Recommend me a board!

Spikey · 15 Jan 2015 at 18:08

Dervious said:
I think all of the major manufacturers make decent boards these days. ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte etc have been designing and manufacturing motherboards for a while now. They know that reliability is a big factor in gaining brand loyalty. You will always get the odd failure here and there. And when you consider how complex a motherboard is, it's suprising that there aren't more failures !

Hope you get your board sorted, and don't be put off by Gigabyte. If their boards were unreliable, we'd know about it. I'm not a Gigabyte shareholder, by the way, I sometimes use MSI boards, and they also seem reliable.

My brother in law has the same system as me including the GB board and has no issues. Mine has just been a nightmare.

Spikey · 15 Jan 2015 at 18:18

pastymuncher said:
From the reviews it looks like a good solid board. Looks good too. I would update to the latest bios (0501) if it doesn't come with it as it gives some stability increases. What are you running your Sammy Greens at by the way?

Running at default mate, why?

Dervious · 15 Jan 2015 at 18:26

Spikey said:
My brother in law has the same system as me including the GB board and has no issues. Mine has just been a nightmare.

That supports my opinion that you`ve just been unlucky.

The symptoms you describe could well be a problem with the motherboard, but I think it might be a good idea to check your power supply. I doubt if it's CPU or RAM related, but the power supply could be the culprit.

pastymuncher · 15 Jan 2015 at 18:53

Spikey said:
Running at default mate, why?

Shame on you. Ban!!!!

It is the easiest stuff to clock, ever!! I have 4x sticks and easily got it to run at 2133mhz while keeping tight timings of 9-10-10-21-1T plus most of the seconds and thirds tightened up and it's only running at 1.5v. It's barely warm to the touch. It will do 2400mhz but then I have to sacrifice the timings so I stuck at 2133mhz as it's the best balance between speed and timings.

Spikey · 15 Jan 2015 at 19:14

Dervious said:
That supports my opinion that you`ve just been unlucky.

The symptoms you describe could well be a problem with the motherboard, but I think it might be a good idea to check your power supply. I doubt if it's CPU or RAM related, but the power supply could be the culprit.

It's an XFX 650W Bronze modular, bought from OCUK in 2013 when I build the system. Looking in the BIOS for the old board all the voltages look ok, anything in particular I should be looking at?

Thanks

Spikey · 15 Jan 2015 at 19:15

pastymuncher said:
Shame on you. Ban!!!!

It is the easiest stuff to clock, ever!! I have 4x sticks and easily got it to run at 2133mhz while keeping tight timings of 9-10-10-21-1T plus most of the seconds and thirds tightened up and it's only running at 1.5v. It's barely warm to the touch. It will do 2400mhz but then I have to sacrifice the timings so I stuck at 2133mhz as it's the best balance between speed and timings.

I used to clock it but then my system was seriously unstable. I'm convinced it was the board.

pastymuncher · 15 Jan 2015 at 20:30

As you had other problems with the board it could have been it at fault when it came to the ram. The new board should be perfect for it though. This is my second Asus Z87 board, the first being the Z87-A which I replaced with the Hero simply because I got it really cheap. Both boards have easily clocked the Sammy Greens to the same speed and timings. I just like Asus boards as they have a excellent bios layout and have never had any problems with them.

Spikey · 15 Jan 2015 at 21:42

pastymuncher said:
As you had other problems with the board it could have been it at fault when it came to the ram. The new board should be perfect for it though. This is my second Asus Z87 board, the first being the Z87-A which I replaced with the Hero simply because I got it really cheap. Both boards have easily clocked the Sammy Greens to the same speed and timings. I just like Asus boards as they have a excellent bios layout and have never had any problems with them.

will report back when it arrives, was hoping they would ship it today but looking like it wont ship until tomorrow now.

Spikey · 16 Jan 2015 at 13:56

Ordered a gigabyte G1 Gaming 970 GTX to go with it, decided to treat myself!

pastymuncher · 16 Jan 2015 at 19:01

Updated siggy and you haven't even recieved them yet.

Spikey · 16 Jan 2015 at 21:08

pastymuncher said:
Updated siggy and you haven't even recieved them yet.

haha, it would be rude not to! Old board went back for RMA today, not hopeful as to me upon closer inspection some pins looked slightly out which I can only imagine have been like that when I bought it.

Spikey · 17 Jan 2015 at 14:10

Got the board up and running, seems good so far! Any idea what I should be running Samsung greens at? Timings and voltages? Thanks.

pastymuncher · 17 Jan 2015 at 14:33

Mine are running at 2133mhz 9-10-10-21-1T with 1.5v you may need to tweak the voltage a little but try 1.5v first. My second set of timings are 6-108-7936-16-6-24-4-5-8 and the thirds are 4-6-6-19-5-5-4-7-7-Auto-9-9-9. Most are tweaked lower than what they are set automatically. Get your primaries and speed set up and stable first then worry about the seconds and thirds later.

Spikey · 17 Jan 2015 at 15:03

Cheers mate. Run into a strange problem installing windows 7 on my ssd, when I go into bios it's now showing an option to boot from windows cd in the boot priority list, it wasn't there before installed windows, is that normal? Will try and add a pic to show what I mean.

Edit: sorted it.

Spikey · 18 Jan 2015 at 15:27

All up and running and touch wood no problems! Any advice on what to run my CPU at? Fairly new to overclocking so not sure what best is I can get out of my 4670k

pastymuncher · 18 Jan 2015 at 19:12

Replied with my settings in your other thread. You got the ram clocked yet?

Spikey · 18 Jan 2015 at 21:17

Not yet mate, will give it a go over next few days and report back

Spikey · 1 Feb 2015 at 18:57

Right mate,can you guide me to the exact settings I. Need to alter on my sammy green?

EDIT :

Currently running at 2133, 1.65v with timings of 10,11,11,21, 1T.

pastymuncher · 1 Feb 2015 at 20:43

It's all in post #33. Change the primaries first to 9-10-10-21 and the command rate to 1T with 1.5v. Test for stability. If not stable try a notch extra on the voltage. When stable do the secondaries. Test for stability. When stable do the thirds and test for stability. Your second and thirds might need a bit of tweaking but the settings in my post #33 are good for all three kits I have here.

One thing I would do first though is find your max cpu overclock before playing with the ram. Have you got it clocking up to 4.4Ghz now? I am going for a shower now but before I boot up tomorrow I will go into my bios and write everything down. I am pretty sure I have turbo disabled.

Spikey · 1 Feb 2015 at 23:54

Hi mate,

Yep currently sitting at 4.4