[Asus] 2nd P8P67 Pro 3.1 Motherboard to Fail in 2 Months!?

gbruyn

Honorable
Aug 7, 2012
6
0
10,510
Okay. I'm going crazy! Just had my 2nd motherboard failure in 2 months. Here' the story:

At the end of June, I was browsing the internet and suddenly my computer just turned off without notice. I tried to power it back on and it wouldn't. I pulled the power plug, reset the BIOS jumper and plugged it back in. When I plugged it back in the power LED on the motherboard lit up. Once I hit the power button, some of the fans and other lights started to turn on momentarily but then turned off right away. I borrowed a friend's PSU and CPU and switched them out --- no change. I finally RMA'd the motherboard. The replacement board came back and booted just fine, but I was getting BSODs in Win 7 after a minute or two. Then it got worse --- I couldn't even boot. I finally went out and purchased another Intel Core i5-2500k processor and it fixed everything. So basically I had a BAD motherboard and a BAD CPU. In all my years with computers I have never had an ASUS motherboard or an Intel CPU fail. Crazy that they happened both at the same time. I'm assuming that the motherboard went bad and took out the CPU with it. Everything worked up until a few days ago when BINGO --- the athing happened! I was inserting a CD and the computer just turned off. Same problem as before --- can't get it to turn back on. I just went out and purchased a brand new OCZ ZT - 750 watt power supply.I was using the same ~3 year old Antec New Power 650w as when the problem happend previously. Perhaps the power supply is acting strange at random times and fine at other times?

At this point, I have no clue what is causing this. I was doing a mild but safe overclock at 4.5ghz with very reasonable temps and volts. I had previously stress tested everything multiple times using various methods and never had any issues.

Besides the PSU, could the memory or video card be burning up my motherboard/CPU?

This is crazy! :) Please help if you have any ideas!

Specs:
Asus P8P67 Pro 3.1 w/ latest 3207 Bios
Intel i5-2500k @ 4.5ghz
8GB 1600mhz DDR2 G-Skill RipJaw (F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL) - QVL'd Memory
Power Color AMD Radeon HD 6870 PCI-E Video Card
 
"mild but safe overclock at 4.5ghz " LOL, you know that the higher voltage and temps eats up processors. The 'safe' voltage ranges are the ones that don't typically fail in the first year of the OC.

That said, Even though ANTEC is a good brand of PSU you did the right thing getting a new PSU. Sure seemed that something is eating your MB.

Did you check temps everywhere? Did you compare your OC voltages against the posted FAQs with safe ranges? How is your surge suppressor?

aside: you have a typo above "8GB 1600mhz DDR2". You have DDR3 memory.


edit: here are some voltages

VCore: Stock is 1.3v and should not be raised higher than 1.5v
VCCSA (System Agent): Stock is 0.925v and should not be raised higher than 0.971v
VDDQ (RAM VOLTS): Stock is 1.5v and should not be raised above 1.65v (this depends on the manufacturer of the RAM, so please note when you buy it.)
VCCPLL (Phased-Locked Loop): the stock is 1.8v and should not be raised over 1.89v
VCCIO (I/O Supplied voltage): The stock is 1.05v and should not be raised over 1.0815v

from here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/265056-29-2600k-2500k-overclocking-guide

(although the RAM voltage surprised me, I though people were going lower than 1.65 -- more like 1.59 max)
 

boju

Titan
Ambassador
Not sure what’s going on here exactly but i can suggest something.

I also own a p8p67. I needed to flash the bios also to accept the 1600memory.

But an extra step i had to do before it was 100% and that was to push in the cmos reset button located on the i/o plate. Not sure if yours has it, if it does press it.

It was all good for me afterwards once i did that. Before pressing it, even though the newly flashed bios detected memory @ 1600, the operating system wouldn’t load.

If it is memory related, try setting the speed down to 1333< and see. The p8p67 family has had lots of trouble with 1600 ram.
 

gbruyn

Honorable
Aug 7, 2012
6
0
10,510


Yeah... DDR3 Mem. Typo.

Anyway... Vcore is around 1.35v MAX under all conditions. All the other V specs I leave alone (auto) on ASUS board. So they should all be fine. Ram I'm setting to 1.5v. So it doesn't seem to be the overclock, but I could be wrong.

To
 


Agree. Maybe just bad luck then, or maybe the new PSU removed the root cause of the problem. Good luck, hope things hold together for you.

Aside: does 'auto' on the MB set overclock voltages? If so might be worthwhile seeing what they are.