So what to do? Troubles ahoy!

Soldato
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Have you checked the warranty on that X79 Sabretooth, might be worth sending it off to Asus.
I don't suppose you have manged to check the 3960x in another board to determine which is at fault.
 
Associate
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Just wondering but what SSD do you have? I have a Crucial M4 and was ready to throw it out after I narrowed down it was the cause of hourly lock ups and BSOD's even on a clean install.

At first I thought it was my hardware but it happened in a desktop build and a laptop.

I decided to give it a go on a new desktop pc build and the same again, so I knew it was the SSD.

Updated the firmware for the SSD and I've not had a single crash or lock up since.

True story.


Also have you tested your RAM? Basically anything that has been used on both set ups
 
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^^ OP has stated his SSDs twice: Samsung EVO 500GB and a Corsair Force 128GB.
That is good advice, might be worth a try before what I typed below, which I wrote before I read the post above. Or something.

For the price paid, I'd be sending it back myself.
You've tried reasonable measures to get it working and, like you say, a top-end board should not give that much grief.


Speak to Gigabyte, or go to wherever you got the board. Replace or refund.
 
Soldato
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Currently waiting on meme test to finish a last run, but all seems good that side. Takes ages to run through 32gb.

But, one thing to note. Again after installing Windows, was only just installing and opening chrome when hard locked again.

Decided to u plug bottom two graphics cards, and have now completed installing all programs without further lock ups. It's important to note though, this lock up at stock when just trying to get Windows up and running is a recent development, and not something was experiencing before couple days ago.

Once am done it Memtest, will be cloning to spare SSD, backing up my backed up image to external drive, and doing further tests on that.
 
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You say your running 32gb memory ? Have you allowed extra SA voltage to compensate the high amount of memory your using. Ram problems will cause freezes and stuff in general.

I had a similar issue recently, building my kids PC. Worked fine with sandy bridge internals and oem vista 64. Upgraded to haswell 4670k and it was locking up and bearly even completing the installation. Cutting this long frustrating story short it ended up being vista , upgraded to win 7 pro solved the issue. Though totally unrelated in your case.

Maybe go back to basics. Remove some ram , install and test with basic setup. Then begin to add your extra.

Best of luck mate.
 
Soldato
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Ok, done all my backups of backups, disconnected all drives apart from Corsair force 128gb which is cloned from my EVO.

Have all three gpus connected up, and at least passed unigine Valley, but score was same as two card score. Will worry about that later though.

Have my memory running on xmp profile 1 (2400). It wasn't so much the sa voltage that needed upping for this but the digital io voltage.

Has passed some real bench and cinebench, and currently running wprime. Having passed those three I think I will be happy to move on to the cpu.

Then will stress it all a bit and maybe put bf4 on later.

Once that done, will gradually connect one drive at a time and do more stressing.

Hopefully the f6 bios will have sorted all issues.

Though I still have that nagging issue of the lock up....
 
Soldato
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Ok, so the black screens when it was trying to load windows were not drive corruption (though I definitely got corrupted drives before).

Seems like the bios itself might be corrupt... When I started getting the black screens on the Corsair drive, I then swapped over to the EVO, which was completely disconnected, and had the same issue, so there is no way it could have gotten corrupted.

I flashed back to the f5, and was able to get into windows, then it locked up again at desktop.

I have now removed the three gpus (thank god for quick disconnects) and am running on a 7770.

Will see how can get on from here.

One thing, the f6b bios will run the memory at 2400. The f5 will have none of that.

Anyway, back to fiddling, but am beginning to suspect dodgy bios more and more.
 
Soldato
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Well, at least I know it's not the gpus, because having all sorts problems with just the 7770 in.

But my word, this thing just keeps going from bad to worse!

Crap like it suddenly decided it would not boot at all. Luckily, first thing decided to try was just use half ram. It would then boot with either set, then eventually with both.

But there's all sorts of issues besides that...

I am simply going to have to give up before too long. With this taking all my spare time, it is wearing me down.
 
Soldato
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Looks like I might be able to settle with the f3 bios for now.

Though I still have a fair bit of testing to do, and need to put all my cards back in, plus reconnect all drives, so don't want to get ahead of myself, but have the cpu at 4.7 with 1.3v, memory at 2200 with tighter timings.

The question is, will it remain stable, because I previously had this thing stable only for a few days later for it to go wonky.

And does this mean I need to stick with f3 forever? Because f4, f5, and f6b have all been terrible.

Would be petrified of trying another to go through all this again, assuming it stays Ok.

Fingers crossed.
 
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eyetrip ,

This sounds like a total nightmare mate. Can understand your frustrations fully.

Its one of those complete enigma scenarios that occur from time to time. Hopefully you can find and pinpoint the cause of all this as this is not a good way to have a new system.

My situation would be, see how you get on with the f3 bios for now. But if anything does start to occur you need to test every piece individually it seems. Right from PSU to each SSD. Borrow if you can ,, swap out and replace and try your best to eradicate any causing component.

I had similar issue with my old 2600 i7 setup going over to Z77. Had a bad board , sent it back RMA ,, but could not get system stable at all with old setup ..... :D I just ended up selling it all off cheap and buying new......

Chin up buddy ,,, you will get there. Try not to over think things ...

Regards
 
Soldato
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Well, now have everything connected up again, and all seems ok. Touch wood.

Ok, is still early days, but if it keeps up like it is now, then that will be fine.

Looks like I will be sticking with the F3 BIOS for a while.

Graphics scoring lower than it should in Unigine Valley, but I am not going to troubleshoot that right now.

Just want a stable system for a while.
 
Associate
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Well, now have everything connected up again, and all seems ok. Touch wood.

Ok, is still early days, but if it keeps up like it is now, then that will be fine.

Looks like I will be sticking with the F3 BIOS for a while.

Graphics scoring lower than it should in Unigine Valley, but I am not going to troubleshoot that right now.

Just want a stable system for a while.

If the motherboard is still having problems I'll take your 3970x :D good luck
 
Soldato
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Bench stable, but not so much bf4 stable... Not too worried on that front. At least my windows install isn't getting corrupted, and not having random strange issues - except that my temps have suddenly shot up some time today.

Idling in low 40s and at 4.7 with around 1.3v am hitting up to 99c in realbench. Wasn't anywhere near those temps before. Would easily stay under 90 before on these sort of settings. So will have to see what up with that.

Even bf4 had me in the 90s...
 
Soldato
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So I finally gave up on that gigabyte pos.

And having the 3960x still lying around, I decided to just get an asus x79-e workstation.

Couple small hiccups, since installing yesterday, but up and running now at 4.5, with all three cards running well and seems stable all around.

Bit of a pain going x79 now, but I just want a system to last me til 2016 when will do my first total system upgrade as opposed to incremental for years.

If I can find a decent clocking, 'cheap' 2nd hand 4930k/4960x then I will grab one.

Cards and CPU all sitting around mid 60's in my custom loop.
 
Soldato
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Oh dear lord.

I should know not to come on here and post that everything fine. It's the kiss of death.

The last thing to push me over the line with the gigabyte board and 4790 was it started randomly rebooting. Not often, but still...

Anyway, sitting on desktop just now and system reset itself when on desktop under no load.

So there is something else going on obviously. Am so sick of this.
 
Caporegime
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you tried f5b bios didn't you?

if its crashing while idling it could be too low cpu v at idle?

are you manually setting cpu/pci clock to 100 or try 101 if that's still unstable

idk if you have vcore voltage response setting in the bios but if you do set it to fast

EDIT: sorry didn't realise your on a new board
 
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Soldato
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So what parts have you carried over to this X79 setup?

I think your RAM is fubar.

Am beginning to suspect ram as well.

Absolutely everything has stayed the same in this system coming from Asus P8Z77-v with 3770K.

Had major problems with the sabertooth X79 I tried first, but the problems I was getting really jsut made me think board was at fault.

Then got the gigabte Z97 and 4790K. All was fine for couple of days, then problems started, and continued, though sometimes intermittent.

But now yet another board... Apart from that one reset so far, it does appear stable, but the fact that it happened... its concerning me.

I just assumed the memory was ok after it passed memtest.

So now have unplugged half and will see how get on (bur for how long I don't know). Then try the other half for a bit (again, after how long I don't know)

Would RAM just suddenly go bad though? It was fine in P8-z77-v with 3770K... Don't think I have ever had faulty ram before.

So now I am stuck with 3 boards.

Have filled out the RMA for the gigabyte + 4790K, but now not as sure as I was that was the problem.

I was so hoping to be done with all this this weekend. I was over the moon when this system appeared to be stable :(
 
Caporegime
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I think I remember you saying you tried overclocking the RAM and then it wouldn't work at stock anymore, its of course possible that you've damaged it.

Where do you live? if its close then I have plenty of parts to test bits+bobs, or maybe someone else is willing to help.

But what PSU do you have and SSD? I don't think I've seen you mention them before.
 
Soldato
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The ram is rated for 2400, and there was only a brief time when I was using 125 bclkc that I ran that I ran it at 2500.

Apart from that the voltages have always been around it's rated 1.65v

Problem was that it stopped running at it's rated 2400 on the gigabyte. It's been happily running 2400 on the x79 ws

So really there nothing that should have nerfed it.

I have some other ram I can run, but the random nature of this problem is going to make it very difficult to figure out if I have found the culprit.

The pus is a super flower 1200w platinum
 
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