Cold boot with R4E and Sleep issues

[mdzcpa]

Same problems - Cold boot and Sleep issues with Rampage 4 Extreme



I'm glad I found more people having the same problems as it proves I am not crazy. I have a similar configuration and I am experiencing very similar issues. My configuration is:

- Rampage IV Extreme with the 1101 BIOS update (Jan 11 2012)
- Intel Core i7 3960X running at stock 3.3GHz
- 16GB of G.Skill F3-17000CL9-4GBZH kit (same as yours), but only 1 kit
- 2 x OCZ Vertex 3 240GB in RAID 0
- 2 x Velociraptors 300GB in RAID 0
- 2 x Seagate Barracudas 3TB
- 1 x EVGA GTX 580 3GB
- Windows 7 x64
- Watercooling on the CPU and chipset

I have the following similar issues:

- Memory is only detected as 1600MHz, not as 2133MHz. I have everything on "Auto" and have not yet tried the configurations mentioned in this thread.

In order to get sleep issues corrected, along with all your other issues, you need to get a stable system first. Sleep will not work appropriately if your system is unstable.

I assume you mean you memory is F3-17000CL9Q-4GBZH ...a 4 x 4GB 16GB kit.
Run your CPU at OEM specs to begin.
Set your system to XMP so it reads the right SPD ROM profile on the ram. This will set the frequency to 2133 and set the appropriate voltages and ram timings. Also, as noted on the GSKILL website, set the Rampage Tweak to Mode 1 (under DRAM Tming Control).

With you memory running at XMP settings and Rampage Tweak Mode 1, run memtest and check your system for stability.
You can keep everything else on Auto as long as your not overclocking the CPU yet. If your system performs rock stable, sleep should also begin working correctly.

[bdazla]

Here is an update on the issues I have been having.

I pulled out one of my kits of the G Skill 16GB and still had all the same problem. I swapped some RAM around in different slots and this got rid of the some of the problems. I still had the same overclock issues but the RAM was set to 1600 and all the Memtests passed. Windows would freeze though when set to 1600 and only a hard reset fixed it. So I had to have the RAM set to 2133 for windows to run correctly.

In the past I was not able to set any of the 4 overclock profiles in the BIOS without the system completely dying and then needing a BIOS reset. But after moving 2 of the sticks of RAM I was able to select an overclock profile that set the CPU to 4.7Ghz. I don't get the overclock failed anymore but in saying that I did get it this morning but I think that is more because I am trying to setup the offset voltage for the CPU instead of having it run at 1.4V permanently. I was not able to get the system to cold boot with the default setting even with 4 sticks of RAM but I can set it to 4.7Ghz and it will cold boot. Really don’t know what the issue is there but maybe someone else will know.

A few things I have learnt along the way that might help others here.

1. XMP RAM profile is only for 1 set of RAM. If you purchase 2 x 16GB RAM kits to make 32GB, XMP can be selected but can or will cause you issues. It is recommended that you only install 1 kit on the board and set XMP in the BIOS, note all the settings for the RAM and then turn XMP off. You can then install the 2nd set of RAM and manually put the settings in for the RAM. This is mainly just the DRAM voltage, DRAM timings and for the G Skill RAM I purchased it also included changing the VCCSA voltage too. If you already know what all the settings are, i.e. you look them up on the vendor’s website, you can just enter those settings in straight off the bat with the 8 sticks of RAM installed.

2. The R4E board only supports 8 slots of memory for certain RAM types. You can get lucky sometimes and be able to install RAM in all 8 slots that are not on the qualified list but this is seriously hit and miss. Also since the qualified vendor list doesn't seem to be updated very often, if at all, it is very difficult to know what RAM to use. If you want performance overclock RAM designed for x79 to go with your high end overclock board, good luck and may the force be with you. You are actually best off going to each RAM vendor to check their website as it more up to date and they seem to have some good info on their forums too. Obviously it makes the RAM selection process that much more difficult and only causes consumer frustration but who cares about the consumer....... Right???? Anyway, moving on………

3. The LED lights are very vague to what the problem is at times. Mine would come up with the boot device LED which Translated to my RAM needed to move to a different slot. I would have thought the RAM LED would come on but maybe this is because the RAM was actually ok. So even though the boot device light was on which I would have assumed there was something wrong with the disks, DVD rom or controller this wasn't the case. No matter how much googling I did for this LED error, there was basically no information on what this issue was. Just more luck than anything else.

4. You need to make sure that you have all the power plugs in the motherboard including the EZ_plug and EZ_Plug2. The EZ_Plug 2 is actually a floppy disk power plug and is for the RAM when running overclocked RAM and/or more than 4 slots. Previous motherboards had a different connector which may throw some people off but the EZ_Plug2 is now a floppy disk power connector and is needed.

5. As for the sleep issues I did manage to get the computer to go to sleep after changing some windows settings. Keep in mind that when I first built this machine that the sleep function did work and I haven't changed any windows setting to break the sleep function. I have done BIOS updates and played with many options in the BIOS which may have changed the way windows now needs to do particular functions. I am not 100% sure of this and the only way for me to tell would be to format the computer and start again which I am tempted to do. There are some settings in power option that I changed to get the computer to go to sleep. Go to the Advanced power setting in the profile that you are using. i.e. High Performance, balanced or power saver.

In the Sleep section set the Allow hybrid setting to Off
Allow wake timers to Disable

In USB selective suspend setting to Enabled

In Multimedia setting change the When sharing media to Allow the computer to sleep.

Also make sure that the power management in each device such as keyboard and mouse in the device manager are set correctly. I noticed in mine that for the LAN adapter the power management was set to allow device to wake computer. This meant that if I had a LAN cable plugged in the computer would wake from sleep as soon as it detected traffic.

I can now get my computer to go to sleep but I can't get it to wake up yet. Really annoying but hopefully I will work it out.

[HiVizMan]

Nice post bdazla - heaps of very good information there. Thank you.

Couple of things come to mind when reading.

A couple of people have noticed that if they shift the ram from one slot to another there is an improvement. I wonder if that is actually the case or simply they have correctly seated the ram. These new slots with only the one latch do require a proper alignment and fair bit of downward force to seat correctly.

XMP is only for one set or kit of ram. That is such a good point and one that is often lost in the mix.

QVL - the list is impossible to keep updated. Not because any vendor wants to mess their customer base around but because of the nature of the ram industry. Let me give you an example. Say for a product that was presented for QVL listing and passed muster, at time of QVL testing the manufacture of the ram would have sourced a particular batch of ram chips. Two months later that batch has been used up and additional batches brought in. The product code does not change. The ram that is sold is for all extensive purposes the same, however that is not the case. The new chips require a different ram bios (let us call it that) to work at the specifications of the retail product. No guarantee that those sticks will now pass QVL. This happens to all ram manufacturers and batches of the chips used change on a weekly bases. That is why it is best to look at the ram vendors web sites for their QVL list. Even then it is pretty much buy to try sadly. You see all that QVL motherboard list on the ram vendors product page actually means is that the ram was stuck into the motherboard on that list and booted at XMP with the CPU they use for testing. Not all CPU's are the same either. So you see why I say QVL is a very fluid notion.

Again a very good point about the LED lights. What has blurred the whole thing of interpreting the lights is the fact that so much of the work that is being done on modern chipsets is now all on die. So where before it was clear where the line was with DRAM, NB, SB, GPU or CPU as being the point of failure that line is now all tangled up. The CPU has the memory controller, the CPU handles the PCIe load so if there is a problem with the ram settings and it is picked up in the IMC the CPU light comes on. Yet it is a problem that can be resolved as you have found by shifting a stick or ram. Tricky one to sort out I think. But there are heaps of very clever people who work at these kinds of things so we can but hope the do find a more fool proof method of interpreting the LEDs.

Sleep and wake is an ongoing project I am working on. And the feed back you provided will help me in that task - thanks for that. I have found so far that if certain of my settings are less that 100% stable sleep/wake will not work as expected. Again a on board CPU function. But more on that when I have finished the exercise.

Once more thanks for the very articulate reply, it makes things so much clearer and will help speed the process of problem solving along.

Cheers

[kaiserspark]

In order to get sleep issues corrected, along with all your other issues, you need to get a stable system first. Sleep will not work appropriately if your system is unstable.

I assume you mean you memory is F3-17000CL9Q-4GBZH ...a 4 x 4GB 16GB kit.
Run your CPU at OEM specs to begin.
Set your system to XMP so it reads the right SPD ROM profile on the ram. This will set the frequency to 2133 and set the appropriate voltages and ram timings. Also, as noted on the GSKILL website, set the Rampage Tweak to Mode 1 (under DRAM Tming Control).

With you memory running at XMP settings and Rampage Tweak Mode 1, run memtest and check your system for stability.
You can keep everything else on Auto as long as your not overclocking the CPU yet. If your system performs rock stable, sleep should also begin working correctly.

Thanks for you help. Indeed the memory kit is the one that you corrected. I made the XMP + Tweak Mode 1 adjustment as you mentioned (also saw it in the bdazla note) and memory is being correctly detected at 2133MHz now. No memtest errors either. I also attached the EZPLUG 2 power cable and CPU VCCSA is now running at 1.246V vs 1.186V before. Windows seems to be running stable (more usage needed) but the two main problems remain:

- Cold boot always fail to detect either one of the OCZ Vertex 3 or Velociraptor drives. A simple CTRL-ALT-DEL fixes it.

- Booting from a pendrive and then rebooting into normal hard drive OR pressing the RESET button causes the BIOS not to recognize the boot partition, which I am now able to fix by entering BIOS and enabling (if it was disabled) or disabling (if it was enabled) the Asmedia Storage OPROM. The enabled/disabled condition does not seem to have any practical effect (despite the fact that I have 2 hard drives connected to it), I just have to switch it and reboot, and it works.

- Sleep only works immediately after Windows boots. If I sleep after 1 minute of booting then it fails. Power lights blink but nothing actually shuts down. I have checked Windows power settings and they are exactly as per bdazla's post today. Looking at Windows system events nothing related comes out.

This looks weird. The sleep function is what I miss the most. I looks like some driver issue but I can't seem to pin it down.

[bdazla]

I think my issues with RAM slot selection had more to do with the RAM kits and what order I installed them. I double and tripple checked that the RAM was inserted correctly on the bench before it was powered on so i'm pretty confident the RAM was seated correctly. THe RAM size detected was correct and most of the same symptoms still occur now after moving the RAM. But that's is not to say that by seating it twice didn't clean a dirty connection or something else weird. And of course the possibility that the RAM was not seated as you can't discount anything at the end of the day.

When I installed the 2 kits I litterally installed the first kit in the four left slots and the 2nd kit in the four right slots. My thinking was that all the RAM is exactly the same and this should have no problems. After finding out the XMP only works on a single set of RAM and that some RAM come as "matched" sets I moved the RAM around so that the first set was in Slots A and then added the other set into slots B. Some RAM comes labled as RAM stick 1, RAM stick 2, RAM stick 3, etc and must be installed in that order. None of my RAM says it is a "matched" set and is not labled as RAM stick 1, RAM stick 2, RAM stick 3, etc but I thought I would take a punt anyway.

Turns out I kicked a goal that day. Yaaaayy. Even though I still get the same overclock issues on cold boot which I personally think has more to do with the Intel Speed Step and Turbo functions than anything else I was then able to select an overclock setting that stopped the issues with cold boots. I was wrapped to say the least.

If I can get the sleep to work I will do a happy dance.

As for the QVL I do understand what you are saying and don't disagree with you at all, maybe you are in facet in the same boat as the consumer purchasing these products. I don't really know. But I don't think it is fair for end users to test production products at their expense and it is very frusting that in reality this is considered the norm these days. This is by no means limited to the computer industry either.



Do you get any of the LED's light up on the board kaiserspark?

[HiVizMan]

Cheers for the reply dbazla

Go have a read here wonder if this will work for you mate?


http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread...eep-mode/page3

[HiVizMan]

Cheers for the reply dbazla

Go have a read here wonder if this will work for you mate?


http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread...eep-mode/page3

[bdazla]

No joy for me unfortunately. I had already enabled the the C1E state thinking the same thing and also enabled all the other states too.

I put all the states back to Auto with the exception of C1E which I set to Enabled but it didn't make a difference. As soon as I wake the PC the screen just comes on with a black and thats all I get.

I then change the CPU PLL voltage from Auto to 2.0875 as mine was already at 2.09 by default. I assume this may be because the system is overclocked to 4.4-4.7Ghz. Once I hard set the CPU PLL voltage I did the same test to put it to sleep and wake it up but this time I got a bright red screen instead. I lowered the CPU PLL to 1.8175 to see if that would make a difference but it still woke up with just a bright red screen.

I also thought that maybe because I have my CPU voltage setup as Offset that it could cause an issue so I manually set the CPU to 1.4V and ran the same tests but I still couldn't wake the computer. All the fans come on and the system looks ready to go but it never quite wakes up completely and displays the OS on the screen. Changing the CPU PLL voltage just did the same thing that was already happening for me except it was a bright red screen instead of black. I tried a number of combinations of the options but none seemed to work. No happy dance yet.

[HiVizMan]

Mate - just out of interest, if you were to go to F5 defaults does this problem go away?

I am starting to wonder if it could be a hardware conflict causing some of the issue here with you. I guess I will have to pull my RIVE board out and repeat my testing (been using the MIVE) of wake and sleep issues.

[bdazla]

I set the BIOS to defaults with the exception of some fan settings and set the SATA to RAID. I was able to do a warm boot and the RAM was recognised as 1600 instead of 2133 as expected. The sleep functioned worked and the wakeup function also worked. However the CPU was stuck at 1200Mhz. I tried to run prime95 to give it something to do but it was still stuck at 1200Mhz. I then shutdown the computer which then failed and I had to physically power it off.

I thought this may have been due to the RAM running at 1600 as I have observed that the system freezes previously when it is set to this speed. So I changed the BIOS to cater for the RAM and did the same test. I was able to put the computer to sleep and wake it again but the processor was still stuck at 1200Mhz and the system would not shutdown again.

I left the computer off for a while to test the cold boot issues and with the default setting and correct RAM timing the issue of overclock failed came back. I put back the overclock profile that I had previously been running and ran all the same tests again. No cold boot issues or shutdown issues occur. I can still put the computer to sleep but cannot wake it up correctly.

Overclocking and sleep has always been hit and miss I guess but it doesn't seem to work correctly in stock mode either at the moment for me. But more to the point for me, my system is unstable with the default settings and fixing the RAM setting to make it stable then produces cold boot issues. Hope that gives you some more info to work with.