Z87 Extreme 4 issues

[SLK]

Hi all,

I have been fighting this board tooth and nail with getting the issues worked out. I have 3 problems that have been bothering me on this board.

The bios freezes at times and about 10-15 seconds later I get an alternating block pattern on top of the screen. Someone from AT forums have experienced this issue too. I am using Bios version 1.50

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Dynamic Storage accelerator no longer shows up in the RST utility as an option. It is enabled in the bios.



The bios lists the Vcore as 1.792v


Is there any ETA on when these fixes will be available?


My Specs

i7-4770k
Asrock Z87 Extreme 4
16gb Corsair Vengeance 1866mhz -
MSI GTX 780 3gb
250gb Samsung 840
240gb OCZ Vertex Plus R2
1.5tb Seagate Green


Thanks in advance!

[parsec]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

I have an ASR Z87 EX 6, but I can answer two of your questions.

Dynamic Storage Accelerator requires Package C State Support to be enabled, in Advanced, CPU Configuration. IMO, DSA is really only a power saving feature, and the default mode when DSA settings are not available would be the high performance setting. Package C State Support apparently overrides the other DSA setting. IMO, that is not an ASR bug, but an Intel thing, since I can turn the DSA display on and off with Package C State Support, which had to be coded in the IRST UI.

A Vcore of 1.792V? Mine was 1.816V the first time I started the board and went into the UEFI. After freaking out for a bit, I remembered that Haswell CPUs with their new on-CPU voltage regulators, have one CPU voltage input from the board's VRMs, of 1.8V. That is a major change from ALL previous Intel CPUs, and should be known by anyone working with creating software for Haswell boards.

Fortunately it is a display only error and repeated in one A-Tuning screen (System Information), but not in the OC Tweaker screen. Still, rather embarrassing for ASR, and repeated in the BIOS/UEFI of two Z87 boards (so far).

I suppose it could be a translation problem. To be fair, Intel is still calling this single CPU voltage input Vcc in their Haswell documents, which meant Vcore for earlier CPUs. Regardless, at this time the ASRock UEFI and A-Tuning both do NOT display the true voltage being applied to the CPU cores. A third party hardware monitoring program I use shows CPU input voltage and the internal core voltage, and CPU-Z (that calls it Core Voltage), both show the same reading, which is surprisingly low.

There are other bugs in A-Tuning screens IMO, but I'm giving it a chance to see if it's me instead.

The BIOS/UEFI screen thing I have never seen with my board. I have noticed that freezes in Windows occur instead of a BSOD in some cases (I'm guessing) due to an OC crash. The new internal VR's have once again changed the way these CPUs are OC'd, and so far it has not been easy.

[SLK]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

I have an ASR Z87 EX 6, but I can answer two of your questions.

Dynamic Storage Accelerator requires Package C State Support to be enabled, in Advanced, CPU Configuration. IMO, DSA is really only a power saving feature, and the default mode when DSA settings are not available would be the high performance setting. Package C State Support apparently overrides the other DSA setting. IMO, that is not an ASR bug, but an Intel thing, since I can turn the DSA display on and off with Package C State Support, which had to be coded in the IRST UI.

A Vcore of 1.792V? Mine was 1.816V the first time I started the board and went into the UEFI. After freaking out for a bit, I remembered that Haswell CPUs with their new on-CPU voltage regulators, have one CPU voltage input from the board's VRMs, of 1.8V. That is a major change from ALL previous Intel CPUs, and should be known by anyone working with creating software for Haswell boards.

Fortunately it is a display only error and repeated in one A-Tuning screen (System Information), but not in the OC Tweaker screen. Still, rather embarrassing for ASR, and repeated in the BIOS/UEFI of two Z87 boards (so far).

I suppose it could be a translation problem. To be fair, Intel is still calling this single CPU voltage input Vcc in their Haswell documents, which meant Vcore for earlier CPUs. Regardless, at this time the ASRock UEFI and A-Tuning both do NOT display the true voltage being applied to the CPU cores. A third party hardware monitoring program I use shows CPU input voltage and the internal core voltage, and CPU-Z (that calls it Core Voltage), both show the same reading, which is surprisingly low.

There are other bugs in A-Tuning screens IMO, but I'm giving it a chance to see if it's me instead.

The BIOS/UEFI screen thing I have never seen with my board. I have noticed that freezes in Windows occur instead of a BSOD in some cases (I'm guessing) due to an OC crash. The new internal VR's have once again changed the way these CPUs are OC'd, and so far it has not been easy.

Thanks for the response. I enabled package CStates and the DSA setting did not reappear but I removed my XMP Profile for my RAM and it reappeared! I haven't even tried to overclock yet until I wait for a fix of the Bios Freezing issues. I am tempted to flash to the first release Bios to see if it takes away the freezing issue. I guess if I mess something up this thing has a dual bios on it :)

[parsec]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Are you saying that you later disabled package C States, and then did not use the XMP profile, and that worked? If so, that makes no sense IMO. For a test, don't use your XMP profile, and disable package C States, and see if DSA is still available. The memory I use does not have XMP profiles, so for all I know, you are right.

But, Haswell systems are strange beasts, and is it possible that the BIOS settings are not correctly implemented yet? OTOH, the power saving options of Haswell extends to more things besides the CPU, so the affects of various settings could cause behavior we have never seen before.

[SLK]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Are you saying that you later disabled package C States, and then did not use the XMP profile, and that worked? If so, that makes no sense IMO. For a test, don't use your XMP profile, and disable package C States, and see if DSA is still available. The memory I use does not have XMP profiles, so for all I know, you are right.

But, Haswell systems are strange beasts, and is it possible that the BIOS settings are not correctly implemented yet? OTOH, the power saving options of Haswell extends to more things besides the CPU, so the affects of various settings could cause behavior we have never seen before.

Package Cstates are enabled and XMP is disabled. It seems that when I enable XMP, it disabled Package Cstates. If I enable XMP and also enable Package Cstates, the DSA is still not available. I guess a work around would be to manually enter the RAM timings and leave XMP disabled.

[parsec]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Interesting, thanks for the info. Memory power saving features are part of the Haswell CPU and chipset platforms, and XMP must override that.

Sure, you can enter your RAM timing manually.

What setting did you want to use with DSA?

[sunlite]

[SLK]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Do you get this issue after you freeze in the Bios?

[parsec]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Freezing can be a memory issue, or possibly in this case the power saving applied to memory is causing a problem. I still have not seen the freezing in the UEFI/BIOS, but I have had it in Windows, which I've never had before. I've let the PC run in the BIOS for 10 minutes, and it did not freeze.

I suggest trying disabling Package C States if you haven't done so already. In the past, and it seems still true on this platform, the CPU power saving options are not active until Windows is running, since the Windows Power Plan settings for the CPU can control them. These new power saving features for RAM, etc, may be active before Windows starts, I'm not sure about that yet, but it's a possibility.

SLK, so that's what you get in the BIOS, those vertical bars at the top of the screen? Weird, I've never seen that myself or posted by anyone as an issue in the past. So far, I've been using the onboard CPU graphics, and you are using a 780 card, correct? The Package C States enables power savings for the CPU, PCIe, memory, and graphics (onboard, video cards, or both?) according to the manual. The onboard graphics works with the power saving option fine (it seems...) but a video card might not.

So far, it seems all these new power saving options are a pain in the butt, I will try disabling as many as I can and see what happens. It looks like Haswell desktop platforms may become a support nightmare, or at least until we get all these new options sorted out. Good luck to you all!

[sunlite]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Do you get this issue after you freeze in the Bios?

If the issue you mean is the vertical color bar on the top of the screen then yes, I can see that pattern on my monitor as well after the freeze.

Let me try to disable Package C state to see if I got any luck

[mike_m]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Hi,
I too am getting the freezing in UEFI Setup on my Extreme4. It's the same thing that you described - go into UEFI Setup, completely locks up after about 10 seconds with the lines on the screen. Hit the reset button and go back into UEFI Setup and everything is fine. IThe settings were the default since I just powered the computer on for the first time. I emailed Asrock and they said they were unable to reproduce the problem and told me to check my overclocking settings (even though I explained that I had none). I started out with BIOS 1.27? and the problem persists after upgrading to 1.50.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with the issue.

[sunlite]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Freezing can be a memory issue, or possibly in this case the power saving applied to memory is causing a problem. I still have not seen the freezing in the UEFI/BIOS, but I have had it in Windows, which I've never had before. I've let the PC run in the BIOS for 10 minutes, and it did not freeze.

I suggest trying disabling Package C States if you haven't done so already. In the past, and it seems still true on this platform, the CPU power saving options are not active until Windows is running, since the Windows Power Plan settings for the CPU can control them. These new power saving features for RAM, etc, may be active before Windows starts, I'm not sure about that yet, but it's a possibility.

SLK, so that's what you get in the BIOS, those vertical bars at the top of the screen? Weird, I've never seen that myself or posted by anyone as an issue in the past. So far, I've been using the onboard CPU graphics, and you are using a 780 card, correct? The Package C States enables power savings for the CPU, PCIe, memory, and graphics (onboard, video cards, or both?) according to the manual. The onboard graphics works with the power saving option fine (it seems...) but a video card might not.

So far, it seems all these new power saving options are a pain in the butt, I will try disabling as many as I can and see what happens. It looks like Haswell desktop platforms may become a support nightmare, or at least until we get all these new options sorted out. Good luck to you all!

Update: Disable the C State doesn't help. It still freeze.

[Shiari]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Hi,
I too am getting the freezing in UEFI Setup on my Extreme4. It's the same thing that you described - go into UEFI Setup, completely locks up after about 10 seconds with the lines on the screen. Hit the reset button and go back into UEFI Setup and everything is fine. IThe settings were the default since I just powered the computer on for the first time. I emailed Asrock and they said they were unable to reproduce the problem and told me to check my overclocking settings (even though I explained that I had none). I started out with BIOS 1.27? and the problem persists after upgrading to 1.50.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with the issue.

Try disabling USB legacy support (set it to UEFI and Windows only). Also, let it properly start up UEFI first, ie let the stars blink for a bit before you start moving the mouse - seems to help me. I've had lots of similar lockups on my Extreme 6, but they're a lot rarer now.

[SLK]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

Hi,
I too am getting the freezing in UEFI Setup on my Extreme4. It's the same thing that you described - go into UEFI Setup, completely locks up after about 10 seconds with the lines on the screen. Hit the reset button and go back into UEFI Setup and everything is fine. IThe settings were the default since I just powered the computer on for the first time. I emailed Asrock and they said they were unable to reproduce the problem and told me to check my overclocking settings (even though I explained that I had none). I started out with BIOS 1.27? and the problem persists after upgrading to 1.50.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with the issue.

There definitely is a issue because when I am at 100% stock settings I get the random freezing. I don't even use the mouse and it still freezes with the keyboard.


On a side note. Did anyone notice the lackluster quality of the 'Purity sound'? I wonder if there will be a fix for that as well. The microphone input is very low and the sound cuts in and out at times as well. Overall sound quality is very washed out and muffled compared to my $18 Xonar DG.

[mike_m]

Re: Z87 Extreme 4 issues

On a side note. Did anyone notice the lackluster quality of the 'Purity sound'? I wonder if there will be a fix for that as well. The microphone input is very low and the sound cuts in and out at times as well. Overall sound quality is very washed out and muffled compared to my $18 Xonar DG.

I noticed the sound was pretty poor as well. I hate how it pops when I turn the computer on. My audio seems to get crackly and broken sometimes until I reset the computer. I haven't tried the microphone yet though. I just ordered a cheap soundcard off ebay and I am waiting for it to arrive.