Asus bios and mobo help pls.

scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
edited September 2004 in Hardware
Hi Guys

I got a replacement A7V8X-X mobo for the one that would not post last week. This one posts fine and all is well....Kinda.
Some specs
A7V8X-X
2500+ mobile barton
512 OCZ E L PC 3200 2x256 dual channel
Cheezy 3D rage Pro 8mb PCI video card
10gig Quantum fireball hdd
Some old CD drive

I set up the inital bios settings and loaded Windows w/SP2 with the default CPU parameters 10 X 100. Everythings working fine. Load chipset drivers and configure LAN , download FAH console. Still all fine ( lots of restarts )

So now I start to bump up the fsb and multi. At around 1.9ghz after hitting f10 to reboot it would start to reboot and freeze ( monitor LED blinking amber)
After a hard shutdown and restart It would boot up just fine and run at 1.9ghz. Even from windows if you try to "Restart" it will get to the same point and freeze. but if you "Turn Off" and restart it is fine. It passed about an hour of prime 95 and 25 loops of sandra burn in (CPU only ) at 2500mhz (12.5 X200) So I started FAH and let it go all night. no errors. So I think it is a stable overclock. But I can not "Restart " Power off and then On works fine.
The manual says it has some feature called "CPR" ( CPU Parameter Recall ) See Manual HERE And it claims "When the system hangs due to an overclocking failure , there is no need to open the case to clear the CMOS data. Simply restart the the system and the BIOS will automatically restore the CPU default setting for each parameter. "

Well I don't think that is it beacuse it won't "simply restart" But it did and will if the speed is kept under 1.9ghz.

Any thoughts , Ideas or opinions.

BTW it is still running FAH @ 2.5 ghz. ( This makes 10 clients on 9 machines )


Scott

Comments

  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Bump
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited September 2004
    Scott, what kind of psu are you using on that rig? It kind of sounds like it could be a psu problem to me, maybe.
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Hey Mudd

    It is a generic 350 watt P4 rated power supply.
    In ASUS Probe the voltages at full load are

    12.21
    4.97
    3.31
    and 1.62 Vcore set @ 1.65v

    It did this on the bench with only 1 hdd attached and no fans except the Cpu fan
    It is now in a case with an optical drive and 3 80mm fans , all voltages remained the same. Nothing seems really outta whack.


    Scott
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited September 2004
    Those volts look good, but I wonder if they sag some when rebooting or something. Do you have a multimeter by any chance? If so, stick the leads into the 12v rail on a molex connector and reboot and then do the same thing on the 5v rail on the molex connector. Other than that, I could only make a wild speculation.
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    I just checked voltage during attempted restarts. No Sag.
    In fact as soon as windows closed the 5 volt rail went up to 5.1 and stayed there and the 12 volt rail never moved. I also checked them on a cold start, also no sag.

    Any other ideas ?

    I appreciate the help.


    Scott
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited September 2004
    The only other thing I can think of, and it's a real shot in the dark, is to have you pinmod a higher default vcore. Maybe the way that Asus implements their initial startup on a warm reboot, before bios control is reset, is having the proc run the default vcore of the mobile proc while still using the multiplier you have set in bios. The default vcore on the mobiles is pretty damn low and might not be enough for reliable rebooting on a warm reboot if the higher multi is staying set through the process. On a cold boot, the stock vcore and stock multiplier (6 on mobiles, as read by a desktop board) wouldn't be a problem for booting until the bios took control, hense no problems on a cold boot.

    Like I said, a real shot in the dark here.;)
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Thanks again Mudd

    The Bios is somewhat confused by the mobile. I do not remember what it called it but as you said the stock settings are pretty low. If I clear the CMOS and go into setup the multi is 6 and the fsb is 100 but the default vcore is 1.6 v. Just for fun I just set the voltage to auto and it changed it to 1.6v. I then cold booted and it went to the desktop so I checked cpu-z and it reported vcore as 1.63v . I then reset the vcore in bios to 1.65v and cold booted again this time cpu-z reports 1.63v. ?? So you may be onto something. Before I try the pinmod I think I will see if asus has a forum and poke around there. But it sounds like you are pretty sure it is a voltage issue.

    I will report back


    Scott
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Well I looked all over the net and could find nothing helpful.
    I went to ocinside to get the pin assignments for the pinmod that mudd suggested. Set my vcore to auto in bios then did a 1.7v pinmod on the socket. booted up just fine , checked vcore in CPU-Z and it reported it as 1.8v . I checked asus probe and it also reported 1.8v. I tried to "Restart" and it still hangs. :banghead: :banghead:
    I removed the pinmod and reset to 1.65 in bios, after double checking my work and ocinsides guide . I did the right pins for 1.7v and got 1.8v ??? maybe more mobile weirdness.

    Anyway...here we are back at square one.

    any other ideas ?

    Class ? Buehler ? Anyone ?

    Scott

    on a side note: It is folding like a mofo. since yesterday around noon it has turned in a 63 pt. gromac and a 242 pt tinker and is starting another big tinker. and I have had it off and on many times.
  • ketoketo
    puts on blindfold and shoots

    got RAM voltage bumped up? 2.8ish wont hurt it any.

    But in reality, I am very much guessing it is a mobo issue, possibly but not likely bios related, more likely hardwired and unfixable....as I said, total guess.
     Occupied. Or is it preoccupied? Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    puts on blindfold and shoots

    got RAM voltage bumped up? 2.8ish wont hurt it any.

    But in reality, I am very much guessing it is a mobo issue, possibly but not likely bios related, more likely hardwired and unfixable....as I said, total guess.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited September 2004
    Like I said, it was a shot in the dark, scott.:)

    I'm starting to lean towards a hardware problem with the mobo like keto. My old v 1.04 A7N8X-Dlx never had any reboot problems, hard or soft, but it has a funky 3Com integrated Lan connection that freezes up, so I just use the integrated Nvidia Lan connection for it. It also won't run at 200 fsb but that's due to the early revision northbridge the old board has on it.
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Thanks again gentleman

    This BIOS does not have a provision for changing RAM voltage.

    But I also have tried it at default Ram speed 166 X 15 and it also ran fine but would not restart.

    I think I will RMA it. I will dig this thread up when I get the next replacement and let you know if the new board has this issue as well.

    I really like my NF7


    Scott
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