Hello everyone!
I've been reading articles on this site for a fair while now, just happily attempting to gather knowledge and understanding about overclocking and such things. Recently however, after building my first PC I've run into some problems.
I purchased the components and put it all together over about 3 days, I got it running, got Windows 7 running and updated my drivers, installed utilities and ther pretty standard stuff. Not very interesting.
Heres where I started having problems: I'd read that i7920s overclock really well when coupled with a high quality motherboard, which is my reason for purchasing the Rampage 2 Extreme. I figured that if I shell out some extra dough on the mobo, I can get better value out of my base level i7920 and get i7965 like performance...without the gazillion dollar pricetag.
The R2E boasts the CPU Level Up feature, which claims that anyone can now easily and SAFELY overclock their CPU. As you may have gathered by now, I'm "pants on head" retarded when it comes to overclocking. So I toyed with the first few options of the Extreme Tweaker in the bios after a successful boot.
I set the Ai Overclock Tuner to CPU Level Up, and selected the i7965 preset, making target CPU frequency 3200Mhz (or thereabouts, it may have been at around 3192MHz). I then set the Ai Overclock Tuner to Memory Level Up and selected 1800MHz (Corsair TR3X6G1866C7GTF can apparently take 1833MHz, so I thought I was safe).
So in a nut shell: on my next boot I would have the CPU at about 3.2GHz and the memory at 1800MHz.
Only thing was, there was no next boot. I turned power on, everything was sweet, then BAM! Bluescreen of death. It was only on for 2 seconds before the PC turned off and tried to reboot, so I couldn't read the message. On the next reboot, the PC would power up, but nothing would come up on the screen. The ASUS LCD Poster thingo would state: "DET RAM" and then after that "CHECK CPU". There it would remain...forever.
In my infinite overclocking knowledge I figure that the overclock has failed, and the settings for that overclock are stored in the bios. The RE2 has 2 Bios ROMs, so I cracked my CoolerMaster HAF932 open and took the jumper which determines what bios to boot from, and put it on the pins that would let the second bios to boot. Jolly, I thought, it'll work now. Wrong. Another boot, same problem. I attached the Clear CMOS button on the R2E rear I/O panel to the mobo and try to, strangely enough: Clear the CMOS. No dice.
I then read somewhere on the ASUS forums about someone who had a slightly similiar problem, just removed the coin shaped lithium battery type thing (wtf is that anyways?) and apparently after reconnecting it, and rebooting, everything was rainbows and butterflies. This worked rather inversely for me, after a reconnect and a reboot my ears were assaulted by the prompted excessive beeping from the mobo. All the while, the ASUS Led poster displaying the same message: "CHECK CPU".
So now, I have an ill-fated feeling that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Hence why I am appealing to Overclocking's Best: the citizens of this online community!
Any thoughts on how I can resolve this horrible issue? I'd happily be content with a mild safe overclock of both CPU and possibly RAM.
(Sorry if the text wall gave you a headache)
I've been reading articles on this site for a fair while now, just happily attempting to gather knowledge and understanding about overclocking and such things. Recently however, after building my first PC I've run into some problems.
I purchased the components and put it all together over about 3 days, I got it running, got Windows 7 running and updated my drivers, installed utilities and ther pretty standard stuff. Not very interesting.
Heres where I started having problems: I'd read that i7920s overclock really well when coupled with a high quality motherboard, which is my reason for purchasing the Rampage 2 Extreme. I figured that if I shell out some extra dough on the mobo, I can get better value out of my base level i7920 and get i7965 like performance...without the gazillion dollar pricetag.
The R2E boasts the CPU Level Up feature, which claims that anyone can now easily and SAFELY overclock their CPU. As you may have gathered by now, I'm "pants on head" retarded when it comes to overclocking. So I toyed with the first few options of the Extreme Tweaker in the bios after a successful boot.
I set the Ai Overclock Tuner to CPU Level Up, and selected the i7965 preset, making target CPU frequency 3200Mhz (or thereabouts, it may have been at around 3192MHz). I then set the Ai Overclock Tuner to Memory Level Up and selected 1800MHz (Corsair TR3X6G1866C7GTF can apparently take 1833MHz, so I thought I was safe).
So in a nut shell: on my next boot I would have the CPU at about 3.2GHz and the memory at 1800MHz.
Only thing was, there was no next boot. I turned power on, everything was sweet, then BAM! Bluescreen of death. It was only on for 2 seconds before the PC turned off and tried to reboot, so I couldn't read the message. On the next reboot, the PC would power up, but nothing would come up on the screen. The ASUS LCD Poster thingo would state: "DET RAM" and then after that "CHECK CPU". There it would remain...forever.
In my infinite overclocking knowledge I figure that the overclock has failed, and the settings for that overclock are stored in the bios. The RE2 has 2 Bios ROMs, so I cracked my CoolerMaster HAF932 open and took the jumper which determines what bios to boot from, and put it on the pins that would let the second bios to boot. Jolly, I thought, it'll work now. Wrong. Another boot, same problem. I attached the Clear CMOS button on the R2E rear I/O panel to the mobo and try to, strangely enough: Clear the CMOS. No dice.
I then read somewhere on the ASUS forums about someone who had a slightly similiar problem, just removed the coin shaped lithium battery type thing (wtf is that anyways?) and apparently after reconnecting it, and rebooting, everything was rainbows and butterflies. This worked rather inversely for me, after a reconnect and a reboot my ears were assaulted by the prompted excessive beeping from the mobo. All the while, the ASUS Led poster displaying the same message: "CHECK CPU".
So now, I have an ill-fated feeling that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Hence why I am appealing to Overclocking's Best: the citizens of this online community!
Any thoughts on how I can resolve this horrible issue? I'd happily be content with a mild safe overclock of both CPU and possibly RAM.
(Sorry if the text wall gave you a headache)
