ASUS Sabertooth P67 Boot/Post problem

[pohlseng]

I am not sure if this is the right forum to post this in, but I'll post it anyways as I really need help and the ASUS technical inquiry staff takes quite a long time to reply. I am trying to build a new gaming pc with the following components:

ASUS Sabertooth P67 Rev3.0
Corsair Vengeance Blue 2x4GB 1600Mhz SDRAM
Intel i5-2500K 3.3 Ghz
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 6950 2GB
Cooler Master Silent Pro 850W
Cooler Master HAF X Chasis
Corsair H80 CPU Cooler

The Problem(apologies if it long):

1st problem(solved kinda by following the instructions from the ASUS tech support) After assembling all the parts together the system would not post/boot. The only way to make the system boot/post to BIOS screen was by holding down the memOK button on the motherboard for 3+ secs. This plus the bios screen was cropped so I could only see half of the BIOS UI. I used the ASUS technical inquiry mail site to get some support after a week I got the following reply:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting ASUS Technical Service.

Please clear CMOS for a try.
Please take the motherboard out of case and keep the necessary components(a CPU, a memory in A1, a video card) onboard for a test.
If the problem still exists, if possible,please change some other components for a further check, such as another memory etc.

For second question, if possible, please change another monitor and vga card for test.

If still, please contact your retailer for further check.

Sorry for the trouble. Wish you a good day.

If you continue to experience issues in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us again.
Best Regards,
Cherry
ASUS Global Technical Support Center

I tried clearing the CMOS first and that worked the system booted properly and I was able to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I had to leave the PC on for the whole night(same day) because formatting raw logical drives took hours, when I woke this morning the format was finished and I installed the latest drivers for my vga card and restarted the PC. During the restart I decided to update the BIOS from 2013->2302. I did this with no problems, but the old problem started again. The system would not reset properly, and now when I turn it on via the power button the system check would get stuck at the CPU(found this out because I would see the CPU red led light on) and then the system would turn off. The only way I could make the system boot/post to the bios is either by pressing the memOK button. Can anyone help? I am still able to boot my windows after using the memOK and doing a boot override via the BIOS screen.

[garikfox]

Did you try clearing CMOS again ?

Make sure to unplug the pwr cord or turn the PSU swtch to off, wait 2 min then clear CMOS for 5sec.

Then once in the BIOS click Load Optimized defaults, then set the BIOS settings accordingly.

[Thomas@Asus]

Hi,

If the MemOK button is managing to get the system to work then it would suggest the Intel Memory Controller is having issues at Post with the RAM modules which you are using. First make sure that both RAM modules are inserted into the Light Brown DIMM slots. Second, get the system to start using Memok and then go into the BIOS and press F10 to save and exit. This is make whatever Memok did to get the system working apply at all restarts of the motherboard.

Also, something else you can try is using MemOK to get into the BIOS and then loading the XMP profile.

Let us know how you get on.

[pohlseng]

Apologies for the late reply, I was only able to try the suggestions above late yesterday evening due to some IRL stuff.

Well as a quick summary, my system is running fine now. I did a combination of both your suggestions. Reset CMOS as per garikfox's suggestion, and went into my bios and used f10 to save the bios settings instead of manually doing it via mouse(as per Thomas' suggestion). It seems that if I save the setting via mouse/gui it doesn't save and the system just shutsdown. Doing further testing to ensure that the system is stable. Will report here again if there are further issues. Thank you guys for the quick response/suggestion.

Edit 1: Ok I've just turned on my system again, after turning it off last night, and the problem is back. I've tried your first suggestion Thomas that didn't work. When I save and restart the bios changes via using Memok, the system just shuts down. I also tried loading the XMP profile, same deal but I do not need to use Memok to make the system post/boot. Pressing the power button seems to do it but I get an overclock error. Should I try resetting the CMOS again?

Edit 2: I reset the CMOS, but this time I did some changes to the Bios settings. Turned off Marvell controller and JMB controller, hit F10 to save reset and bam same problem. Going to try to reset CMOS again and save without touching the BIOS.

Edit 3: Reset the CMOS and saved (f10) without touching any of the settings in the BIOS, but no go problem still persists.

[HiVizMan]

Could we go back to a point you made in your original post please.

In the opening post you said that it took many hours to format your hard drive? Is that correct?

Once we have some kind of clarity about that point we can move forward.

[pohlseng]

Could we go back to a point you made in your original post please.

In the opening post you said that it took many hours to format your hard drive? Is that correct?

Once we have some kind of clarity about that point we can move forward.

To clarify, I have 1 harddrive which I partitioned into 3 logical drives C,D,G (I did this when I got the system to work evening of 26th). I installed Windows 7 ultimate 64-bit on C:, I had to format the other two raw logical drives another way because there was no option in the windows7 installation to do so. Did this via Disk Management, it took a long time because I decided not to do a quick format. Drive D, which had 790gb space, took around 2 1/2 hours to format. I left the system on the rest of the night while it was formatting the last drive, drive G: which had 980gb, because I needed to sleep.

[HiVizMan]

Thank you.

Just for informations sake you can do so in the installation of OS stage. But that is for another discussion.

I think that is an extremely long time taken for a hard drive to be formatted. What I will do tonight is format a 1TB hard drive and compare times. The reason I am focusing on this is that if the times are way out of the norm then there is something amiss and if we find and fix that I suspect your other problem will be resolved too.

[pohlseng]

Thanks for the fast reply. Just fyi as I forgotten to mentioned I formatted both newly partitioned logical drive from RAW to NTFS format via Disk Management(also did not select quick format).

[HiVizMan]

Thank you so noted and will duplicate.

[pohlseng]

Update: Today I decided to rebuild the system from scratch and do some fault testing. I removed all the components from my chassis, and just assembled the motherboard, processor, aftermarket cpu cooler, RAM, VGA card and PSU. Still got the same problems, so I gave up and put everything back to the chasis. I tried to do one more test power up, and a new problem occured. The system check thing does not stop at the CPU led anymore and turns off, now the VGA led and boot device LED stays lit up and nothing happens. My monitor screen blank, but my keyboard and mouse lights up.

I'm going to try using a different vga card on this system and test out my intended VGA card on another system and will report back again.

Edit 1: Tested 2 working PCI-e VGA cards on the board and I get the same problem...seems this board is fubar and I need to RMA.