X58-OC Choosing a Mainboard

[DR4G00N]

It should work regardless of a chipset driver. Try some older bios'. There are also some beta bios' floating around.

 

[Dinnercore]

I flashed back to Version 1.5, gonna try the original 1.2 again now.

Here are some pictures of the problem:



After running defaults I set 140 manually and this POST seems to confirm that it has the settings.




Note the '840' MHz DRAM and 1680MHz Uncore, because in CPU-Z with these settings I actually got 401 (802MHz) RAM and 2400 Uncore.





This is one of the POST codes that it takes the most time on during start-up, it stays on 0C for 15 whole seconds before going further. I could not find documentation about this code in my manual it seems to be 'Reserved for future AMI SEC error codes' but why does it take so long on this step? Is a total POST time greater then 20 seconds normal for X58?


And here is the result in OS, always 133. Doesnt matter if I try 140, 145 or 150. Temps seem good, performance is where it should be. Ran some CB15s fine and it was stable the whole night when I made an overnight stability test on default settings.

I´m going to try the other bios versions too and download some OS overclocking tool. I really hope I can use this board, I don´t know how I should explain to the seller that it is working but actually not really working.

EDIT:

So I installed the MSI tool and guess what, it has the same issue. Voltage changes do apply fine, but baseclock does not move one bit.

 

[phill]

Early EVGA's X58 boards* don't support Xeon's (or require hard modding).

X58A-OC > X58A-UD9

Rampage III Black Edition

I can vouch for this as all three of mine won't work with a Xeon and I wish they did as I found trying to get 12Gb of ram working with the boards proved to be a bloody nightmare and a pain.. That said I have a few Gigabyte X58 motherboards and they work fine, including a X58A-OC, well two but with my good mate @TheMadDutchDude trying to get one repaired, the guy who was looking at it buggered off and we never got the board back or fixed either.. Was a waste of a few quid.. If need be I'll grab another at some point, but with 6 X58 boards, I think I've enough

I do agree 110% with TheMadDutchDude, don't waste buying a board that's only 75% of what you're after, if you're going to spend the cash, do it 100% right if not more

Apologies a bit late to the party

 

[Dinnercore]

Going back to version 1.2 bios did not help either. I´m now going to try beta bios too, but after I try some other things.
Gotta write this down before tho, I´m really frustrated with this issue and myself right now. Again my dumb face falling for either a scam or just having the luck of picking the worst possible option.

*rant on*
I have spend the past 3 months on several things and all turn out to be dead ends resulting in me throwing money out the window and loosing many hours for nothing. I have a broken SR-2 that I thought I could fix but after finally finding the parts from china, waiting weeks for shipping, it turns out there is no hope. Fine, I expected that. Then there is my other SR-2 which is ready to go in a build, the parts all there except for the mainboard cooler which now got delayed way past its original ETA in September and I start to doubt that I´ll ever see it...
And now this. With all the things combined I spend 600€ on these projects during the past couple of months and many hours of searching, reading, soldering, trying, installing software, etc.. And nothing, absolutly nothing is working.
*rant off*

So now that I got that out let´s start to think logical about the issue. I tested if I could atleast set a lower BCLK. Nope -> This means that the mechanism of changing the BCLK frequency seems to be broken or obstructed on some level. I doubt it´s a bios version issue at this point (tested 5 different versions).
I can succesfully change literally every other setting, multipliers up and down etc.. I tried with 20x CPU multi and it still is stuck at 133 BCLK. Which in return makes me think that may not be the intel 'overspeed protection', but I won´t rule this option out completly for now.
Just to be sure I switched to a new battery too, that 3.04V bat is now 3.3V.

The socket looks good, no broken or bend pins. I doubt the CPU can be the issue since the BCLK is board level? Still I will try a different CPU just to make sure.

Under the bios setting 'ClockGen Tuner' there are multiple mV options like 700mV, 800mV up to 1000mV for 'CPU Amplitude Control'. I will try setting this above and below default (800mV).

I have seen that MSI has a dip-switch on the X58 Platinum to control the BCLK, if you activate that switch it will force a certain clock like 133 or 166 and ignore everything else. Seems like exactly what my board is doing, except that I don´t have such a switch for clocks, only overvoltage settings.
Could it be that someone did some hardmods to my board? I did not spot anything when changing paste and pads but maybe I should check again. (Or did some dingus try to use a modded bios from a dip-switch supporting board and screwed my rom up in a place the original bios does not touch?)

There is some OC-Dashboard from MSI that can plug into the Xpower, maybe this is able to set some hard-limit? But why would that persist after bios flashes and clearing CMOS?


To sum it all up I got some ideas left, the beta bios @DR4G00N suggested might be working too. But I´m getting a bit tired of it all. One part of me wants to finally get atleast something working after all, the other part just wants to throw it all in the trash and never touch this topic ever again.
I miss the 775 boards, they were atleast fun to fail. This is just a brick wall I´m running against.

 

[TheMadDutchDude]

That looks like a Windows issue to me. I forget which setting blocks BCLK OC... but that’s where I’d start.

 

[agent_x007]

Try enabling XMP profile, and adjust it manually for what you need.
Maybe BIOS is too dumb to know how to set stable (2-nd and 3-rd rate) timing without a map when it's over or below 133MHz.

 

[Dinnercore]

Thank you for further suggestions but I had no success with anything. No bios, no Windows setting - even reinstalled OS and tried the older chipset driver version.

I tried XMP on/off/auto with manual secondary and tertiary timings and full auto timings.

Last straw I tried was pushing the OC-Genie button to see if the auto-OC can do anything and well the board gets stuck on postcode: 'A1 - IDE Reset '

The board is broken in some way and I have no idea how I would even begin to figure out where and if I can fix it. I´m sad, mad and just want to catch some distance from it all. Three boards in a row now that end up as expensive bricks. Can´t even argue to return this one since it does work at default.
Never buy used from private people, only go with companies that offer a limited warranty or some kind of return policy. Lesson learned threefold.

Update:



Atleast I got some fun out of it. I can set the max. values and the bios does actually believe it applies them. Max value for BCLK stated was 600 but at 567 it jumps to 760 and frequency rolls over to the start. So I only set 567MHz BCLK and left all voltages on auto as a small experiment.

The board set 1.28V for the 13.6GHz. Atleast you can never really overvolt on auto, gotta give MSI credit for that.
Decent OC I´d say, 3400MHz RAM, 20.4GHz QPI and 13.6GHz CPU.

 

[Dinnercore]

Sorry for double-posting, but I wanted to let you all know I´m now happy with the Rampage III. This time I bought from a registered company offering one year warranty and guess what it´s working. Did not even have to do anything, no software change, no bios setting just default and then change the BCLK. As simple as that.



So the MSI-Board is definitly broken on a hardware level.
It wouldn´t be me and my luck if I wouldn´t give myself the next heart attack right away tho:



Just remove the backplate to install the one from your own cooler and you break off an SMD on the rampage... Great. You can´t even know things like these beforehand, you see four screws and take them out -> well RIP SMD.

Luckily this guy seems to just be signal/power filtering and not 100% necessary. All memory channels are present, RAM runs even above XMP profile in 1T on this board and the CPU is working fine. Maybe I´ll run into trouble with OC-stability later but if so I think I can add the little cap back on. But looking at the thin isolation material and how it poked through, I´d say this thing was shorted out anyway and must be on many other boards out there so eh.


Thank you all for posting and trying to help me out! I seem to have broken my bad luck streak, lets keep the fingers crossed.

 

[snorlaxgangs]

@Dinnercore I'm using R2E for long time, and i love this board. It never failed me. Idk if it's just me but over years i found that asus bios setting is easier than other brands.
I recently just bought 1x 4GB Gskill Sniper 2400 and 2x4 GSkill Ripjaws 2400, all cas 12 but it's stable at cas 11. Didnt expect that i can run 2400MHz DDR3 on this board.

Anyway i would love to play R3E and see what's the different between them. I read somewhere ocn or ltt forums, ppl can achieve higher BCLK on R3E than R2E. Mine is walled at 220, beyond that i have to set slow mode in qpi.

Btw, does anyone know where to get a pre-binned i7 990x or w3680/w3690?

 

[R-T-B]

Btw, does anyone know where to get a pre-binned i7 990x or w3680/w3690?

I have no idea about prebinned x58, but I have a complete dirt cheap set of x58 stuff coming into the BST forum here soon (likely tomorrow, just parting out and photographing a complete system) and a W3690 is the centerpiece of the whole thing really. I don't have any idea how she clocks though because the board is a horrible ocing board (Intel X58SO2)

You may want to watch for it, as it will be priced to move. Just a heads up.

 

[Dinnercore]

@Dinnercore I'm using R2E for long time, and i love this board. It never failed me. Idk if it's just me but over years i found that asus bios setting is easier than other brands.
I recently just bought 1x 4GB Gskill Sniper 2400 and 2x4 GSkill Ripjaws 2400, all cas 12 but it's stable at cas 11. Didnt expect that i can run 2400MHz DDR3 on this board.

Anyway i would love to play R3E and see what's the different between them. I read somewhere ocn or ltt forums, ppl can achieve higher BCLK on R3E than R2E. Mine is walled at 220, beyond that i have to set slow mode in qpi.

So far I have not found a bios that is 'difficult' to work with. Some are just a bit more clean and faster to navigate and I agree that Asus does a good job on that. I got some decent Corsair modules with my SR-2, 2400MHz C11 rated. I think they are a bit overkill on the SR-2, I doubt this dual socket server chipset will run that high.

As for the R3E, I can tell you in a bit if I can make it beyond 220. If I find a CPU that plays along too. I like that the NB does not need any voltage and runs very cool. That stock heatsink block with nearly no surface area keeps it below 40°C for me.
What I can tell you already is, IF you want to try an R3E I recommend enabling QPI LLC with the jumper from the start. It does slightly overshoot, ~15-20mV but without it it droops out of control.
Example:
I set 1.34V for the QPI in bios without LLC = 1.32V idle and only 1.29V (!) during load. On my X5650 I always crashed benchmarks due to the QPI droop.
With QPI LLC I got 1.337V in bios = 1.345V idle and 1.35V during load. Much more usable.

Could just be my board tho, I don´t know.

 

[Keullo-e]

Kinda offtopic, sorry, but X58 is just a damn awesome platform. Kinda the only Intel platform I miss of all the hardware I've had in recent years..

Well, the basic AM3 (Phenom II) has also a place in my heart.

 

[freeagent]

My R3F is the same way. Gravy train. Runs cool, oc like a mofo. I also have qpi llc jumper enabled. No sags anywhere

 

[snorlaxgangs]

@Dinnercore How to enable QPI LLc with a jumper? Is it in bios? I dont know if R2E have one. My qpi drop 0.014 under max load.

 

[Dinnercore]

@Dinnercore How to enable QPI LLc with a jumper? Is it in bios? I dont know if R2E have one. My qpi drop 0.014 under max load.

That drop on your board is fine, the R3E has this:

There is no bios setting. If you bridge pin 2-3 its enabled, if you dont or set pin 1-2 its disabled. Bios only tells you if its on or off but you cant set it in bios.

 

[snorlaxgangs]

That drop on your board is fine, the R3E has this:
View attachment 135985
There is no bios setting. If you bridge pin 2-3 its enabled, if you dont or set pin 1-2 its disabled. Bios only tells you if its on or off but you cant set it in bios.

I see. The only jumpers i found on my board are chasis intruder, bios flash back and and CLRTC_SW.

 

[Dinnercore]

Anyway i would love to play R3E and see what's the different between them. I read somewhere ocn or ltt forums, ppl can achieve higher BCLK on R3E than R2E. Mine is walled at 220, beyond that i have to set slow mode in qpi.

I tried my luck and got to 225 just by lowering the CPU multi, have not changed any voltages from 200. However 230 would not post, stuck on CPU initialisation. Could be CPU limit, maybe it would boot with higher NB voltage or setting PCIe to 103 (I have 102 right now).


So maybe the R3E can get higher, I´m not sure. I don´t have much time to test further now and I´m still new to this platform. If you ever decide to get one, let me know how it went

 

[Zyll Goliat]

That is nice&solid OC numbers for this platform.....check the stability first with prime or IBT and be EXTRA careful with PCI-E OC,it should be fine to go from 101-105 but anything beyond that can damage your hardware....

 

[Dinnercore]

That is nice&solid OC numbers for this platform.....check the stability first with prime or IBT and be EXTRA careful with PCI-E OC,it should be fine to go from 101-105 but anything beyond that can damage your hardware....

I know about the horrors of raising the PCIe clock, I don´t think I´ll go any higher than 102 any time soon. This was just a run to test the BCLK question for snorlaxgangs. My stable OC is 200 x22 on this X5650. Same voltages and 800 / 1600 RAM.

 

[snorlaxgangs]

That's pretty good bclk. IIRC most x58 can't boot further if QPI > 8800, maybe try QPI slow mode, it works for me but the bios is stuttering afterward.

 

[DR4G00N]

I know about the horrors of raising the PCIe clock, I don´t think I´ll go any higher than 102 any time soon. This was just a run to test the BCLK question for snorlaxgangs. My stable OC is 200 x22 on this X5650. Same voltages and 800 / 1600 RAM.

PCIE freq is reasonably safe for bench use but I wouldn't push it with a drive that has important data on it. I used 120MHz the other day to run ~234 bclk on my 920 and classy 4-way without slow mode.
That much is good for like 250 bclk with the right cpu though.