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UnknownEngineer · ‎10-03-2015

I have had quite a wide arrangement of issues with my system, I am not quite sure what is causing it, mobo, CPU, OS?
Specs.
Maximus VIII Ranger (previous BIOS 0401, current 0801)
6700K @4.0GHz (underclocked by 200Mhz, still getting issues) temps 68c under gaming load
16GB Crucial Ballistix 2x8 @2400Mhz (using XMP profile)
GPU (if that matters) GTX 970 Gigabyte G1 @idk varies (undercloked by ~120Mhz from OCguruII) temps 75c under gaming load
OS Win 10, upgraded from Win 7 (deleted win 7 files already)

Let me know if other details are needed.

Here's the list of issues.
1. My entire system will some times freeze, mostly happens under load but it recently happened on while I was watching a Youtube video. Audio will hang, this usually gives me quite a scare as it is usually louder than usual. I don't see the HDD led blink at all when this happens so I just turn the PC off, event viewer only shows an unexpected power-loss event. Is this caused by the OS screwing up, or is it something else?

2. Audio clipping randomly, regardless of what I am doing, will happen when gaming, or listening to music on groove music (local), or google chrome. May or may not happen, is happening as I am typing and listening to music on Youtube.

3. Possibly unrelated, I have also been unable to install any Linux distro on the system, regardless of UEFI settings I will not be able to boot into the installation. Only booting on a USB works, however the on-board audio device isn't detected and I get odd graphical issues while booting, but not after.

Any help is appreciated, I just want these problems solved, I no longer care how. These issues have been bothering me since I built the PC roughly a month ago.

salman31 · ‎10-03-2015

There is a new bios i.e 0905, you can try to see whether your problems will be resolved.

UnknownEngineer · ‎10-03-2015

salman31 wrote:
There is a new bios i.e 0905, you can try to see whether your problems will be resolved.

The last BIOS update didn't fix it but I'll try the new BIOS tomorrow, I am going to go to sleep soon and would rather do this when I have time to do everything in one go.

I was able to temporarily fix my audio issue by restarting my OS, task manager told me that I had an uptime of 1day and 17 hours (how can I make windows actually shut-down?), even turning off the PSU for a while didn't fix that. I had to choose restart from Win 10.
I still had another freeze as I was playing Arma 3, after that though. It isn't even almost daily, this sometimes happens several times a day.

I am still not quite sure if this is a hardware or driver issue.

Adampvp · ‎10-08-2015

Hey, iv had an identical issue, albeit with slightly different specs (but the same Mobo).

My specs:
Windows 10 pro
Core i7 6700k processor
Asus Maximus Ranger VIII z170 motherboard
Strix R9 Fury graphics card
850 evo ssd 500gb
Corsair HX1000i Power Supply
32gb Crucial Ballistix sport ddr4 ram

For me a OS reinstall fixed it... Until i installed aisuite, then crashes returned. Even after uninstalling it and restoring stock processor settings in bios.

I have since done another reinstall.. Had one freeze and subsequently sfc /scannow fixed 1 error. Since then it has been completely stable.

Im pretty sure it is a driver issue/conflict considering I am completely stable following a reinstall.

If you find some sort of fix or identify the issue, let me know!

My advice to you:
Do a fresh install of windows, get motherboard drivers only (not the asus utilities), then use DDU to remove graphics drivers and do a fresh install using latest drivers

Best of luck, hopefully future driver updates fix this issue

UnknownEngineer · ‎10-08-2015

Adampvp wrote:
Hey, iv had an identical issue, albeit with slightly different specs (but the same Mobo).

My specs:
Windows 10 pro
Core i7 6700k processor
Asus Maximus Ranger VIII z170 motherboard
Strix R9 Fury graphics card
850 evo ssd 500gb
Corsair HX1000i Power Supply
32gb Crucial Ballistix sport ddr4 ram

For me a OS reinstall fixed it... Until i installed aisuite, then crashes returned. Even after uninstalling it and restoring stock processor settings in bios.

I have since done another reinstall.. Had one freeze and subsequently sfc /scannow fixed 1 error. Since then it has been completely stable.

Im pretty sure it is a driver issue/conflict considering I am completely stable following a reinstall.

If you find some sort of fix or identify the issue, let me know!

My advice to you:
Do a fresh install of windows, get motherboard drivers only (not the asus utilities), then use DDU to remove graphics drivers and do a fresh install using latest drivers

Best of luck, hopefully future driver updates fix this issue

I am now running the 0905 BIOS, haven't tested properly yet for crashes but I did notice some audio clipping, even with sonic studio effects disabled. I really do not want to do a reinstall of Win10, I am not exactly sure how to reactivate it.
I'll check support and see if any newer drivers are available that might fix this, I just cannot understand how the drivers weren't checked for this.

Is there any way to notify Asus about the issue? So that they might fix their drivers/aisuite ASAP, I was already on the verge of doing an RMA, and if that would not have worked I would have just sold this mobo for a MSI/Gigabyte one.

EDIT: I just remembered that I heard something about a windows update failing to automatically download, "kb3087040-x64" is the update in question. I have it downloaded and will try installing that manually.
As I was typing I noticed that another update failed to download "Cumulative Update for Windows 10 for x64-based Systems (KB3093266) - Error 0x80200056", will do the same thing to that as well as downloading every relevant thing from the Asus website, will report back when done.

zalmoxis12000 · ‎11-28-2015

UnknownEngineer wrote:
I am now running the 0905 BIOS, haven't tested properly yet for crashes but I did notice some audio clipping, even with sonic studio effects disabled. I really do not want to do a reinstall of Win10, I am not exactly sure how to reactivate it.
I'll check support and see if any newer drivers are available that might fix this,

Where did you get this version of BIOS?

UnknownEngineer · ‎11-29-2015

zalmoxis12000 wrote:
Where did you get this version of BIOS?

I mistyped, I meant 1001, still had 2 crashes after increasing VCCIO to and System agent voltage to 1.2V.
I have now increased my ram voltage to 1.25 in addition to that while maintaining the 16 16 40 timings and other voltage changes.

Tech syndicate had a video on skylake overcloking, they mentioned using the RAM slots furthest away from the CPU to get more relaxed timings, I'll try that if this doesn't work.

Adampvp · ‎11-29-2015

UnknownEngineer wrote:
I mistyped, I meant 1001, still had 2 crashes after increasing VCCIO to and System agent voltage to 1.2V.
I have now increased my ram voltage to 1.25 in addition to that while maintaining the 16 16 40 timings and other voltage changes.

Tech syndicate had a video on skylake overcloking, they mentioned using the RAM slots furthest away from the CPU to get more relaxed timings, I'll try that if this doesn't work.

Hello, I have been stable 10 days (pc on 15 hrs a day) now with 16-16-40 timings and 1.25 dram voltage. i've put vccio and system agent to auto as they seemed to have no effect.

UnknownEngineer · ‎12-04-2015

Yeah.... I just had another crash, 2 days after setting the dram voltages to 1.25, I had set VCCIO and System agent to auto as well because I was confident that this would fix my issue.
FML

Adampvp · ‎10-08-2015

Just noticed we have the same ram (I have 2 16gb kits). Had lots of error 55s during setup. Perhaps it is causing issues.

Im sure my ram is good however as it passed numerous memtest86 runs.

Maximus VIII Ranger troubleshooting, audio clipping and system freezes