ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

[YeahPete]

CPU: AMD FX 8320
MOBO: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer v.1
RAM: GSkill Ripjaws 4GBx2 (1600)
HD: Kingston SSD 120GB
GPU: XFX Radeon HD 5850
PSU: Corsair RM750
OS: Windows 7 Pro

I recently upgraded my motherboard and processor and am having some problems.
Problem 1: FREEZING
* Computer is freezing. No blue screen it just freezes.
* It first froze while attempting to do my 1st windows 7 update.
* Computer freezes even if not under load even while idle.
* Computer freezes even when its not hot.
* Prime 95 does not show a fail during stress testing when it froze.

Problem 2: THROTTLING
* Computer is running at stock speeds with stock cooler.
* Using Prime 95 the computer throttles down
* CPU Temp is around 52 C when this happens.
* CPU Temp via core temp does not go above 53 C.


I guess what I am mostly wondering is what is making this thing throttle and freeze? Did I get a bad CPU or MOBO?

[parsec]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

The freezing could be an SSD issue given your description of what happens. What model of Kingston SSD are you using?

Throttling could be a CPU power saving feature, do you have AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet Technology enabled in the BIOS?

Do you have AMD Overdrive installed? That seems to be the best utility to use to monitor the temps of AMD processors like yours. Monitoring temps of AMD processors like yours seems to be problematic, Google on "amd fx 8320 max temp" and check some of the hits, like those in the AMD forum.

The AMD specs for your CPU list max temperature as.... ? AMD Processors for Desktops: AMD Phenom

The best I could find is 61C max.

[YeahPete]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

Thank you for the reply.

The freezing could be an SSD issue given your description of what happens. What model of Kingston SSD are you using?

Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB
Figures it has not freezed yet since I disabled a bunch of stuff in the bios.

Throttling could be a CPU power saving feature, do you have AMD's Cool 'n' Quiet Technology enabled in the BIOS?

I did finally disable that, and also lowered the voltage down to 1.1750 volts. It kept wanting to run at 1.4-1.5 volts which is why I think it was getting so hot. Not sure why the darn voltage was so high as default.

Do you have AMD Overdrive installed?

No I do not but I will make a note to do that sometime tomorrow evening!

The best I could find is 61C max.

That is what I've seen as well. I would much rather be safe than sorry.



SO my next thing here is: In my motherboard bios, I saw nothing as far as thermal shutdown. I would definitely want to enable that before I do any overnight stress testing but see it nowhere. Never had a motherboard where I could not adjust the temp for thermal shut down. Its always good in case of a fan failure or the northbridge gets too hot, which is my main concern.

[- wardog -]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

BIOS > Advanced > CPU Configuration - "CPU Thermal Throttle"

[parsec]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

Thank you for the reply.

Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB
Figures it has not freezed yet since I disabled a bunch of stuff in the bios.

If you have Aggressive SATA Link Power Management in the SATA config, disable that.

I did finally disable that, and also lowered the voltage down to 1.1750 volts. It kept wanting to run at 1.4-1.5 volts which is why I think it was getting so hot. Not sure why the darn voltage was so high as default.

Cool n Quiet is not necessarily a bad thing. It lowers the CPU speed under low load conditions, which reduces heat and power consumption. It is not throttling due to a problem, just a power saving option. If CnQ causes excessively high voltages (not an AMD guy) then that's not good. If you were getting the 1.5V on an Auto CPU voltage setting, they normally are way to high. Best to tweak the CPU voltage yourself, but that can take some time.

No I do not but I will make a note to do that sometime tomorrow evening!


That is what I've seen as well. I would much rather be safe than sorry.



SO my next thing here is: In my motherboard bios, I saw nothing as far as thermal shutdown. I would definitely want to enable that before I do any overnight stress testing but see it nowhere. Never had a motherboard where I could not adjust the temp for thermal shut down. Its always good in case of a fan failure or the northbridge gets too hot, which is my main concern.

As wardog noted, that is where that option should be. It may not have the configurations you have had in the past, some boards have thermal throttling either on or off, and no shutdown either.

[YeahPete]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

So... I believe solved.

I went back and enabled the CPU core throttling feature. That is really your only defense against a CPU fan failure if leave the computer running while you are away so its not worth it to turn it off.

I am stress testing w/ prime95 @ the stock 3.5Ghz right now w/ stock cooler. Max temp shows 38 C. I don't believe it will do above 40 C.
CPU voltage is set at 1.1750V. I did stress testing @ this voltage last night and this morning w/ no errors.

I am going to have to read about AMD overdrive a bit. I browsed through it this morning before work. lots of options there.

All-in-all I was the auto set voltages that were causing the throttling. Its was just WAYYYY overvolting it, causing it to overheat, then throttle down.


SO.... more questions now :P
RAM voltage is at 1.5 V while set to (auto) - I am thinking this is too much as well anyone know what a good voltage for DDR3 1600?

Northbridge voltage is set to auto as well, and I am wondering if I should set this low as well for a cooler NB temp?

While I am tying this I am stress testing. It seems to not be logging all my keystrokes but shows error in the stress test. Is this normal?

[parsec]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

RAM voltage varies from model to model of RAM, there is no one "good" voltage. Check the specs for your memory.

You can change any voltage available but if it is to little for a component, expect problems.

So you are stress testing (with what?) while on the Internet, posting in forums, and you are surprised some keystrokes are missing?

[YeahPete]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

RAM voltage varies from model to model of RAM, there is no one "good" voltage. Check the specs for your memory.

Was wondering if anyone knew a good starting point because I hate restarting the computer a million times to check each voltage level.

So you are stress testing (with what?) while on the Internet, posting in forums, and you are surprised some keystrokes are missing

Sorry I am new to all this which is why I was asking if its normal. I would expect a delay but did not think it would all together miss the keystrokes.


Thanks for all the help guys! Now that I know all the voltages are too high I'll be messing around this weekend and see how LOW I can go with all the voltages without it skipping a beat in the stress testing. I'll post the results once I get through all of em. I have been running the CPU @ 1.1750V and I ran outta time yesterday w/ the memory at 1.280 V. FAR down from the 1.5V when set to auto.

Lowering the CPU voltage has decreased my Temp by

Another experiment for another day!

[YeahPete]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

So... After lowering the memory voltage. When I check the voltage in CPU-Z it still says 1.5V? Not sure why that is?

Also not sure where I can check the NorthBridge voltage to make sure its sending the voltage I want

[- wardog -]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

CPU-z reads the SPD programming on each stick. It does not query the boards chip and report actual voltage applied.

You're best to use the native F-Stream util or HWiNFO.

[chuckiechan]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

I'll apologize in advance if I've crapped this thread, but we seem to have the same problem.

I have a similar problem. I had an Extreme 3, FX 990 with a AMD 8350 processor which I RMA'd due to a faulty HDD light. So I got a Fatality 990 fx Killer in place of it. Both froze in the same way with only MB swaps being different, both running the same platter with the o/s on it. The Crucial M500 with a clean install came later on and I still have the problem.

BUT.... it all ran fine when I just used my old ASUS board with a Phenom II, 955 amd and a platter drive, even . My first Asrock install was without reformatting - just a swap of motherboard and processor. So it must be Asrock's board, or Win 7's interaction with the Asrock FX990 boards, or some software somewhere. The freeze unfortunately disables writing to the event manager, it seems...

I just recently bought a ssd m500 240G for my Falality board, did a clean install of Win7 and I have freezes, still! 30 seconds or so of nothing often going into a whitish, transparent screen. Video drivers are up to date. IMO, a symptom of a hung program that has to time out.

I'm suspecting it's not the SSD since I did a clean install of Win7 and the platter drive was not hooked up at first and I still had freezes.

I'm suspecting it might be my Seamonkey (Mozilla variant), but maybe not.

And I'm running out of ideas. So if you solve it, I'm all ears! Maybe we can determine if we both have the same causes for the freezes. I share your frustration. I've been all over the boards and no one is offering a fix, just ideas.

I also wrote to tech support, and they as much as admitted - but not quite - that it is the board and they aren't sure what is causing it.

I encourage you write to them to at least go on record as having problems with freezing.


Fatality Killer FX990 Board
AMD 8350 CPU
GTX 670 Video card
8 gigs Corsair DDR3 1333mz
M500 240G SSD
Antec TP3-650 Power Supply

[hristiiann]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

Figures it has not freezed yet since I disabled a bunch of stuff in the bios.

Can you tell me what exactly have u disabled, because I have win 8 and always freezes up.. Under load and even in idle. Thanks.

[chuckiechan]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

The only thing I changed in BIOS was memory voltage. My specs are 1.5 volt as I remember, and it was set higher by the BIOS default, so I set it back down.

The Device Manager thing seems to have done the trick. I have not had a freeze since I made this change.

Look in here:
My computer/manage/event viewer/Summary of Administrative Events - see "critical", click on the +, see "Kernel Power", click on that and see if you have a bunch of Error 41, task 63 errors. It says it's restarting when it obviously is not, and I think this error is linked to the problem, since I have no new entries since my change.

Try the device manager change and let us know. Maybe you'll get lucky. You won't hurt anything my using "disable" as opposed to "Uninstall".

BTW, I'm running Win 7 sp 1.

[hristiiann]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

Thank you for the fast response. I've disabled on the device manager the realtek digital audio, and only let the speakers. But it frozed up again after that.
And i see there are like 5 or 6 of that errors (41-task63) everyday.
I have kingston hyperX beast 1600 and it's default voltage is 1.65, but ill try to put it at 1.5.

[chuckiechan]

Re: ASRock Fatil1ty 990FX Killer freeze ups / throttling issues at stock speeds.

Look up your memory and see what the voltage is supposed be, and set it to that.

The device manger thing didn't work? Bummer.

To be clear, you may have two or more entries under Sound, Video, Game Controllers, called Whatever HD audio, and disabled all but one? I have:

Realtek High Definition Audio
Nvidea High Definition Audio, and I deleted the Nvidea one.