X79 and/or rampage IV OC'ing thread for those of us still left....

[dalekdukesboy]

Had a problem today was hardly getting into bios and as I made the mistake of trying to re-attach the last and third fan I just put on recently on the heatsink I realized what was going on...The lovely crappy clips that are of course metal on the fan made contact with back of my video card as this pc was running...several sparks from the spot I touched on video card and instantly pc was off but light was still on mobo. So stupid....what was I thinking? But I did it and realized that clip wasn't totally on to start with so it made contact with card before and that is why when pci express bus was loading in bios it was hanging more and more often when I restarted pc. Amazingly after possible repeated shorting out I didn't know about and the big short I did myself....pc started up again fine and now isn't hanging in bios etc. Anyway, just a reminder to all don't rush and think before you do something unlike what I did. Never did anything to that degree in the decade + i've done in pc building. Anyway everything appears to still work so tough to lose the card but it may have already had issues and had it for a couple years RIP MSI gtx 980.

 

[Kanan]

Had a problem today was hardly getting into bios and as I made the mistake of trying to re-attach the last and third fan I just put on recently on the heatsink I realized what was going on...The lovely crappy clips that are of course metal on the fan made contact with back of my video card as this pc was running...several sparks from the spot I touched on video card and instantly pc was off but light was still on mobo. So stupid....what was I thinking? But I did it and realized that clip wasn't totally on to start with so it made contact with card before and that is why when pci express bus was loading in bios it was hanging more and more often when I restarted pc. Amazingly after possible repeated shorting out I didn't know about and the big short I did myself....pc started up again fine and now isn't hanging in bios etc. Anyway, just a reminder to all don't rush and think before you do something unlike what I did. Never did anything to that degree in the decade + i've done in pc building. Anyway everything appears to still work so tough to lose the card but it may have already had issues and had it for a couple years RIP MSI gtx 980.

It's gone? Shit. RIP
Remember, always take your time when tampering with PCs, never touch PCs that are ON, or really know what you are doing.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Done it a million times, USUALLY I have it off, occasionally it's on and I'm trying to figure out if something is plugged in right etc...however yes it sucked BUT it pointed out the problem that that silly clip ALREADY had touched card or was constantly touching it which is why it got progressively worse booting and the pci express bus as it loaded in BIOS was hanging and for the life of me couldn't think of why, the silly clip I had put on never even occurred to me! So in a way I'm glad it was quick and obvious so I didn't leave it that way and fry possibly multiple things. So yeah, I already miss that card it was a good overclocker and high quality etc but...in the scheme of things I'm just thanking God that with several sparks flying it's a miracle nothing else got roasted, and/or the power supply and the motherboard did their job and shut off quickly and only the card itself died. Card is worth less than this motherboard now anyway with the advent of the 1060 etc. Anyway realize it isn't easy to openly admit when you do something very blockheaded and I do it as a caution to all who work on their pc's and just tell you haste really does make waste however many hours you have been screwing with it and are tired and want to get it done....either take a break, get something to eat etc, or just slow down because when you're tired and possibly frustrated is when you do something like I did. Also I'm fairly surprised they don't make those clips out of some sort of non conductive metal or other material....how my board is set up the clip WILL touch the back of the video card however you put them on the slot is so close to the cooler.

Also you may want to stress test that cpu 1.3 volts seems a bit too undervolted, it may be fine for basic use but for that speed I'd be very surprised if you did intel burntest with full memory used and multiple runs that it would pass...even if you do have memory at relatively tame speed.

 

[cdawall]

I love this thing over my 3820K though. I cant believe how much better bios's have gotten

 

[Kanan]

Also you may want to stress test that cpu 1.3 volts seems a bit too undervolted, it may be fine for basic use but for that speed I'd be very surprised if you did intel burntest with full memory used and multiple runs that it would pass...even if you do have memory at relatively tame speed.

Did some stress tests with Prime on Blend, worked well. 1.29V was too much (or too less) though.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah that's a decent indicator but admittedly I've always failed on burntest much quicker than prime or anything else I've tried, particularly if I've got too little voltage or settings are "off" enough. Yeah, that's one thing that stinks about this cpu it's an ES and I can't update bios beyond 2012/2013 I tried with old board and I thought I borked the board but what it was is the newer bioses specifically said they don't support any ES chips anymore so they just don't work at all. I'm afraid to even try updating even though I do have a couple backup chips plus the extra one on the board that I tested has same bios as one I'm using. I'm not sure reading quick bios info on ASUS site if it said which is the first bios that discontinued ES support, I just know I found that out several years ago when I was trying to update and couldn't figure out why newer bioses just wouldn't boot at all.

 

[Kanan]

Well because I'm a gamer I don't run extreme tests on it, games aren't taxing the CPU that heavy anyway. Used to run Small FFT before which quickly froze my PC, because it's simply too much on high overclock with my cooler. Past 4.3 or 4.4 GHz it was simply too much for the NH-D14 to bear. Was fine on my 3820 but then again it was only 4.3 GHz.

For what do you need a newer bios anyway? Everything should work fine the way it is I guess.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Well oh hey nice cooler that's same one I got. THAT is the cooler with clips that made nice little sparkles and an oh shit from me. I actually got this cpu up to 4.6 ghz stable with the dh 14, but I ditched the crap stock fans it comes with I got a 140mm like 140 cfm fan in middle and either 1 or 2 extra fans both from 80-90cfm as well. The stock fans for that are a joke, yeah quiet but they only move about 65cfm, you can feel the breeze but you're right I never even tried them after initial setup I knew they wouldn't cool this thing to the point I wanted to clock it to. Also there are like 10 newer bioses and several specifically are labeled that they were made for improving system stability and/or system compatibility...so therefore getting the newest one could be very helpful in getting my memory/cpu overclock as high as possible.

I love this thing over my 3820K though. I cant believe how much better bios's have gotten

Yeah obviously you got couple more cores and die shrink and some added features etc, plus the bios is newer of course...currently my bios is dated 4/2012....and as I just said earlier due to the nature of my ES I can't get the newest one which I think is 6/2014 lol so still would be about 2 years newer

 

[Kanan]

Well oh hey nice cooler that's same one I got. THAT is the cooler with clips that made nice little sparkles and an oh shit from me. I actually got this cpu up to 4.6 ghz stable with the dh 14, but I ditched the crap stock fans it comes with I got a 140mm like 140 cfm fan in middle and either 1 or 2 extra fans both from 80-90cfm as well. The stock fans for that are a joke, yeah quiet but they only move about 65cfm, you can feel the breeze but you're right I never even tried them after initial setup I knew they wouldn't cool this thing to the point I wanted to clock it to. Also there are like 10 newer bioses and several specifically are labeled that they were made for improving system stability and/or system compatibility...so therefore getting the newest one could be very helpful in getting my memory/cpu overclock as high as possible.

So your cooler was touching the backplate of the GPU? Normally it shouldn't do anything, that CPU Cooler isn't supposed to be charged with electricity. Maybe upload some pics, that way I can see what you mean.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

No, see that particular gpu HAS no backplate....that was the problem, most cards I've had before do so yeah metal on metal won't do anything, but that little wire clip touched circuitry on the back of the card.

 

[Kanan]

Oh shit, now I get it. Wow a GTX 980 without backplate, who is to blame for it?

 

[cdawall]

Yeah obviously you got couple more cores and die shrink and some added features etc, plus the bios is newer of course...currently my bios is dated 4/2012....and as I just said earlier due to the nature of my ES I can't get the newest one which I think is 6/2014 lol so still would be about 2 years newer

I just hate the GB bios on my other machine.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Oh shit, now I get it. Wow a GTX 980 without backplate, who is to blame for it?

Me for not noticing but yeah last thing I expected was clipping the fan on would have such consequences, yeah it's an MSI gaming version, for this reason alone from now on I won't buy a gpu without a backplate or I will install it in a slot further down

 

[Kanan]

Me for not noticing but yeah last thing I expected was clipping the fan on would have such consequences, yeah it's an MSI gaming version, for this reason alone from now on I won't buy a gpu without a backplate or I will install it in a slot further down

Strange I thought all MSI Gaming have backplates on it ... I would blame MSI for that. Expensive GPU without backplate is a no-go.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah, unless I got an unlucky exception and just was taken off or left off? I will have to look it up in reviews and see if it indeed should have had backplate. But yeah especially with metal clips etc if you use that first slot very good chance at some point you will bump it. And it's game over for something if you do while it's running or even if something unclips or you bump case and something falls on it. This really was an eye opener for me how fast bad shit can happen with a pc especially if you touch it while it's on. But even if it were off...what if clip was touching it and I turned it on? Coulda been even worse of a result if it shorted as it powered on.

Either way, it's a real testament to the quality of the hardware I've got that something so dramatically bad happened and everything else still works! The first PCI-E slot however won't now work properly. Thankfully I have several slots and I just picked another and it did and is working fine with my gtx 480 backup card, unfortunately I sold my 7970 or I'd use that for it's a newer/faster card but this is best I got atm.

 

[Kanan]

Yeah as you can see my gpu is pretty near to the cooler too, but it has a backplate. Good nothing else was damaged in the accident at least.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Wow...how unlucky is that....the gtx 960/970/980 gaming cards from MSI are the ONLY 3 cards I see they EVER made in gaming series with no backplate! #$(#$*$%(. I think even the gtx980ti has one....smh wtf were they thinking?

Yeah as you can see my gpu is pretty near to the cooler too, but it has a backplate. Good nothing else was damaged in the accident at least.

YEs I thought sure I would have fried the board or multiple things on it to a point of either being unusable or losing functions I couldn't live without! As I said first slot will power a card but only lower end cards and monitor randomly shuts off...higher end cards needing more than 1 6 pin connector like the 480 just don't display there once correct driver is loaded so the card fried itself and messed up that first slot. But I'm thankful being a high end board it has several pci e slots that have enough bandwith to run cards fine.

The most ironic thing....I used WIZZ's review of this card to buy it over the strix version he rated a 10...and he even mentioned no backplate as a negative and I am pretty sure now that I commented on review defending MSI saying who cares about a backplate? LOL how ironic!

 

[Kanan]

I don't know I'm pretty surprised by it, I thought all 980 customs have backplates at least the better ones like Gaming/Strixx etc. Maybe you get warranty on it? Pretty bad decision by MSI. Well was your last backplate-free card I guess.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yep, I just looked at the reviews of EVERY MSI gaming card all of which are excellent pieces of hardware but for whatever odd reason the non ti gtx900 series those 3 cards MSI had no backplate....EVERY other card which thankfully WIZZ takes pictures of from all angles ALL had backplates. Like I said OH the irony I said no biggie when he reviewed and said that was a negative feature even though in every other way it beat the STrixx version. Now I see why backplates really do "protect" a card. A lot of metal bits including screws, coolers etc in a case that somehow could contact back of card and as I saw it instantly causes problems literally in blink of an eye.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_1070_Gaming_X/3.html

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_980_Gaming/

just check out those pics and you'll see.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_980_Gaming/

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_980_Ti_Gaming/3.html

Check that out...how stupid is that?

 

[Kanan]

Well under normal circumstances it's no problem but what is normal? Shit happens I guess. Don't you have warranty on the card?

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Well under normal circumstances it's no problem but what is normal? Shit happens I guess. Don't you have warranty on the card?

card wasn't new when I got it and I've had it over a year, no warranty on that.

 

[Kanan]

card wasn't new when I got it and I've had it over a year, no warranty on that.

Okay. Which card you gonna get for replacement?

 

[dalekdukesboy]

no idea, for now I am not doing any real heavy gaming so the gtx 480 is enough. I will probably wait till after the full 1080ti or whatever they call it with all shaders is released and after some of the other cards go down in prices. For now I'm not in a position to buy a new card anyway things are tight.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Currently looking for work since early May so yeah was already freaking out when my board died and was tough pill to swallow getting a "new" used board so thankfully it works and I'm even more thankful my little spark incident only seems to have damaged one card and one PCI slot. So yeah thinking I may have stupidly ruined my board/cpu etc was an awful thought...currently however re-stress testing it and no problems with 4.4 ghz and 2400 mhz memory after tightening a few timings, just required more voltage to the memory and unfortunately it's summer here so cpu is getting hot fast so at some point I may get best AIO watercooling possible and put some crazy fans on it so I can hopefully improve my situation with the one core that always runs hot whether real or just faulty sensor throttling result is the same once I hit 82 on that one core.

 

[Kanan]

Yeah probably faulty, typical ES cpu. I had a spark too but board was slow after it, even though everything still worked besides the CD Rom drive - was young and tried to connect floppy while pc was on (a p90 or p166 mmx). Had to change the board.