Help me diagnose a problem please

Here are my current settings - please could you suggest what to change? I really appreciate your help.

bios1.jpg

bios2.jpg


I assume QPI/VTT is the one which wants to go up, but i'm not sure by how much.
Thanks,
 
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set cpu clock drive to 800mv and pcie clock drive to 900mv

then try with 1.38v qpi/vtt (might need more)
 
Thanks Wazza, I'll have a go. It might be tomorrow that I can get back to you though, I have a really early start. I really appreciate your help and i'll make sure to post back. Thank you again for all the help!
 
Hi Wazza,

Thanks - I've updated those settings and I can still boot fine. No problems yet (it's only been a few minutes).

Is there any particular stress test which you would recommend for testing those settings, or shall I just leave it for a while and see if I run in to any problems?

Thanks,
 
Thank you again - just a quick update. Since I changed the settings as suggested, I haven't had any BSODs. It's only been a day (I usually get one a day, so it's promising), but so far so good.

Thanks again!
 
:(. So it was all working nicely for a while, but now my screen turns black fairly often during gaming. So I took out 2 of the graphics cards (leaving in just one).

I then decided to do a clean install of Windows, since I wanted to rule out any software problems (and at this point i'm not a bit frustrated because it seemed fixed).. After re-installing windows, it happened again (twice).

So.. all three graphics cards and the power supply are new ish. I'm wondering what I can do from here to find out what the faulty part is.

A couple of times (before I re-installed Windows), the CCC kept popping up saying the graphics card driver crashed. That made me think it was probably the graphics card, but since I'm using just 1 of them now, that significantly reduces the chance of it.

I think I will swap the card over to another, and if it happens again then I can totally rule out the graphics card (although, not necessarily the motherboard slot).

I guess if it continues to happen after that, as I have checked the memory using memtest, I would assume it is the PSU or motherboard. Is there anything else I should be trying?
 
Happens to always be when i'm playing a game though. This time it was PKR. I've swapped the cards over so I am now using another, if it happens again then I think it's because something else is at fault - it seems unlikely that 2 of the 3 cards could be faulty. Now when trying to re-open PKR it says the file store is corrupt...Perhaps that could be just because PKR wasn't shut down properly.
 
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Starting to think I might just buy these, and if it still fails, then I would assume it's the PSU:

Intel Core i5-4690 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail
Asus Maximus VII Ranger Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard

To be honest, this current G1 sniper (rev 1.0) is annoying to say the least and I'm sure that processors have come on a fair bit since I bought my i7 920. (2.6ghz).
 
After swapping the graphics card out for one of the others, I played for about 5 minutes and the same happened again. So I'm fairly sure it's not the graphics card(s)
 
I think its memory controller voltage

have you tested with just 6gb or 8gb of memory installed and 1.32v vtt? you'll know for sure then if its memory or not

24gb is a big ask on x58
 
wazza300 said:
I think its memory controller voltage

have you tested with just 6gb or 8gb of memory installed and 1.32v vtt? you'll know for sure then if its memory or not

24gb is a big ask on x58
Click to expand...

It seems strange because I haven't messed with memory settings, and i've had the 24gb memory for a few years. Originally it was because I was doing a lot of software testing and needed a lot of VMs, but now I don't do that so much so can happily take out the vast majority of it. I just tried putting all of my bios settings back to stock defaults and still have the problem. I'll remove all but 2 memory cards (6gb) and set 1.32v vtt, and see how it goes. It seems to be crashing every few minutes when playing PKR (It seems to really not like that), so I should find out quickly enough.

I also keep getting a pop up saying that the graphics card drivers stopped responding and recovered (the screen goes black for a while first). It does exactly the same when it just goes black and stays black, I think it may be related (although when it stays black of course I can't see any pop up saying anything crashed).
 
its hard to say what it is atm,could be memory related or gpu driver/xfire related

if it bsod's try and catch the bsod code it will be 0x00000124 if its memory controller voltage too low
 
Thanks Wazza. I just took all but 2 memory cards out (6gb left) and changed the vtt to 1.3215 (It wouldn't let me have 1.32). I then booted up and my whole desktop, everything looked fuzzy. I can't think how best to explain it (I did take a photo but it didn't come out too well). It looked like someone had put my display though instagram.
So I changed the vtt to just under 1.32 (it's 1.3185 I think) and restarted. This time I can see everything fine and it booted up properly.

I'll try playing some games for a few minutes and see what happens, but I'm not sure what all that fuzzyness was about.
 
idk why it went fuzzy it shouldn't affect display

max safe for vtt is 1.4v and ive seen a few users run much higher,i ran my x58 board at 1.32v for years without any trouble
 
Hi, sorry - I should update my sig. The motherboard is this:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3760

The rest of my spec is mostly in the first post (sorry for so many messages).

I'm playing a game at the moment and it seems ok (it's lasted longer than it did before but we'll see).

I didn't think vtt should affect the display either since it's a memory setting, seems strange.

However, (here comes my excuse which I need to rehearse ready for explaining to the OH)... I spend nearly all day every day on my PC at University or at home programming, so I really get frustrated when my PC starts failing. I need it to be reliable. My i7 920 has lasted me since the 920 was first released (2008/9 I think) and I did upgrade from an X58m to the G1 sniper but my motherboard has lasted me a fair while too. I've been upgrading parts around the CPU and motherboard (SSD, memory, graphics cards, PSU, even the case) without really spending much on the CPU or motherboard - mainly because I know that they need doing together and the price + effort of it.

I'm starting to think I should just spend a little money and upgrade them to try to avoid these problems. I'll admit I am slightly looking for an excuse to upgrade (and, as my OH will say I don't have money to burn), but if it is likely to fix all these problems and improve performance then it might be worth it. Since I haven't really looked into hardware much at all, roughly how much better are current low end i7s / high end i5s than the 920 (2.6Ghz)? Would I actually see much difference? If it's the case that I would, and I can upgrade the motherboard and PSU for around £300, then I think it might be something to think about.

I seem to have been firefighting a lot recently with my setup and there are some other motherboard problems (sound crackling & no linux drivers for the networking and no new updates since 2011 for drivers etc which may be because of stopping support - they don't even officially have windows 8 drivers).

I'm looking at this http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html and my 920 is scoring 5,006, although I don't know what that means in real world usage, it does look like recent i5s are a lot better.
 
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if you wanted to upgrade then you'd best go for z97 board and get a devils canyon cpu when they come out,either june or September

they would be better than your current cpu due to them running at 4.1ghz and boosting to 4.4ghz out of the box,plus youd have better sata3 speeds
 
wazza300 said:
if you wanted to upgrade then you'd best go for z97 board and get a devils canyon cpu when they come out,either june or September

they would be better than your current cpu due to them running at 4.1ghz and boosting to 4.4ghz out of the box,plus youd have better sata3 speeds
Click to expand...

Perfect, I think this might be the way forwards (I can probably survive until then). I'll wait for the devils canyon cpus if they are recommended. Since I followed your advice to change the voltage and took out most of the memory, I haven't yet had any problems yet (I know it hasn't been long, but it started crashing every few minutes when playing PKR before, so half an hour is promising).

I think i'll just leave the other memory sticks out, I don't use anywhere near that much memory anyway.

I really appreciate all of your help wazza. If it holds out for another month then i'm happy. I'll let you know how it goes and if it crashes again.
 
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