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Ammonia · ‎01-25-2015

Bought myself a new computer a month ago, with the following specifications:

Intel i5-4790k
Asus Maximus VII Impact
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC
OCZ Vertex II
Kingston HyperX Savage 2400 MHz 2x8 GB (HX324C11SRK2/16)
EVGA Gold rated 500W PSU (EVGA Hadron Air)

It's been running fine with the exception of an occasional crash, when I had my monitor connected to the GPU all that would happen is the monitor would disconnect and the computer would otherwise be unresponsive (but running, after about 2 minutes it would shut down).

Thinking it was a fault in the GPU, I removed it from the PC and ran off the intel graphics, but a couple of hours in it would happen again, but this time I would see more of what was happening. The first thing is the USB devices stop responding, immediately followed by the HDMI disconnecting and reconnecting over and over, I can also see the LAN connection symbol show disconnected in the windows taskbar. The PC remains unresponsive in this state until it finally shuts off after several minutes.

This problem is coupled with two other minor ones (which might help in this diagnosis?), my motherboard fails to recognize my SSD a lot of the times, and only boots into BIOS. This can happen over and over 3-5 times. Also occasionally when I turn it on from a "cold start", it starts up but immediately restarts again.

Any help would be much appreciated. (I am running the most recent BIOS)

m0bov · ‎01-25-2015

Does sound like the motherboard needs to be RMA'ed as all that seems to be related to the board. If you boot up into the bios and just leave it at the bios does it do the same?

jab383 · ‎01-25-2015

Hi Ammonia, and welcome

One retry at cold start is normal and intentional for recent Maximus MBs.

Have you tried the SSD in other Intel SATA ports? There is a BIOS adjustment Tweaker's Paradise > SATA Drive Strength that may help the SSD be recognized. Adjust the SATA Drive Strength by steps of 1 and watch out for other SATA devices being missed. The adjustment may have to step either up or down. There is some chance the crashes happen as a result of misread SSD.

I see two other possibilities for these crashes, although others may see more -- power and heat.

A 500 watt PSU is barely at the recommended rating for a GTX970. If the GPU and/or CPU are overclocked, power demand could go higher and the PSU could drop out to protect itself. This possibility is less likely since the crash also happens with the internal Intel graphics. You could also check the mains supply for steady power when one of the crashes happens.

What CPU cooler? An overheated CPU will also stop to protect itself when it reaches 100C internally. Even when running stress tests, CPU temperature should peak no higher than the 80Cs. The 70C range in games is normal for peak temperatures.

Jeff

Ammonia · ‎01-25-2015

I always knew that PSU was a bit of a gamble, especially reading somewhere that the GTX 970 could draw 42 A from the +12V rail, while the EVGA PSU can only supply 40 A on the rail. But I did the math and talked with someone about it, and concluded it would be fine. When I first build it I ran all the stress testing software I could find, keeping the GPU at 100% load for 12 hours straight. Did the same with the CPU and both combined, no issues. The PSU itself doesn't even heat up to any noticeable degree. Temperatures on both are fine, I have a Noctua NH-D9L on the CPU, keeps it idle at 20-25 C and 50-55 C on full load. The GPU do reach 75 C quite often, but only because the automatic fan control is heavy on noise reduction (20% fan speed at 75 C).

Thanks for the tip on the SSD boot issue, I'll be getting a new SSD tomorrow so hopefully it won't be an issue anymore with that one. But will keep that setting in mind.

I've simply re-flashed the BIOS yet again, reset all settings to default and restarted. If the issue continues I will try to see if it also happens in BIOS, then we'll think about an RMA.

NemesisChild · ‎01-25-2015

You at the bare minimum with PSU wattage and more than likely short amps on the +12v rail.

If it were me, I would replace that PSU with a higher wattage unit, like the HX650 or HX750.

Intel i9 10850K@ 5.3GHz
ASUS ROG Strix Z490-E
Corsair H115i Pro XT
G.Skill TridentZ@ 3600MHz CL14 2x16GB
EVGA RTX 3090 Ti FWT3 Ultra
OS: WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe M.2
Storage: WD Blue SN550 2TB NVMe M.2
EVGA SuperNova 1200 P2
ASUS ROG Strix Helios GX601

Ammonia · ‎01-26-2015

This might sound insane, but I've recreated this over 5 times now. What is causing my motherboard to crash seems to be my mobile phone (Lumia 930), whenever someone call or I call myself, and I place it near the PC the system freezes. I've done this 5 times now by calling myself from Skype. I don't know if this is the sole cause, but it definitely seems to freeze the system in the same way.

It would love to hear other people with this motherboard attempt to recreate the freeze. Bad shielding? Noise/harmonics picked up by the WiFi module? Bizarre.

EDIT: Changing the orientation of the case so that the metal panel faces the mobile phone prevents it from crashing. If there is no panel it crashes, and it there's acrylic panel it crashes as well.

Calle30 · ‎05-08-2015

I had problems with crashes in my system. Came to this thread. After reading about your mobile phone, ..... it happened to me too right now as I tried what you said.

Amazing.

Now I put my phone away and I'm going to see if the PC is stable.

Again, this is unbelievable.

Puffnstuff · ‎01-26-2015

I think that I'd create a support ticket and tell asus about this problem as they might not be aware of it. If you're having it then surely someone else has it and can't figure it out.

~~Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi~~ Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master, AMD 3900X, EVGA 360 aio, 32gb G.Skill Trident Z Neo, Samsung 970 Pro NVME 512gb, WD Black NVME 1 TB, Crucial MX500 2tb, Zotac GTX 1080 AMP!, EVGA Nu Audio, CM HAF 932

Asus Maximus VII Impact crashes