System completely freezes only when OC'd, out of the blue.

[dbee]

HEY EVERYONE. This here is my brothers bios template. He did not realize until last night. The settings we were using were 1000% stable .
he was operating at stock settings , so i jumped in and placed a
mild OC which he was previously using and was stored in his profiles.
He can boot but within 30 seconds the system freezes completely , HDD
light stays ON. not flashing, just solid on. Loaded optimized defaults,
and everything runs 100 %. Get back into bios and set everything over again,system freezes. Any type of overclock it does this. One thing i did notice
was CPU clock drive and PCI express drive were set at 700mv after loading
optimized defaults. I corrected this to match mine at 800mv, and 900mv,
respectively. He is on bIOS F8D, which we neither had a problem with ever.
Spent about an hour or so tweaking and fiddling around , just cant find what may be wrong. Temps are idle mid 30's , load 53c on stock, used to be about 65 when overclocked to 3.486 (166x21) and 1333mhz on the ram. His hardware is identical to whats in my sig, besides i use the SSD . Windows reports no errors since it completely freezes and must be hard shut down.
i have tried voltages up and down, mem settings up and down, left to right.
Again , this is very unusual since it has never done this before and
only freezes when overclocked at all. Anything besides stock it locks up.

Can you guys think of anything that may help? Any other info you need from me,
just ask. All is appreciated . Thanks- dbee. Again here is his hardware.

i7 920 C0
ex58-ud3r
WD Caviar Black 500gb
LG 22x DVD burner
Coolermaster RC690 case
Vista 64 SP2
OCZ3x1333lv6gk
corsair 750tx
evga gtx 260 216 p3-1255-ar
noctua nh-u12p se1366
logitech g11 keyboard
logitech mx518 mouse

Advanced CPU Features:
CPU Clock Ratio ................................ [20x]
Intel(R) Turbo Boost Tech .................. [Enabled]
CPU Cores Enabled ............................ [All]
CPU Multi Threading .......................... [Enabled]
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E) ................... [Disabled]
C3/C6/C7 State Support .................... [Disabled]
CPU Thermal Monitor ......................... [DISABLED
CPU EIST Function ............................ [Disabled]
Virtualization Technology ................... [DISABLED]
Bi-Directional PROCHOT ..................... [Enabled]


Uncore & QPI Features:
QPI Link Speed .............................. x36
Uncore Frequency .......................... x16, tried 17x and 18x
Isonchronous Frequency ..................[Enabled]


Standard Clock Control:
Base Clock (BCLK) Control ................ [Enabled]
BCLK Frequency (MHz) ..................... 166
PCI Express Frequency (MHz) ........... [100]

C.I.A.2 [Disabled]

Advanced Clock Control:
CPU Clock Drive ..............................[800mV] was 700mv?
PCI Express Clock Drive ................... [900mV] was 700mv
CPU Clock Skew ............................. [0ps]
IOH Clock Skew ............................. [0ps]


Advanced DRAM Features:
Performance Enhance ...................... [Standard]
Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P) ......... [Disabled]
System Memory Multiplier (SPD) ........ [8x)
DRAM Timing Selectable (SPD) .......... [Manual]

Channel A + B + C

Channel A Timing Settings:
##Channel A Standard Timing Control##
CAS Latency Time ...................... 8
tRCD .......................................8
tRP .........................................8
tRAS .......................................20, 24 tried both


Advanced Voltage Control:

CPU
Load Line Calibration ................. [enabled
CPU Vcore ............................... 1.325
QPI/VTT Voltage 1.150v ............ 1.3
CPU PLL 1.800v ....................... 1.8

MCH/ICH
PCIE 1.500v ...........................1.5
QPI PLL 1.100v .......................1.1
IOH Core 1.100v .....................1.1
ICH I/O 1.500v .......................1.5
ICH Core 1.1v ........................1.1

DRAM
DRAM Voltage 1.500v .............. 1.64v
DRAM Termination 0.750v [AUTO]
Ch-A Data VRef. 0.750v [AUTO]
Ch-B Data VRef. 0.750v [AUTO]
Ch-C Data VRef. 0.750v [AUTO]
Ch-A Address VRef. 0.750v [AUTO]
Ch-B Address VRef. 0.750v [AUTO]
Ch-C Address VRef. 0.750v [AUTO]

[wazza300]

alot of users are having trouble with evga cards maybe its that? try swapping cards over and overclocking i know there both evga cards but there all different bios's on them i dont know what else to suggest

[dbee]

The system freezes when the CPU is overclocked, not the GFX card. However, my EVGA doesn't like Crysis when overclocked, nor RE5 for that matter now that you mention it.

Forget about that for now though, the system only freezes when the cpu is givin ANY overclock.

[dbee]

Not even a single boot / post after flashing the bios which was successful...or so the bios reported . Tried a clear cmos and nothing yet. Could excessive dust within the case cause something like this?

[dbee]

Once the bios flash completed , it asked me to restart and i did so as usual, and the reboot cycle went from there.

[dbee]

ok guys, i know the floppy has to be installed prior to system failure, but by default the first boot device is the floppy disk so i should be ok on that part.

Second, formatted the floppy to a bootable dos disk, loaded ex58ud3r.f6 , and the custom autoexec.bat file containing "flashspi ex58ud3r.f6"

Somewhere says to use the flash895 or flashspi, whichever was included with your bios - i have flashspi but cant find flash895 - is there a difference ? or should i say is flashspi correct to use on this?

[Lsdmeasap]

FlashSPI and Flash895 are the same, you can use either.

If this does not work for you, please remove all hard drives, CD Drives, ect and plug in ONLY your CD Drive into SATA2_0 and put the motherboard Driver CD in and see if it will load the BIOS from there.

If not, you may need to short the MAIN BIOS chip, you will have to search for the thread with my post on this or have someone point you to it.

Have you tried clearing your CMOS the long way? If not, please do try that now before going forward with the rest

[dbee]

Yes, i have tried clearing cmos the long way. Did a few tries with my screwdriver, then took the battery out for an hour, tried the gigabyte disc in dvd drive last nite- not sure if it was in 2_0 though. Also left the cmos battery out overnite without any luck. It started the reboot cycle immedietly after f8g loaded "successfully" . I was prompted to shut down, did so and waited a minute. powered on and the cycle began.

correct me if im wrong, but after a bios update and everything is defaulted , disk boot priority is always set to floppy , at least thats what i've always seen and have always changed, but cant even get into bios . So really, if all else fails, the floppy boot disk should work. I also made a bootable USB drive that i will try tonite, but doubt it will work.

really sucks f8g had to do this to my bro's machine. my machine seems to love it.

[Lsdmeasap]

It must be in SATA2_0 and it must be the only drive connected. This normally helps though, only if you get the "Scanning Hard drive for BIOS" Error message.

If you are not getting that, shorting the MAIN Chip may be your only savior from RMA and that may or may not help, just depends but def. worth a shot before a RMA

Have you tried to start it with only one stick of memory in slot one, or a different set/stick of memory, this can sometimes get things going as well.

Yes, you are correct about the floppy question, but since you are not sure it flashed properly, which it may not, you can never be sure. GO ahead and try a blind flash though

Blind flash instructions are posted in the Qflash guide

[dbee]

LSD, also just took a look at the short m_bios pins 5 and 6 . May give that try if all else fails. As for clearing cmos, there really isn't any settings to clear as i never got into the f8g bios anyways to begin with, if it were to clear it, it would be exactly the same as nothing was changed by me. BIOS flashed successfully and i shut down, powered on , continuous power cycle.