GA-P55M-UD2 i7 860 K Panics after 24 hr shut down

[homesnake]

another KP after BIOS flash last night

yea I have a good working copy of win 7 which I used to apply bios updates - I was thinking the same thing last night, if it's a problem withe the board/bios it should affect another OS negatively as well correct? I will leave it over night and then boot just the windows disk and see what happens. If it crashes (in the morning) I will be relieved, because then I'll know it is hardware issues, if however it keeps working - what does that mean? windows is more tolerant or hardware issues?

I will probably end up buying a new P55M-UD4 just to test with as this UD2 is the only P55 unit I have to work with right now.

there's a light at the end of this hackintosh tunnel, I'm just not seeing it yet

 

[humph]

Are you able to see/get any tell-tales on what the KP may be related to, in the logs?

(Crash Reporter, Panic Reporter)

Even if is h/w related, might give some indications of the issue (not that would necessarily change stuff w.r.t RMA).

 

[homesnake]

thank you for the tip, I managed to find the crash logs and a log for a crash (can't remember what it was about exactly, something to do with the fresh install) but for some reason there is no listing for the KP that occurred this morning before I went to work - it shows the shutdown the night before and when I powered up this afternoon (after booting from iboot, fixing permissions etc so that booting was possible)

just to clarify - the panic this morning wasn't recorded.



I couldn't find a "panic report" but from what I understand it should be in the same area as the other logs http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2546

I will take a picture of the next KP tomorrow morning since I am fairly certain this will happen again - at least it's consistently reproducible

 

[homesnake]

oh forgot to mention - yes windows was a bit flaky - explorer crashed about 20 after I booted up - maybe this is pointing to hardware issues as suspected.

 

[humph]

Ah yeah, a really bad panic might prevent system from logging, I guess.
Here's where I see my panics that required a hard rest. (You'll see it's old...caused by a bad kext that I uninstalled once I knew about it):
Panic.tiff
Also, account needs admin status to see some of the logs (but I think, when they are present, if normal user, you just see greyed-out list on left and no details, rather than no entry).

 

[homesnake]

that's good info thanks. I run as admin, and they weren't there so I think the KP just wasn't logged.

I ran windows for a while last night after another couple reboots and it seemed OK ???.

I cleared the CMOS again and set up the defaults in the BIOS as per tony's guide, booted back into OSX, fixed permissions and as usual, and the machine again seemed just fine. deep sleep etc worked fine.

I almost had a heart attack when it booted up this morning, but it quickly became unstable- itunes crashed, then safari (all within 5 minutes of booting). powered down.

on restart managed to snap a pic before I ran out the door to go to work:

I will check the logs when I get home and see if there is something there this time as the photo is incomplete obviously.

I think I'll be moving to a different board, probably a UD4P, and see if my luck improves. Anyone have any hints on dealing with gigabyte RMA's? It's going to be painful isn't it?

 

[humph]

I'm not a programmer or IT person or anything expert like that, so consider this with the it probably deserves...

Interesting that right at the top there it's saying ..swap_HFS+BTInternalNo(de?).

Wonder if that means it all starts going pear-shaped due to swap memory (on disk?), bad image or something related to actual memory?
Run memtest perhaps, to rule out RAM issues.
Repartition, reformat disk, write zeros (erase) just in case bad blocks.. reinstall.

Only thing I know about "BT" is means Bluetooth, but surely its nothing to do with that.

 

[homesnake]

yea actually when I was first buying all the bits and pieces for this build in my haste I bought triple channel ram, and had a bunch of issues related to ram so I ended up taking it back and getting ram that is on the gigabyte approved ram list for this board, and did a couple overnight tests with memtest in a windows 7 partition and was satisfied with it...but then
..I was just checking out some newegg customer comments on the UD4 version and gigabyte had responded to one concern:

Other Thoughts: Thanks for your posts! Since I am planning to build my HPC arround the GA-P55M-UD4, I was worried that the memory modules I choose would cause me troubles described here. I asked Gygabite techsupport to provide a feedback and here thier reply:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
to resolve problem on forum, just adjust memory voltage match in bios.
Mother board bios memory voltage setting is base on 1.5v (default voltage), please check current model memory label for voltage spec information, if it's higher then 1.5v go in bios under M/B intelligent tweaker, on memory voltage control item adjust memory voltage to match. For example: current memory is 1.7v go in bios M/B intelligent tweaker on DDR3 voltage control item change from 1.5v to 1.7v, this will match the current model memory voltage spec, system will work stable.

I might try what the gigabyte rep here says, after I run memtest overnight tonight.

this may be an nonissue as I know this post is months old and gigabyte has updated their BIOS to deal with memory compatability issues since then.

one other question on a different track - if I update my BIOS to f9f can I still use the DSDT from my generic gigabeast UD2 install?

thanks for all the comments guys BTW

 

[humph]

In reverse order...

F9f -
Dont go there, I'd say. Tried it, could not extract a valid DSDT.

DSDT -
Whilst might be OK to use same by luck, there could be differences in the things that matter, so to be safe always should use a DSDT that's based on the specific BIOS version.

MOST IMPORTANT LAST:
Memory Voltage Vddq (a.k.a VDIMM/DDR voltage)- If I read the Intel i5 750/i7 8XX specs right, max voltage for memory is 1.575V.
Well, thats the max spec voltage. Obviously overclockers increase it. BUT.

..according to specs this next value should be less, but even according to some overclock stuff i've read, it should NEVER be more than 0.5V above Vtt.
(Vtt a.k.a. “CPU VTTâ€, “QPI/VTTâ€, or “QPI/DRAMâ€, but I think is QPI Voltage in our BIOS).
... Vtt/QPI Intel spec is between 1.045V and 1.155V..probably means it's default of 1.15V on Gigbyte BIOS. (again overclockers may set higher..). Actually there's a lower spec also 1.023V to 1.117V..depending on how it's measured.

Means:
(a) If memory voltage is 1.7V, that's only ever OK if Vtt/QPI is increased to >1.2V; and you dont want to be doing that without it being a part of a planned/careful o/c.
(b) If your Vtt/QPI is 1.15V in BIOS, then NEVER put Memory/DDR voltage above 1.65V.

In fact, typically if you want to increase DDR voltage for stability, you'd do it in very small increments and retest at each stage to be sure to use the lowest stable figure (ie: 1.58V better than 1.60V) to avoid excessive electrical stress on devices.

Soures:
1. http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-guide-overclock-core-i3-i5-i7/
2. Intel® Core™™ i7-800 and i5-700 Desktop Processor Series Datasheet –– Volume 1

P.S. Just noticed your sig says RAM spec 1,5V; if correct, then should not be needing to increase DDR voltage anyway to gain stability..

 

[homesnake]

wow - it's going to take me some time to absorb all that, thanks for the links and your breakdown.

I found a thread on the Gskill forum referencing the UD2 and the exact ram sticks I purchased.

http://gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=2005&page=3

the Gskill admin makes a suggestion (last post) that falls within the guidelines you quoted re: CPU Vcore in relation to QPI/VTT voltage ie:

"it should NEVER be more than 0.5V above Vtt"

I am running on one ram stick right now, will do some more testing on the ram as maybe I was too confident of it even though it is listed on the gigabyte compatability page and would seem to be a safe choice for this board.

:?