Sounds like you are having a real nightmare Gene. I don't know what to suggest.
I do hope Steve has better luck with the board, I know as we speak he is setting it up for a bench run to see if it works ok. I wish him the best of luck and hope all runs smooth.
Paul.
Me too! When it work it work good
Gene
Thanks Dave, had wackbards huh?Close,
Problem In Chair Not In Computer
Sorry
(The other guys made me do it)
Man Gene, I have no other ideas. Did you get a replacement board or the same one back?
Got the replacement before I had to send the MB back. I don't have to send the original back for a few more weeks. Amazon = great return & exchange policy. However both were shipped loose in the box - the second the bubbles in the box were so cheap and thin they had burst. Not any different than newegg I guess, I had quit purchasing sensitive items from Newegg for just this reason.
So now I am exploring an avenue that is relevant to this thread! In both instances of MB I was overclocking to 4 or 4.1 GHz using an offset voltage and C1E enabled with standard LLC. I think I somewhat killed my previous processor with LLC, so I want to keep it at Intel standard. I had to set a negative .06V Vcore offset to get the load voltage down to near 1.2V. This resulted in very low processor voltages when idle and C1E kicked in. Since these freezes usually happened under light load, I suspect that maybe Vcore dropped too low. So now I am setting up a stable overclock with manual Vcore and C1E off. This should rule out a Vdroop/C1E voltage drop that is too low.
BTW, still had freezes after uninstall of Spectraview and Asus AI Suite II.
So far my take on the BIOS on this MB is it really isn't that accurate. The offset voltages are very strange and for manual setting of Vcore the Vdrop is pretty high. But I seem to be able to overclock at much lower voltages than the previous generation with pretty low temps. Hopefully Asus address this in a future BIOS. One of the reasons I choose this board is Asus explicitly said Ivy Bridge would be supported - which means an extended support on this BIOS. Usually these MB manufacturers drop updates once the new best thing is out.
I see. Amazon has this "eco friendly" packaging kick. It usually means contents are not protected. The shipping companies commonly allow packages to drop at least 6' because they use automated conveyors.
A good return policy is fine so long as its not needed with each shipment. Newegg always has had good padding and cushioning in their boxes.
I had an RMA motherboard once which came back in a box. No padding, no electrostatic bag, no nothing. I'm surprised they didn't just glue a shipping label to the back of the board itself and send it like that.
Well, I'm not overly enamored with the board. It would not post with 2 sticks of ram even with the memory OK. I took 1 stick out and it finally posted after the 5th try. But, it posted with my 2133CL9 ram at 1600 11-11-11 @1.68V. In the OS, almost everything was completely unresponsive. I could not open computer or Control Panel. It would not open or boot from a USB, even after setting it as 1st boot device in bios. And yes, I know it works as I used it Yesterday. At idle it was running at 3.8GHz with a 1.35Vcore. and 51°C I ran the stock cooler on the bench, but even the stock cooler should do better than 51 at idle. I was running a M4 Gene, but the OS was so unresponsive and error prone, I could not tell if it freezed or not. Everything I clicked on said server failure. The only programs I could get to run were cpuz and core temp. But, Gene , you are right about what bios reports as vcore. It was much lower than my P67 is. But, with ram and CPU, what bios was reporting was not even close to what cpuz and core temp was reporting. I never once got it to boot without 3 or 4 tries I may play with it again tomorrow, but right now, it looks like the board is going on a long trip. That's my story.
Aww crap! It seems there are no good working parts out there anymore.
I'd send the CPU back with the board Steve, it could be bad too.
On Auto, it tends to way overvolt because the VID is 1.37v, and that is what it goes by. I think I have a stable clock now @ 4.1 GHz @ 1.21V unloaded and about 1.17V loaded. My loaded temps @ this clock with the hyper 612 is less than 65c. If it sticks without freezes I am a happy camper!
I think this is a lot different to overclock than the previous gen.
Steve, I would suggest you not use auto and that you may have a memory issue. I bought RAM that would run at 1.5V in XMP mode. 1.68 V seems awful high - the maximum for the Intel spec for this CPU is 1.56 or thereabouts. I never set the RAM voltage on Auto on these Asus boards as they way overvolt it.
Good luck for us one and all
Gene
