Black or Frozen Screen----but no BSOD

[sword_fish]

glad to hear it's ok now. also cheers to Wev!

[wevsspot]

Experience is a wonderful teacher  

 

It just happened to come to mind because a few months back I was still running the 306.97 driver with my 5 series cards and got a butt hair to "update".  In my situation each update was progressively worse than the one before for my cards, so I went back to 306.97 and all was well again.

 

Not having learned my lesson, just this week I updated to the newest 314.22 driver.  For now that one seems to be working great, but the 313 and all previous 314s were a disaster.

 

Glad it's sorted.  Hopefully the fix holds for you.

[HarryTaco]

Well, not all is well.  I did gain some stability, but it has bombed a bit since I was so sure everything was fixed.   I did a reformat and loaded with the newest drivers again, like you did Wev, since they were 03/27/13.

Now Im getting frozen upon gaining desktop but not always.  

I just ordered a new Gigabyte Mobo--Z77X-UD5H.  It seems pretty mature now and the price is cheap. Not much left to eliminate. 

This should get me thru to the second gen Haswell parts.  Hardware is so far ahead of the curve for Mainstream use.

 

thanks again,

Dave

Edited April 5, 2013 by Kwok

[wevsspot]

On the bright side you just ordered a wonderful replacement motherboard  

 

When you get the new board swapped in, please run a full suite of benchmark and stress testing before you proceed to overclocking.  Looking back through this thread, I don't see where any of us asked you how you achieved the 4.6Ghz overclock on your processor.  Where you using manual or offset voltage control, what cpu features enabled/disabled etc.

 

We probably should have taken a look at that.............

 

Especially in situations where you are using auto or offset voltage control - the idle voltage can drop too far causing system instability.

 

On the new build;

 

While you're building put the CMOS clear jumper in the "clear" position

Remove motherboard battery

Before first power up, remove CMOS jumper from the "clear" position

Install motherboard battery

Boot to BIOS and load optimized defaults, save changes and exit

Before installing OS run Memtest for a few hours (the longer the better and 8 hours or overnight is ideal)

If rig passes Memtest boot and install OS, hardware drivers and Windows updates

Before proceeding run Prime95 version 27.9 Prime95 27.9

 

Still running the 2500K?  If so you can test two specific FTTs to get an idea of stability quickly (usually in 20-30 minutes)

Select custom test type and test the following two FTTs either one after the other or even concurrently.  Make sure to set the test to use 80-90% or your memory

Test FTTs = 1344 and 1792

 

Personally I test a little differently - same objective and results but takes a little longer.  I do a custom test and set minimum FTT to 256 and maximum FTT to 4096.  This eliminates the small FFTs and instead focuses on the higher FTTs where Prime95 usually fails on Sandy Bridge.  

 

At some point you really need to run the Prime95 Blend test, but that is one where you really need to run it 8 -12 hours to get a good idea of stability.  Another quick test you can use is Intel Burn Test, but I have experienced multiple times when IBT says "stable" and the rig won't pass extended Prime95.  Prime95 really hits the IMC and Memory - whereas IBT doesn't seem to stress those two components to failure regardless of what amount of memory you allocate to the test.

 

I know this seems very time consuming and like a lot of work............  it is.  But the last thing you want is to continue having issues with your new build.  If everything above pans out, you can start overclocking to your hearts content  

 

I'm really familiar with the Gigabyte P67, Z68, Z77 boards so hopefully we can help get you to the promised land.

 

Good luck.

[HarryTaco]

Yeah, Wevspot, thank you for taking the time to lend so much advice.  My board is sched for delivery today. I should have all the hardware reinstalled quickly and will take your advice from there.   I don't really mind the upgrade at this time.  I don't really remember exactly how I went about reaching 4.6ghz, but I do recall it wasn't complicated and didn't take long at all.   None of my settings have changed in the bios since that time, so it would be easy to post them up on the boards.  I think what I will do is just go for a lower OC on the new board, like the 4.2 I am running now.... I cant imagine its really going to affect my gaming much with my new GTX-680.

 

I have changed the Computer info in my Signature over a week ago but it still shows my GTX-580.  I have double checked and its correct when I check it in my profile but it hasn't changed in a week on my posts.

[wevsspot]

Not sure why your sig isn't updating.....

 

4.4 to 4.5Ghz should be a walk in the park for your 2500K.  The Gigabyte board will be easy to overclock.

 

When you get ready holler at me and we can get you straight to those numbers in a flash  

[HarryTaco]

Not sure why your sig isn't updating.....

 

4.4 to 4.5Ghz should be a walk in the park for your 2500K.  The Gigabyte board will be easy to overclock.

 

When you get ready holler at me and we can get you straight to those numbers in a flash  

You da man!  See you this afternoon then. TY.

[wevsspot]

On the subject of your sig............

 

Completely delete your current sig.  Refresh page and make sure it's gone from one of your thread posts.

 

Recreate sig and see if everything is ok.

[wevsspot]

We will be doing most of the BIOS work for your new motherboard in the M.I.T section.  Please get familiar with it  

[HarryTaco]

We will be doing most of the BIOS work for your new motherboard in the M.I.T section.  Please get familiar with it  

 

The Hardware swap-out was painless.  Most of the connectors were in relatively the same place as my old board.  The F-socket was easy to read.  I got them all right the first time. It fired right up and wanted to load my old Windows on my SSD.  I did a Wipe of both my SSD and my HD and a fresh Win7x64 install.  The Driver CD was straightforward with only a little spam offered and that was easily filtered out. 

My 2500k is running at 3.6ghz on auto/default settings.  Don't ask me to explain it.  Im concerned about my Ram.  I have 2x4gig Mushkin Redline 1600 @ 1.65 volts.   I think this Mobo is happy with 1.5 volt ram.  Mine isn't on their list of Ram.  Its running at 1333 with 9-9-9-24 settings default and the voltage is running in the 1.5__ range.  Let me know if you think any of this is a problem. I can go get 2x8-16gigs of xxxxx-brand that is acceptable or if you have a recommendation.

Ok ready when you are Wev jeje.

 

Edit: add content

 

I completely deleted my Hardware stats from my profile and saved last nite, but as you can see its still showing up on my posts.  I have no idea about how to solve that one.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Kwok

[wevsspot]

You can run your current memory at 1.65v and the rated speed and timings.  While the Intel design spec. for memory voltage on socket 1155 is 1.5v nominal - you can safely run up to 1.65v on your memory without any problems.  No telling how many thousands or hundreds of thousand users can attest to that.

 

Before we go about overclocking the processor, lets get your memory working correctly;

 

Go ahead and jump into the M.I.T. menu and select "Advanced Frequency Settings"

Down towards the bottom of the menu you will see "Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) - change that from "Disabled" to "Profile 1"

Save changes and reboot

After rebooting, get back into the BIOS and check your Memory Voltage and Memory Speed / Memory Timings - everything should be spot on to what your memory specs are, ie.;

Memory Voltage = 1.65v

Memory Frequency = 1600Mhz

Memory Timings = Whatever they say on the modules

 

Save your changes and run Memtest and Prime95 after that. 

[HarryTaco]

Okay, I did about 6.5 hours of Memtest the latest version with no errors.  Im confident with that. 

Readings are  1334.9mhz-- 8-8-7-20 @1.6 volts.

Whats next?