ASUS Z87-A "overclock failed" when there is no OC

[dparm]

Less than a month ago I bought a new Asus Z87-A, Core i7 4770, and 2x4GB sticks of Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133 RAM. This particular RAM is listed in the compatibility guide, for what it's worth.

About 1 in 10 times I power the machine on, the fans will spin up and nothing happens. If I power it off and then power it back on, it will POST and say "overclocking failed". The problem here is that I am not overclocking at all. If I go into the BIOS and then just exit without changing anything, it will reboot just fine and happily hum along.

Latest BIOS release, reseated the RAM, reset the BIOS. Problem remains but is sporadic, as I said.

Thoughts?

 

[redhat]

I had an ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z board with my 1155 Sandy Bridge. My board started to do this daily after about two years.

I'm not sure why it did it, but I sent it in for RMA and ended up buying an ASROCK board. I'm waiting for the one to come back and will be making a new system out of it for my Gramps.

Odd issue... are you using XMP?

 

[Colt45ws]

For some reason, the machine is not able to POST. When you shut it off, it triggers the 'Overclock failed' logic. The same thing will happen if you were to shut it off before it was able to POST any other time.
Essentially, its just a symptom of not being able to POST. But, I would check and see what it is running for RAM speed. If its automatically trying to run them at the rated 2133 through XMP; that is technically an overclock for the 4770 being rated at 1333/1600.

 

[dparm]

I running the RAM in XMP mode, and confirmed in CPU-Z and the BIOS that it is hitting the correct speeds and timings. I specifically picked this RAM because ASUS certifies it on their compatibility list as running the 2133 speed.

Perhaps I need to run Memtest and make sure the RAM is good. I tried running it in the B1/B2 slots instead, but no change. I should probably try disabling XMP and just setting the 2133 & timings manually, though that would really [censored] me off because I explicitly bought this because it should work out of the box.

 

[Colt45ws]

Well, it is an overclock on the memory controller. I would try backing off to 1866 or alternately, bumping voltage on the memory controller. On my old Gulftown it was "Uncore" but I haven't messed with anything newer.

 

[dparm]

I just turned off XMP and verified that it fell back to 1333. Will test and report back.

 

[dparm]

Problem persists when XMP is enabled and I manually set the RAM to 1333 or 1600. I can eventually get it to POST (with the overclock error I described) after about 5 power cycles. I am running Memtest right now.

 

[dparm]

Originally Posted By: dparm
Problem persists when XMP is enabled and I manually set the RAM to 1333 or 1600. I can eventually get it to POST (with the overclock error I described) after about 5 power cycles. I am running Memtest right now.



Meant to say XMP enabled OR disabled.

Memtest just ran for about 30 mins and no errors. I did notice that when this freezing before POST happens, the CPU LED on the motherboard glows red. I'm thinking it might be a bad CPU.

 

[Rand]

probably bad board.. this type of problem would be extremely rare to be the cpu's fault.

 

[dparm]

Originally Posted By: Rand
probably bad board.. this type of problem would be extremely rare to be the cpu's fault.



That's what I was afraid of. I'm going to try reseating the CPU after work tonight. If that doesn't solve it, I'm taking it back to Microcenter since I'm still under the 30 days.

 

[dparm]

Ugh, just did some searching on Toms Hardware forums...TONS of people have this problem on the Z87-A board regardless of CPU/RAM/BIOS version. [censored].

 

[ClutchDisc]

I've not been impressed with ASUS products.

 

[TMoto]

I'm curious to see how this turns out. I'd heard there were some problems with Haswell builds in the past but that it's no longer an issue.

I'm about to build a new system myself and haven't decided yet whether to use the Z87-C or Z-87A mobo even though they're very similar.

 

[ProStreetCamaro]

Have you updated the bios yet? Many times doing that will solve random issues. Also go into the bios and turn off the automatic overclock function.

What heatsink and fan are you running? The stock unit is terrible. Should run ok on stock settings but it will run warm.

 

[Rand]

I had an abit board that would do this (with a q6600)

if you did a hard power off.. it would take 2-3 times to boot.

I just never powered it off..

being new.. I'd change boards... to a different model/manufacturer.

I usually highly research boards to try and avoid issues like this (which were much more common 5-10 years ago)

 

[dparm]

Originally Posted By: TMoto
I'm curious to see how this turns out. I'd heard there were some problems with Haswell builds in the past but that it's no longer an issue.

I'm about to build a new system myself and haven't decided yet whether to use the Z87-C or Z-87A mobo even though they're very similar.



The Asus ROG and Toms Hardware forums have a lot of people complaining about this. Some have reported success by ditching the Corsair PSUs, even expensive ones, for a different brand (Seasonic, etc).

I'm going to test the PSU with my multimeter to see if it's not sending the full 12V to the CPU or something weird like that. A few people complained about my exact PSU having this problem.

Other than this quirk, it's a great mobo.



Originally Posted By: ProStreetCamaro
Have you updated the bios yet? Many times doing that will solve random issues. Also go into the bios and turn off the automatic overclock function.

What heatsink and fan are you running? The stock unit is terrible. Should run ok on stock settings but it will run warm.


As I said in the first post, latest BIOS. There is no OCing happening. CoolerMaster Hyper N520. Temperatures are definitely within spec.



Originally Posted By: Rand

being new.. I'd change boards... to a different model/manufacturer.

I usually highly research boards to try and avoid issues like this (which were much more common 5-10 years ago)


Yes, that's what I'm thinking too. I did a lot of research and this board is one of the highest rated and universally praised, but apparently it does have some quirks that are hard to research until it happens to you.

I will probably switch over to an ASRock.

 

[dparm]

Tested the PSU 12V rails and they are showing 12.16V, so no issue there.

Since the problem only affects cold-boot, is it possible the PSU is struggling to deliver the 12V when starting up and the motherboard is interpreting this as a CPU failure?

It's a fairly high-end power supply with 80 Silver rating and plenty of amperage.

 

[Rand]

well it would be good to test with another.. but doubtful.

What corsair do you have? the ax series is very good... but those are gold not silver.

 

[dparm]

Originally Posted By: Rand
well it would be good to test with another.. but doubtful.

What corsair do you have? the ax series is very good... but those are gold not silver.



HX750. It's 80-Gold, 12V 62a single rail. Pretty stout PSU.

 

[Rand]

well corsair says its compatible but many reviews say its not esp with your specific motherboard

"Cons: Haswell compatibility is only partially-true, very problematic PSU with Asus Z87 motherboards"

so it seems like a power supply swap may also fix the issue.

I have the corsair AX650 differences from hx series include, higher efficiency(?), Fanless at low load, fully modular.

Seems people have also had issues with my psu and some haswell motherboards.


another gem review from newegg:

other Thoughts: This is my second PSU. The first HX750 wasn't working properly. It was not powering my CPU everytime. Sometimes my comp. would start, sometimes it wouldn't. I'm not going to knock any eggs for this because things happen and the RMA process was a breeze. This new unit works like a champ.