GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

Let us know how you get along with your testing, it very well could be the two IDE drives causing the issues, or one of them at least

[jcrawfor74]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

well perliminary results are good.

The boot process does:
1. Check memory Dual Channel interleaved.
2. Detect IDE Drives (Channel 4)
3. Detect AHCI connected drives
4. Verifying DMI Pool
5. Boot windows.

I had cold boot success after 14 hours of the computer being turned off. But...
It hung for about 8-10 seconds on step 2 above, and now I am in windows I have no DVD or IDE Drive showing up. I will remove the drive, I think its the culprit...

I will also give 5 to 10 seconds before attempting to find the drives, to see if this helps.


Will let you know how it goes, but I think I am on the right path now.

Cheers

[jcrawfor74]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

Please post an ET6 screen-shot (Tuner -> Advance -> Voltage) to show the actual applied voltage settings.
CPU PLL and CPU Termination (VTT) are usually too high when you overclock and have these set to AUTO.
Using NORMAL for these settings is probably OK.
The ET6 screen-shot in post #26 shows that CPU PLL = AUTO is too high.

Lucky, post # 26 is not my machine! my original ET6 screen shot when running @ 445 - 4.0Ghz is on post #16. I will post the image of my ET6 if it looks significantly different from post #16 when I get home.

To Yuu, I have no issues with stability, my machine is rock solid @ 4.0Ghz once up and running, I just have this cold booting issue.
Note: the booting issue still occurs when running @ 400Mhz - 3.6Ghz, so 445 doesn't seem to be a magical failure number for me.
(by the way thanks for trying to help :-) )

Next steps I will try are:
1. Try a new IDE Cable
2. Try giving my ide drive more time by increasing the Delay before checking for the hard drives
3. Try removing my old IDE drive and see if it can cold boot with the DVD drive only
4. Try removing my DVD drive and see if it can cold boot with the IDE drive only

Cheers

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

I would also add this to your test list
5. Remove both IDE devices and test

[profJim]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

I've always run with Delay For HDD = 6 or 7 seconds.
I have a Pioneer 112D IDE optical drive installed and have never had cold boot issues.
I don't have any IDE hard drives in my system.

Your ET6 voltages in post #16 look good, were these using NORMAL settings for most of the voltages?

Your cold boot startup issue might be related to your psu, even though everything else is stable. You might want to test with a different psu if the cold boot problem isn't solved by disconnecting one or both of your IDE drives.

Nice review on your cpu cooler. The Aywun website has a link to your review.
Near as I can tell, your cpu cooler isn't available on this side of the pond.

[jcrawfor74]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

I would also add this to your test list
5. Remove both IDE devices and test

I chose not to do that one as that is effectively the same as what I did in post #32, cold boot into windows successfully with no drives showing up ;-)

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

Yes but you said it hung on IDE Detect still though, did you have the drives connected?

If you did I still advise a NO IDE connected test

[jcrawfor74]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

Yes but you said it hung on IDE Detect still though, did you have the drives connected?

If you did I still advise a NO IDE connected test

Sorry, use of the word hung may have confused the issue.

When I cold booted the system with my IDE DVD and HD attached it just seemed to take slightly longer on the IDE Detect step before saying that it could not find anything and then with AHCI it proceeded to successfully detected the SATA drives and booted into Windows, but my IDE drives were missing in windows cause they were not detected, by the bios on boot.

I have been doing further testing and I have come to the conclusion that I have a "dry solder joint" issue with my IDE channel.

My computer is in a small home office setup in my gararge, (it has been converted from use as a gararge so is carpeted with internal walls, paint etc), and in Australia we are now in winter. I generally use the computer in the evenings so the ambient temperature is generally around/below 14 degrees.

I have removed the IDE HD and am just running with the IDE DVD on the IDE channel running as Slave.

I have re-installed my bios and returned to Optimised settings running stock 3.0Ghz. I have even set my HD detect timeout to 15 seconds (max).

I have tested multiple cold boots and it is still not detecting the ide drives on the first boot.

Test scenario 1:
1. Cold boot machine.
2. Fails to detect IDE drives
3. Turn off.
4. Go away, wait 30 minutes and repeat

Results: Fails to detect the IDE devices every time.

Test Scenario 2:
1. Cold boot machine.
2. Fails to detect IDE drives.
3. Wait on boot screen for another 10-15 seconds, (so machine has been powered on for approx 30 seconds)
4. Ctrl + Alt + Delete

Result: Machine reboots detects devices successfully and boots into windows.

Test Scenario 3:
1. Turn on heater in room and raise ambient temperature to approx 18 degrees
2. Cold Boot machine.
3. Detects ide drives and boots.

I will do some more runs of the Test scenarios to ensure that it is consistently reproducible.

My idea is that in scenario 2 the time delay allows for the motherboard to warm up slighlty and the faulty connection makes contact and its all good, and this would be the same reason why Test Scenario 3 works as well.

Sound plauseable?

[jcrawfor74]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

Oh, forgot to mention results of my tests

1. Try a new IDE Cable
No Change - IDE devices still not detected on cold boot
2. Try giving my ide drive more time by increasing the Delay before checking for the hard drives
No Change - IDE devices still not detected on cold boot
3. Try removing my old IDE drive and see if it can cold boot with the DVD drive only
No Change - IDE devices still not detected on cold boot
4. Try removing my DVD drive and see if it can cold boot with the IDE drive only
No Change - IDE devices still not detected on cold boot

Here is a screen shot of one thing it does, sometimes it wil not detect the DVD drive other times it will think that SATA0 is actually SATA4. SATA 4 slave should be my DVD!

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

Hmm from your thoughts and testing I think you may be right about this cold solder joint!

I suppose you could RMA if you wanted after all this testing

[kick]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

1.Ive seen a lot of posts on gigabyte boards with the 45 chipset,
Some people hit a "wall" at around 450 cpu ref (1800fsb), some dont .
2.ds3 and ud3.. some utilities used to identify my board as ds4
3.mixed sata and ide.
Originally I had one sata 1tb hdd and an ide hdd and ide optical drive on ide channel.
I found the ide hdd was slowing the whole system down so i removed it.
The ide optical drive was in place till about 3 months ago,but it started giving dvd errors,it was near 4 years old anyway also the rs2 case mounts the optical drive vertically,which has some "coolness"factors but may strain the optical drive mechanism.
My systemis all sata and usb drive now.
I havent invested in ssd because they still have a lower lifespan.

4.If you are going for the best overclock,pull out any items u dont really need,One big sata hdd ,one sata optical drive and one say 16gb usb stick for memory boost should do.
If you want to keep all the other bits connected you may have to settle for a lower overclock,

[jcrawfor74]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

Was just reading through my old post and realised I didn't put in the final fix.

The problem was with the IDE channels. So I ditched all of my old IDE devices, got a SATA DVD drive and it has worked fine ever since.

I have been running for the past 1.5 years with my machine running @ 4.0Ghz with my Aywun V10 cooler producing stock temperatures at that overclock.

I can't remember the last time that the machine crashed, so after the initial pain it all turned out well.

Cheers

[profJim]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3 E8400 Overclock cold boot issues, faulty ram channel?

Glad to hear that your problem was solved.
Thanks for the update.