Gigabyte Z87X-OC and 4 x ATI 5970s won't boot.

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johnno29

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Oct 17, 2013
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Hi all.

After a couple of weeks of frustration, hoping someone can help with this.

I have recently purchased a Gigabyte Z87x-OC motherboard intending to run 4 x ATI 5970s. I am using a Thermaltake Toughpower 1500w.

The board runs three cards fine, but when I add the fourth, it just hangs at the Gigabyte BIOS splash screen. I have tried powered risers and also attaching power to the 6pin aux pcie power plug but still have the same problem.

I have tried BIOS f5, f6 and f7a with no luck. I have tried disabling legacy USB support and forcing the 4th slot to x4 in the BIOS and have disabled integrated graphics.

Also swapped the cards around and tried running with 3 cards swapping them around to leave each slot blank at least once. This works fine until I add the fourth card.

I have contacted Gigabyte support and we have been going back and forth for a week. Their final answer was to ask the PSU manufacturer if it can handle the 4 cards.

I have run these 4 cards successfully with risers and this PSU on an older motherboard
using the x16, x1, x16, x1 slots.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
John.

--- EDIT ---
Post LED is A2 when it hangs.
 
Solution
J


Hi,
I bought an earlier Gigabyte motherboard (G1 Sniper3 ) on ebay for $250 Aussie Dollars. This did the trick. Sold the z87x-oc.

There is another available on eBay Australia for AUD$250.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/GIGABYTE-G1-SNIPER-3-Z77-LGA...
Just seems to be an issue with the board, perhaps the z87 chipset.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you get it working.

Good luck!

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johnno29

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Oct 17, 2013
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Thanks alexoiu.

.F6 is the latest stable release. .F7a is the latest beta. Gigabyte supplied a copy of .F7a to me via the tech support system. Tried them both with no luck.
 
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Adrian Gut

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Jan 12, 2014
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Did you get this working?
I have exactly the same issue but it's not the PSU, heat or cables.
I would appreciate any updates - Thanks!
 
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J

johnno29

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Oct 17, 2013
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Hi,
I bought an earlier Gigabyte motherboard (G1 Sniper3 ) on ebay for $250 Aussie Dollars. This did the trick. Sold the z87x-oc.

There is another available on eBay Australia for AUD$250.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/GIGABYTE-G1-SNIPER-3-Z77-LGA...
Just seems to be an issue with the board, perhaps the z87 chipset.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you get it working.

Good luck!

 
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Solution
A

Adrian Gut

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Jan 12, 2014
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Many thanks - I'll try to get that MB and confirm if I get it to work.
 
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Adrian Gut

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Just want to make sure about the CPU - what CPU did you use? might the CPU affect the PCIe behaviour (how many cards the board supports, lanes, etc.?)

The board that I'm currently testing has 1150 socket, the one you used is 1155 so I need to buy another CPU and don't want to buy some low CPU that will somehow cause the MB to not recognize all 4 5970.

Your help is much appreciated! :)
 
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johnno29

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Oct 17, 2013
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Glad to help. I spent many frustrating days with this issue, and would not wish it on my worst enemy!

Someone did tell me that the CPU has the PCIe controller on board and thought this might be the problem, but wasn't the case. You might wan't to check for bent CPU socket pins to be 100% sure.

I am using this for mining so I only used a low grade processor - G2030 which cost me $70. Make sure you're using 64 bit windows or linux. 32 Will only detect 4 GPUs (2 x 5970s).

I also had this working on a Intel 1155 board with 2 x x16 slots and 2 x x1 slots using risers. This also used a low-end Pentium 64bit processor.

So it really seemed to be the mobo in my case. Don't blow extra cash on a higher spec processor if you're just mining.
 
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Adrian Gut

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Jan 12, 2014
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Johnno29 - you're the man!
I received the Sniper 3 MB today and just installed all 4 ATI 5970 - it's been mining for the last half hour and everything seems fine and stable. Although this board was much more expensive than my original plan, I went with the CPU that you've recommended - G2030 which was really cheap. So, all in all, if I can return the other board + CPU, things are still looking good.

I has some issues when I've added the 4th 5970 card - Win7 64bit crashed with some blue screen memory dump. So, I used DDU and removed all graphics drivers in safe mode, then extracted the Catalyst package and manually installed the drivers. Windows booted this way and saw all 8 GPUs, but cgminer only saw 7. So, what I did: I went in Device manager and uninstalled (without deleting the driver) one of the GPUs then clicked the Scan for new hardware. This way, Win7 reinstalled that GPU and somehow linked it internally because cgminer immediately recognized all 8 GPUs.

So, now, they are all mining happily at 355Khs/GPU, without any OC.

Johnno29 - please, send me your BTC address so I can send you a small token of my gratitude - it will be my pleasure for all your help!
Best of luck to you!
 
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johnno29

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Oct 17, 2013
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Glad to hear you got it working, your heart must have sunk temporarily when you got the blue screen of death.

P.S.
Interested to see you cgminer settings. My cards run about 341hs/GPU at stock (725/1000) using the following:
--thread-concurrency 8000 --intensity 19 --worksize 256 --gpu-threads 1 --shaders 1600.
Can get them to 400Khs each at 855/1100/1.050vddc reliably but my temps just get too high for summer.

Thanks for your offer of coin...
BTC: 18sdQQkD65rJ5uiFdnDgoCkwLGaYyo6GMh
LTC: LgZkMQ23ueX2xAL4CV5Fvrzkss2kq8etnv
 
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Adrian Gut

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Jan 12, 2014
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I start cgminer with these params: -I 18 -g 1 -w 128 --thread-concurrency 8000 -s 2 --queue=0 --lookup-gap 2 --expiry 1 --auto-fan --temp-overheat 90 --temp-target 80 --gpu-fan 45-85 (if you're wondering about --gpu-fan 45-85 - I use it to help stabilize the fan rpm, because it usually takes it like 30mins. to stabilize and during that period it's a lot of noise).

I keep all my hardware in a room with the window always open, so the temperature in the room is the same with the temperature from outside; right now here is around 5-7 Celsius, and the cards are staying at 76-78 Celsius at 2800-3000 rpm. I didn't try overclocking yet, but I will - curios what's the most I can get from these cards. I was also thinking about replacing the stock coolers, because they seem pretty inefficient to me, but don't have any alternative in plan yet... I assume in mid-summer, when temperatures will get to 35-38C, things will not go well at all with the current setup.
 
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