently upgraded my i3 2130 to an i5 3570k. Rest of the machine is:

Gigabyte Z77-D3H
8GB of Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
MSI 570GTX, connected via DVI.
Sammy 830 64gb boot drive (SATA 6GBps connected)
WD Black 500GB (SATA 3GBps) w/ Crucial M4 cache (SATA 6GBps connected)
OCZ 650w PSU

Ever since the upgrade, the machine has been temperamental with it's booting. Sometimes it'll boot, but display nothing. I can see the HDD light going like the clappers and hear the WD ticking away, so it gets into Windows. Reboot and it'll boot fine.

Then, sometimes I'll reboot it and it'll hang on a black screen. Press the power and it instantly turns off. Boot back up, no display boot again and so on.

I've tried/checked:

BIOS - CMOS cleared
BIOS - F18, supports 3570k
BIOS - reset loaded defaults, reconfigured.
BIOS - Everything at auto, as it was with the i3
CPU - Reseated
CPU - Temps all good
CPU - Survives high load with OCCT and Battlefield 3.

One clue I've found is CPU-Z reports the PCI-E 16x running at x4...

The only thing I haven't tried yet is a GPU reseat which I'll do tonight, failing that I'm a bit stuck for ideas.

Thanks in advance for any assistance, I'm a bit stuck with this generation of hardware as this is the first I've played with it.

Cheers

I'd uninstall any Intel and Nvidia video drivers you may have installed.
Remove the CPU and GPU.
Check the pins of the CPU socket.
Re-seat the CPU and boot using the built in video.
Reset to BIOS defaults and go from there.

This should be 100% working and always pass the reboot test.

I'll give the reseats a go tonight, ta chap.

I'm convinced it's not software because it exhibits the fault on cold boot before it has got anywhere near Windows. Gotta be a hardware issue if it's at POST.

Cheers though, I'll give it a go.

Well, partial success yashiro. Since reseating the machine is stable and performing as it should at power up, shutdown and suspend. Nice one.

However it's still reporting the GPU as x4 instead of x16. I've watched the Bus Interface in GPU-Z and when it's quiet it winds the bus down to x1 then when I run the render test it goes back up to x4. Nothing higher than that though annoyingly.

Just about to give the slot a blow out then I'll inspect the pins as a random Google seems to suggest. Other than that I dunno, it's a relatively new mobo and this is the only card I've had in it so not holding out much hope tbh!

One problem down. One to go.

Yep, but I fear that problem is mobo related. Possibly an inherent fault from the reading I've been doing. Bumped another similar thread from September with GB involved, hopefully they'll be able to suggest something.

Cheers again for your advice mate, very helpful.

So following up on this, I've raised a support request with Gigabyte who have pretty quick to respond each time which is encouraging.

However, despite the information I've provided and the diagnostics I've done they can't ascertain what the problem is and are asking me to send the board in for testing. They're also asking for me to send my GPU in, which quite frankly I'm not happy about doing for a number of reasons. What happens if something goes awry with my GPU whilst it's in their care, or in transit etc. Not to mention being without a GPU for however long it takes them to find the fault.

Is this common practice? Seems a bit unusual to me.

You don't send them your GPU, no. Are you able to try another video card yourself?

Which Slot have you got the graphics card in and have you tried reinstalling the motherboard chipset drivers ?

No no, my GPU is staying in my computer plugged into the new board that's replaced the D3H!

Tried both slots, reinstalls and all sorts Attu. Hence resorting to tech support/RMA options.

I am missing the picture
How do they have the nerve to ask for your GPU
Have never heard of a company wanting a component from another company
Gigabyte is demanding for a MSI video card
At that point i will be asking for someone higher on the food chain
I am dealing with a retard