Running stable OC, but sometimes it won't boot

khare

khare

khare

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Hi guys, I've got a mind puzzling one for you.

I'm running an AMD Athlon II X4 635 cpu overclocked to 3.5ghz and it's running stable (16 hours on prime95 and no errors, warnings or crashes). I've got an Akasa AK-CC4005SP01 Venom Nano cooler with AC MX-4 thermal paste with temps of 29C idle and 54C under load with MB temp not going past 28C. It runs well once booted up (stable as I said), however around 1 in 4 boot ups it won't boot to windows, instead the monitor's power light will go from green (ON) to orange (STANDBY) and it'll stay like that.

To sort it I hit the restart button and it'll show me a screen saying overclocking failed press F1 to run bios and F2 to reset to default and continue. If I hit F1 which is what I always do it'll restart again, this time booting into bios and then I just press F10 (save and exit) without changing any settings and then it'll boot up again but this time successfully. I'm confused as to why sometimes it won't boot as the OC is stable. My votlages are shown below;

IMG_20111009_191405.jpg


They are higher than I expected them to be but as I said the system runs low temps and stable.

Computer spec is the following;

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 635 AM3
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Motherboard: Asus M4N68T
Memory: 4GB DDR3 1600mhz Corsair XMS3 (2x2gb)
Hard Drives: 500GB S-ATAII 3.0Gb/s & 160gb IDE HD (storage)
Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA
Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Sound card: Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio
Case: Xigmatek Asgard
PSU: 700W EZCool Tornado



Any ideas as to why I have problems? Also, I don't know why but it takes a fair amount of time to boot into windows when it does boot. It'll take about 4 or 5 minutes to load everything in the explorer and run smoothly. Could it be related at all?

Regards
 
I've just reset to default clock and it does still take a long time to load. Thinking it may just be Windows 7, although I didn't remember it taking this long? (Was a long time since it ran default).
 
No, that's a really long time for Win7. My system takes less than a minute to boot. I don't know if your long boot times are related to boot failures. Do you get any beep codes when it fails to boot (i.e. does the system pass POST)? I would think you need to try running everything at stock for a while to see if you get boot failures, and if you don't the long boot issue is probably unrelated.
 
4-5 is longer than it take win7 on my old amd barton 2500+ powered shuttle. Something clearly isn't right there.
 
AlfBaxter said:
No, that's a really long time for Win7. My system takes less than a minute to boot. I don't know if your long boot times are related to boot failures. Do you get any beep codes when it fails to boot (i.e. does the system pass POST)? I would think you need to try running everything at stock for a while to see if you get boot failures, and if you don't the long boot issue is probably unrelated.
Click to expand...

Ok I'll run it at stock for a while and see what happens. Computer doesn't make any beeps at startup, my old one did but this one doesn't have a speaker buitl into the case like the old one, hence no beeps.
 
Boot up time kind of sorted. Boots up in about a minute or so now. Used msconfig to remove a few startup programs and services and also updated my sound card driver.

It's just the issue with the OC boot now. Been running default for about 20 or so restarts (been trying to improve boot up time) and not once did it not boot up.
 
Just redone my overclock. Rather than high multiplier and low FSB I've gone for high FSB and lower multiplier. System has yet to crash or restart, however I'm slowly sorting it through prime95 and voltages. I still get the screen sometimes not coming on though, along with the "overclocking failed press F1 to run setup" screen.

I've noticed one thing while watching CPU-Z. In between tests and also randomly my CPU frequency, multiplier and the voltages are dropping, almost as if cool n quiet is on (it's off though, via bios).

Here is a pic of CPU-Z under normal conditions

hi.jpg


and here's a pic of it when it slows down

low.jpg



Any reason it's doing this?
 
khare said:
It says disabled in the bios though? :confused:
Click to expand...

I haven't had an AMD system for a long time so couldn't tell you why it's still working but it obviously is.

Hopefully someone will be able to assist you but I still don't see why you want to turn it off.

It saves electricity and deterioration of components when the PC is idle and the processor will clock back up to full speed when required.
 
Cool n quiet is recommended off when overclocking, that's what I've read everywhere anyway. Thing is when at idle when nothing is running it runs at full speed. It's just under load that it slows down...
 
khare said:
Cool n quiet is recommended off when overclocking, that's what I've read everywhere anyway. Thing is when at idle when nothing is running it runs at full speed. It's just under load that it slows down...
Click to expand...

Sometimes it's beneficial to turn it off while finding a stable overclock but then turn it back on afterwards.

If your CPU is throttling back when under load perhaps it's a temperature issue.
 
I see. Well temps are fine, with the current OC temps are not going past 57C under load so they're within the limits.
 
Ok I'm slowwwwwly getting to the bottom of things.

The problem where the voltages go from 1.152v - 1.536v was LLC related. It was set at 0% with 1.4625v vcore via BIOS. The system is stable with this setting however. I tried different LLC percentages up until 38% were the voltage actually dropped at load rather than rose. They ALL caused instability though, with the system rebooting only a few minutes into prime95 small FFT's. So I'm running 3.6ghz (overclocked it a tad more from when I created the thread a few days ago) with 1.4625v and 0% LLC. It runs at the voltages I said above which are a bit high for my liking, would like closer to 1.45v but it just seems 3.6ghz isn't possible with those voltages and it prefers 1.53v (tried LLC at 16% and under load it was 1.5v and crashed). Temps are 55C max under load though so I'm happy with them.

I've still got the original problem though, of the system sometimes not booting up. Anyone shed any light?
 
Update on this. Bought an OCZ ZS 650w and it's still doing the same thing, so deffo not PSU related. I think it's just the mobo's feature to stop the overclock melting the PC is kicking in with false fail safes :(
 
I managed to get my 620 to 3.5ghz using 270fsb and 1.35v so can't see why you shouldn't be able to manage it.

Might be worth setting memory timings manually if it thinks you're running it at a slower speed it might be trying to tighten the memory settings but with a higher fsb it's actually running faster than it can handle those settings?
 
I'm already running the timing manually. They're running at 8-8-8-20-27 1T.

CPU core voltage is 1.476v, can't seem to get it stable if it's lower than that.
 
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