GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

[westsdad]

I have the following system bread boarded outside of a case:

SYSTEM #1
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard
F11 BIOS with optimized defaults loaded
Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad SLACR CPU
Intel OEM Heatsink and Fan
Arctic Silver Ceramique Thermal Compound
OCZ Platinum Edition DDR2-800 PC2-6400 2GB (4 sticks)
Asus EN9800GT 512MB DDR3 HDMI PCI-E Video Card
Corsair CMPSU750TSX 750W Power Supply
(I have both the 24 pin and the 8 pin motherboard connectors connected)

I have only gotten this setup to make it to the Gigabyte logo screen a couple of times where it locked up (or the default BIOS settings disabled the USB keyboard and mouse).

Otherwise it just goes into a reboot loop.

I have tried to power off during the reboot loop via shorting the power pins, turning off the power supply and unplugging it, shorting out the Clear CMOS pins (or removing the battery and shorting out the battery connector pins), and cold booting with only 1 stick of the above memory (or with other G.Skill or different OCZ memory) without luck and a reboot loop.

I also went through the recommended troubleshooting steps from this forum.


The same Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad SLACR CPU works in the following system (I don't have the same motherboard to try it in):


SYSTEM #2
Asus Striker Extreme motherboard
BIOS with optimized defaults loaded
Intel E6600 Core2 Duo CPU
Corsair Nautilus 500 Water Cooled CPU and GPU System
Arctic Silver Ceramique Thermal Compound
Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2-1066 PC2-8500 1GB (4 sticks)
Vision Tech Radeon X1300 512MB PCI-E Video Card
Thermaltake Purepower 500W Power Supply
(I have both the 24 pin and the 8 pin motherboard connectors connected)


Note that the Intel E6600 Core2 Duo CPU removed from the Asus Striker Extreme SYSTEM #2 works in the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R System #1 listed above and POST's everytime.


One thing that I noticed is that the 775 sockets in the two motherboards are slightly different. The Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad SLACR CPU will recess further into the 775 socket on the Asus motherboard than in the 775 socket on the Gigabyte motherboard. [The inner dark gray socket on the Gigabyte looks almost like a slight pincushion effect with rolled edges on the sides parallel to the locking arm while the inner dark gray socket on the Asus edges appear to be straight without rolled edges.]

Looking for suggestions / recommendations to get the Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad SLACR CPU to work in the GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard.

Thanks,
Scott

[profJim]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

Try booting your system with a single memory module in slot #1.

1. immediately enter the bios
2. load optimized settings
3. save settings and exit
4. enter the bios again
5. follow the recommended bios settings in this post
6. set the DRAM voltage to the max rated voltage for your memory
7. save settings and exit

Turn off your system, turn off your psu, unplug the psu power cable, then install your remaining memory modules.
Run Memtest86+ (v4.0) from a cd or dvd for at least 8 passes to verify that your memory is OK.

Follow steps 1 - 4 to provide hardware information in your forum signature and to post your bios settings if you need further help.

[Chike]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

Does the Q6600 work in the Asus board?
What is the BIOS vers. of the EP45-UD3R?
Have you cleared CMOS, both battery removed and CLR_CMOS jumed for 20 minutes or more?

[westsdad]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

I've done all of this (except for the specific settings - thanks for the link) using the E6600 as it will fully POST every time and have the UD3R up and running with the E6600 and 4 sticks of 2GB. I will go back to optimized settings tonight and set up the BIOS with the recommended settings and see what happens.

Thanks,
Scott

Try booting your system with a single memory module in slot #1.

1. immediately enter the bios
2. load optimized settings
3. save settings and exit
4. enter the bios again
5. follow the recommended bios settings in this post
6. set the DRAM voltage to the max rated voltage for your memory
7. save settings and exit

Turn off your system, turn off your psu, unplug the psu power cable, then install your remaining memory modules.
Run Memtest86+ (v4.0) from a cd or dvd for at least 8 passes to verify that your memory is OK.

Follow steps 1 - 4 to provide hardware information in your forum signature and to post your bios settings if you need further help.

[westsdad]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

Yes the Q6600 works in the Asus board, and the E6600 works in the Gigabyte board.

F11 with optimized settings.

I've cleared both, but not for 20 minutes or more. I'll try that tonight and see what happens.

Thanks,
Scott

Does the Q6600 work in the Asus board?
What is the BIOS vers. of the EP45-UD3R?
Have you cleared CMOS, both battery removed and CLR_CMOS jumed for 20 minutes or more?

[Chike]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

Also check the socket for bent pins when you get the chance.
Testing different quad may verify if it's specific to your CPU or not.

[profJim]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

What is the BIOS vers. of the EP45-UD3R?

He is using F11 with optimized bios settings already loaded (see post #1, hardware list).

The Q6600 (B3 and G0 stepping) require bios version F3 (minimum) for the 1.0 and 1.1 mobo versions.

[westsdad]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

Did all of the steps that profJim suggested last night and ran Memtest86+ v4.0 overnight.

Had to use the E6600 to get into the BIOS and reset to optimized and then to suggested settings. Couldn't get the Q6600 to POST with these changes. Put the E6600 back in and the 4 sticks of memory. Had a slew of memory errors in the 6G to 8G memory address range.

Will run Memtest86+ v4.0 on the same memory in a different computer tonight. Leaning towards a motherboard issue at this time.

Thanks for all of the suggestions,
Scott

[profJim]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

System #1, EP45-UD3R, has 4x2GB of OCZ 800MHz memory:
E6600 boots, Q6600 does the reboot loop dance.

System #2, Asus Striker Extreme, has 4x1GB of Ballistix Tracer 8500MHz memory:
E6600 and Q6600 both boot without problems.

The problem might be related to running 8GB of memory at the rated 800MHz speed.
In many or most cases, 8GB of memory can't be run at its full rated speed.

Have you run any stress/stability tests on either of your systems?

I suggest that you test your EP45-UD3R with 2x2GB of your OCZ memory and see if it boots and is stable.
You can try your Q6600 with 4x1GB in your EP45-UD3P.
You can also try running your Q6600 with 8GB clocked lower than 800MHZ on your EP45-UD3R by changing the system memory multiplier.

To avoid swapping your cpu, boot with only 1 memory module in slot #1 and you should be able to enter the bios to make any required changes.

Sometimes there is an incompatibility between a specific psu and the motherboard, even though the psu might work perfectly in another system. You might need to swap both power supplies and see if this makes a difference.

I've seen several cases where the motherboard was at fault, when the system was tested with another identical motherboard, both cpus worked properly.

[westsdad]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

Thanks for all of the input.

I picked up a new GA-EP45-UD3R Rev 1.1 motherboard and the Q6600 POST's everytime. Turns out to be the motherboard as the problem. Took a while to find a new rev 1.1 motherboard along with shipping time.

I'm curious about the 8GB not always running at full rated speed as it appears to run fine in the new board at 800MHz, and I have 8GB of 1066MHz memory running overclocked in an Asus board and in a GA-P35C-DS3R.

What stress / stability tests are recommended and is there a thread on the config of the stress / stability tests, and recommendations when running them?

Note that I could never get the system to enter the BIOS setup or POST when using the Q6600 in the original GA-EP45-UD3R Rev 1.1 motherboard no matter what config of memory.

Thanks again,
Scott

[Chike]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R Reboot Loop with Q6600 (E6600 works)

Few users reported even 16GB memory configurations to work at high speed without any need for any BIOS changes. IMO it's more compatibility/BIOS related than a real issue.

Prime95/Orthos blend torture, or OCCT medium data set are usually used for general stability test. IBT(IntelBurnTest) at max stress level for 5-10 runs.
IBT will generate the highest temps, so it' good idea to monitor the, with RealTemp/CoreTemp to make sure they are not out of line.