Fresh P8Z68-V, i5 2500K Issues.

[internetlad]

So I just got myself a brand new P8Z68-V board, and i've been looking forward to this since I ordered it. First thing I do, Since I have some extra time, is slap the processor on the board and throw in the RAM.

Then came the downer. At first I was having issues getting it to run Memtest 86 off an older ultimate boot CD. (3.5 i beleive) and it kept locking up, freezing. Then I went into the BIOS, and it kept dropping the USB keyboard and mouse. Past that, i've seen weird, abnormal stuff going on. When it POSTs, it will turn on, spin the fan a bit, then shut off, turn back on, sometimes this happens twice, then it will almost consistantly boot like normal after that. This is completely breadboarded so i know it's not a short.

I got it running Knoppix and it seemed very content to run that for about the 20 minutes I was in it (the mouse would drop every 30 seconds or so out of the BIOS menus) so I was pretty hopeful.

I've upgraded the BIOS to the latest version and the first thing it did was restart before posting

at the moment i've got it on the lastest version of Memtest 86+ and it's running away happily. How eagar should I be to RMA the board or chip? Am I overreacting? Is the jury still out? I don't want to run into more problems in a month, and have to spend a week without my PC while the stuff RMAs.

 

[itzdanielp]

That definitely doesn't sound normal. have you contacted Asus to see what they suggest?

 

[internetlad]

I have not. I have this complex about talking on the phone, is there a chat or email service provided or do i have to call them up:?

 

[itzdanielp]

They have a live chat

http://service.asus.com/ProductCategory.aspx?pid=6

 

[internetlad]

man that's a pain, I just wrote a 20 minute essay on my problem via their E-Mail

well I guess doing both cannot hurt. Thank you for the information!

 

[internetlad]

well, apparently their live chat is offline ATM so i would have had to email anyways. I'll try again later. Thank you for your support so far.

 

[itzdanielp]

No problem, I hope you get this figured out. It is always a pain to have to deal with problems on a brand new board

 

[internetlad]

tell me about it, you're all excited about the stuff you just dropped a walletfull for, it gets here and instead of being the roaring beast you wanted it's like a sick goblin or something

Bad analogy but the point gets across.

 

[itzdanielp]

haha, for sure

 

[internetlad]

More info incoming. I was mistaken on the UBCD version, it's 5.3 not 3.5 or whatever the heck i said before.

I was running CPU burn (I beleive it was called.) and I kept getting the error "Port 3 disabled by hub (EMI?) Re-Enabling. Now i did some digging on this, apparently it's a safety feature wherein if the board detects a badly sheilded device that could harm the board, it disables that device, Which seems pretty darn reasonable about what's happening here.

A couple of things:

This is a Kensington Keyboard and a Microsoft mouse, I doubt they skimped on the cabling job.

It's happened on every port with every device i've tried so far as far as I can see.

that still doesn't answer the mystery reboot on POST issue. It's running American Megatrends and the BIOS version is 0706, on the off chance anybody has this much in depth experience, the POST code it's giving (i'm using one of those PCI code reading cards) is 60 when it decides to reboot, as far as I can tell.

 

[internetlad]

So how's this for bizarre. If I hadn't experienced those issues yesterday, and I was just using the motherboard today, I wouldn't say there's a thing wrong with it. The USB keyboard and mouse stayed fine through configuring the BIOS, it hasn't done the "turn off while turning on, but then turn back on" thing once. the CPU test did kick up some of those weird errors about the USB but other than that i'm not having an issue with it.

This problem is so intermittent I don't even know if it's a problem or what's going on.

 

[raja@asus]

To prevent double POST, set BCLK to 100.0MHz exactly in UEFI>Ai Tweaker>Ai Tuner to Manual, then BCLK to 100.0

-Raja

 

[internetlad]

I actually found last night that if I set the ram to 1333 (it's a 1600mhz rated kit) and turn off the Asus Optimal setting in the BIOS then everything seems to work fine. As soon as you turn on Optimal everything goes south really, really fast, if you leave that at normal and overclock the RAM, everything will run fine for a while but every hour or so it will lock up. Left everything on Auto in the BIOS and it worked fine for like 2, 3 hours last night. Hardly enough time to say for certain there isn't a problem with the automatic settings but still diagnostic.

Either way, I've never been very good at overclocking, I don't know if it's me or the chips, but everything i've tried to use has a pretty good "reputation" for oc'ing and it just farts in my face whenever i try to tweak it at all. IE setting the ram to 1600 which it should be stock anyways.

I Already have everything installed in the case. I would assume that setting Asus Optimal wouldn't normally make the computer take a huge dump like 45 seconds in, Is this still a RMA'able problem? Technically I am trying to adjust the speeds in the BIOS, either when i'm doing the RAM or the "Optimal" but I really don't believe that should case the problems i'm seeing?

I've run CPU burn on it and the CPU checks out fine at stock
I've run Memtest on it and memory tests out fine at 1333, and I thought i had it tested okay for 2 passes on 1600 but i could be wrong, or maybe had a setting wrong.

TL;DR, it works fine with everything at auto, when i try to tweak anything or set it to do the automatic OC it takes a dump.

EDIT: Thanks for the info Raja, I'll try that once I get home tonight. That should help with system stability?

 

[raja@asus]

It will just prevent the double POST because the clockgen wont be offset at POST.

As for stability, if you get any memory related errors, I would make sure that DRAM voltage and VCCIO are set as need be. Some DIMMs are more capacitive than others so VCCIO may need an increase to aid stability.

-Raja

 

[internetlad]

Okay, thanks for the input! I'm not very good at OC'ing so that information is very useful!