X99 Deluxe bF is still working well after a cold start for another five months.
X99 Deluxe bF is still working well after a cold start for another five months.
Hi all. I'm trying to discover the cause for this as it started a couple weeks ago. For some background info, I've been running this OC (my setup in sig) since early 2015. I only use my system in question on weekends generally, as I have another for my "daily driver". I had many months of testing in my free time and Cold Boots bF Q-codes to get things dialed in regarding OC, voltage, ect. This Q-code relates to Cache or IMC voltage needing adjustment during "memory training" on Cold boot. I've read countless posts on this issue during early X99 days. The bF was a nightmare since I got X99 at launch, but after many stresstests, adjustments, ect. thing were normal. I keep a logfile for settings, ect. to keep track of things.
Back to the present, I've had 57 consecutive normal Cold Boots, not including regular reboots from Windows 10 updates, ect. This is actually 5 months worth of boots for me. All the sudden, using same settings, I got another bF a few week back. I figured it was odd as I hadn't seen for so long and brushed it off. My next Cold boot was fine. Next Cold boot, bF again. This turned out to be a 50/50 chance of normal boot or bF w/ no settings changes for 6 boots or so. I tried a CLR CMOS, and re-loaded my OC profile again. After this, I had 2 normal Cold Boots, and on another attempt today, bF again.
I should mention I've ran a few stress tests to check my OC to verify stability. So far, in my regular use, things are normal. Have 80hrs in Witcher 3 running fine along w/ my usual browsing habits, Youtube videos, ect. Two other things I'd like to point out though. About the same time this bF came back, I had an issue at boot where my keyboard wasn't working at login screen. I unplugged and plugged in and things were fine. I figured this was an MS problem w/ their constant Cumulative updates changing the Kernel, ect. Device Manager and Event Viewer are fine. However, the following weekend, I was looking through the UEFI following a bF, and my keyboard all the sudden stopped functioning while inside the UEFI. I figured after this it's not going to be an OS problem. After a reboot though, my keyboard has been working fine since. I've since read about X99 and USB problems. The other thing I'd like to point out yesterday that was odd was that after a normal Cold Boot, my taskbar in Windows wasn't working correctly. Left or Right click with my mouse would have no effect, but I could open Start using Windows key and I could open all my tiles, software normally using mouse in this way. After a normal restart, back to normal. I did some more research, and taskbar issues again seem to point to Windows 10 bugs. SSD Magician says things are fine w/ my drives, as well as an SFC /scannow checkup.
Sorry for the long-winded post, but I wanted to be clear on things. I suppose my question is does this sound like it could be motherboard related, OC related, even possible degradation. I'm not using any excessively high voltages. I'm using 1.325 vCore, 1.25 Cache(running at 4Ghz), and .992 to 1.000v SA voltage. DRAM is set to 1.35 though I did tighten my timings a bit. Temps are fine. My UEFI is version 2001. They recently released a newer one, but this is the one that worked fine for about 3 months of the 5. I had to update for NVMe support from the previous version. That version I had about 23 consecutive normal Cold Boots. Any ideas would be appreciated. I'm likely to run more stresstest next weekend. Again, other than these "odd" issues cropping up in the last few weeks, my normal browsing/gaming is fine. Thanks again for reading.
I'm just refreshing my own post. I plan to perform stress tests this weekend when I can. It's interesting to note that both the USB disconnect with my keyboard (Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate) in Windows and later in UEFI occurred around the same time these error codes reappeared. It looks like OCs might also cause USB issues. I'm curious if this could be reflected in the UEFI as well. Combining this with the error codes, it seems the problems are connected or possibly a coincidence. Until recently, I hadn't conducted stability tests or benchmarks since early '15, though I did run a short benchmark and a 15-minute stress test of ASUS' Realbench last week. Since the error code appears linked to IMC or Uncore voltage adjustments, I'll probably run Memtest86 again. My timing is 14-14-14-28 1T. The previous run succeeded with version 6.0 and the "hammer" test. I'll just have to wait and observe the results of further testing.