Asus X99-A II Another Bios Update 1201!

Discussion in 'Processors and motherboards Intel' started by Dburgo, Oct 17, 2016.

  1. Dburgo

    Dburgo Guest

    Wow, not even a few weeks have passed and ASUS has released yet ANOTHER BIOS update for the X99-A II motherboard. I am trying these and havent noticed any real performance improvements/degradation or new features. The change log says;
    X99-A II BIOS 1201
    1. Optimize power management
    2. Improve PSU compatibility

    Same as the previous BIOS.

    Here's the link to anyone interested.
    https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99-A-II/HelpDesk_Download/
     
  2. _cTn_

    _cTn_ Master Guru

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    Thanks for the heads up, flashed it last night, unfortunately, i am still running into the same problems as before, after upgrading from bios 0401 (to anything newer), i am unable to maintain overclock over 4.0GHz on my i7-6800k, which i find rather odd, the computer simply shuts down during stress test, while on 0401 i can go to 4.2Ghz @ 1.25V no problem :/
     
  3. Dburgo

    Dburgo Guest

    [​IMG]I reverted back to 1101 because this latest set, had started giving me trouble getting into windows at my overclock and voltage. Thats really odd. What are your temps and how are you cooling it?
     
  4. _cTn_

    _cTn_ Master Guru

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    Hi, i use Corsair H110i (aio water cooler), with fans fixed on 1000rpm, after 15 minutes of stress testing the temps will rise up to around 80 deg Celsius.

    That is on the old bios with 4.2 GHz @ 1.25V, right now i am running at 4.0 Ghz @ 1.20V which results at temps around 75 deg Celsius or so.

    I really have no idea why i am getting such a poor OC results with the newer bioses, i had a longer conversation about it here:

    http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...rd_id=1&model=X99-A+II&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

    But i was never able to iron out the problem, anything above 4.0 doesn't even get through 3 mins of stress testing, machine simply shuts down. :/
     

  5. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    You are getting one of several things, thermal trip point is being hit or PSU OCP/OVP etc are tripping causing PC to shut off.

    Try setting CPU current to 140%, disable CPU thermal monitor and disable power surge protection.
     
  6. _cTn_

    _cTn_ Master Guru

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    Hi, thank you for your suggestions, i looked into it, set the current limit from auto to 140%, the power surge function was disabled already, so i left it there, but i wasn't really sure how to disable the cpu thermal monitor.

    I did fire up RealBench to test it out, 4.2 GHz @ 1.25V, shut down in less than 2 minutes into the stress test.

    I should probably provide little bit more info, so here it is:
    the PSU is EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2
    and i have an in line watt meter that i plugged between the PC and the socket, the power usage barely hits 500W and the PC shuts down.

    Does this mean my PSU simply can't handle the current draw?
    What i find most "odd" is, how can the same OC hold stable on rather old BIOS, i ran this OC for about a month with no problems.
     
  7. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    It's called Intel adaptive thermal monitor.

    PSU can be faulty, rare but possible.
    What temperatures does it reach before shutting down?

    Also, wattage readers sometimes can cause issues.
    What about the house, are the power lines/ac receptacle old?

    Have you tried higher CPU voltage? Broadwell-e sucks with scaling, not uncommon for 4.2-4.3 to require 1.4v with high input voltage(2.00v) to get even remotely stable.
     
  8. _cTn_

    _cTn_ Master Guru

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    Ill look into that "Intel adaptive thermal monitor", thank you.
    Ill also remove the wattage reader just in case.
    I live in an "older" apartment, but i haven't seen any weirdness related to power lines, i replaced couple of the circuit breakers for new ones, just in case.

    I tried 4.2 GHz @ 1.3V, computer shut down just the same.
    Regarding the temperature, it barely reached 75 deg Celsius.
    I am not really comfortable with using higher voltage, as i am pretty sure this AIO cooler won't be able to handle it.

    I just find all of this so odd, since i used the same OC with every BIOS, i expected that if the CPU is unstable, the machine would reboot, instead it simply shuts down completely.
     
  9. _cTn_

    _cTn_ Master Guru

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    So i set the CPU current to 140%, disabled the CPU thermal monitor and left the power surge protection disabled, cranked the CPU to 4.2 GHz @ 1.3V, and set the cpu cooler to maximum (noisy as hell at over 2k RPM), just to keep the temps as low as possible.

    The highest temp i saw was around 75 deg Celsius on the CPU package, the individual cores were a little bit cooler, the machine still shut down within 3 minutes of starting the stress test in RealBench. :/
     
  10. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    So when it shuts down, it is like someone pulled the plug or does the psu switch back on and boot up.

    Are there any dumps created when this happens? Check with bluescreenview
     

  11. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    Also, screenshot all relevant options inside of bios. Upload it as a zip file somewhere.
     
  12. Dburgo

    Dburgo Guest

    your 4.2 probably needs 1.35v or closer to 1.4. Set it in adaptive mode, make the offset 1.325 and change the offset to 0.025. See what happens.
     
  13. _cTn_

    _cTn_ Master Guru

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    Sorry for the long delay, busy day :(

    Regarding the shut down, it just shuts it self down (doesn't boot back up on its own, i have to turn it on manually).

    There are no dumps (at least none of them being shown in the bluescreenview)

    Here are the screenshots (i hope i took pictures of most important parts)
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31740/storage/BIOS_screenshots.ZIP

    They are shots of my stable OC, when i go to 4.2 GHz i simply change the core ratio to 42 and set additional turbo mode cpu core voltage to 1.3V

    And to "Dburgo" i don't see why it would require such a high voltage, when on the old bios it was running just fine at 4.2 Ghz @ 1.24V.

    And sadly i don't understand what you mean by "Set it in adaptive mode, make the offset 1.325 and change the offset to 0.025."
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2016
  14. Dburgo

    Dburgo Guest

    You know what? We have the same mainboard and processor. Adaptive mode basically is a setting you can find in BIOS that allows you to run at a lower voltage and offset when needed a small incremental boost or jump in voltage to keep the chip running basically. The bios you have at 0401 are not compatible with broadwell-E I think. That changed with the BIOS right before 0901. That might not be fact but I feel pretty sure about that. As for me, 0901 and 1101 have been the only bios that were 100% solid. These latest ones are good, but now on the BIOS splash screen, it wont tell me how much % the OC is, and I liked that.

    But more to your issue. TRY THIS! If you installed ALL of the software that came with the mobo disk, you should have a program by ASUS called, Dual Intelligent Processor 5. It looks like a little black circle that once you press the circle, fan settings display, or if you hit the teeeny tiny little square on the right side of it, 2 more buttons produce, and the top one will open up a plethora of quite awesome and functional programs. The window that opens will have some info in there like cpu speed, temp, core status, digi + power control etc etc.

    Now, its quite obvious we dont know why you had better results before, but now we need to build a solid baseline to reflect from. In that program hit the 5 way optimization button, (it looks like a speed gauge in a car) leave everything the way it is, and hit the red start button. Your PC will reboot, and the software will figure out what is a good stable OC for you. It may reboot quite a few times doing this, but just let it do its thing. Please report your findings as I am curious why you are not seeing better results with the OC. Just to give you a little baseline to work from, my CPU idles near 30C and maxes out at 62C even at 1.5volts. So if you have a good AIO cooling setup, you have nothing to worry about. :)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 21, 2016
  15. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    What program are you using to test?

    AVX stress testers will easily draw +100 watts over non avx stress tests. Not very realistic.
    I recommend to test for stability using prime95 v26.6. Newer p95 will use heavy AVX which will be +20c or more. There are a few other stress tests that are fine as well.

    Anyways you're most likely being a victim to bad auto settings. Looks like a majority of your stuff is set to auto(which can change from newer bios)

    Since AVX is unrealistic need to change a few things.
    AVX instruction set core ratio = 2(that should make it run -200 mhz on AVX applications, games will run at high frequency.)

    Set CPU Core voltage offset to .010(when you do this, under load voltage will be this number plus additional turbo mode, which would be 1.210 in your screenshot)

    Set your input voltage to 1.92
    Set CPU cache voltage to offset + .200(it will be 1.2v~ under load)
    CPU and DRAM SVID support = disabled
    DRAM voltage(if its 1.2v kit) set to 1.23~ to account for voltage droop.
    VCCIO CPU 1.05 voltage set to 1.1v (1.26v is high)

    Set your input voltage to 1.92 with Cpu Load line calibration to level 7.
    Set VRM switching frequency to 500, CPU power phase to extreme, dram power phase to optimized. Dram current to 120%.
    CPU and VRM spread spectrum off.

    Under CPU power management turn off CPU integrated vr fault management, set efficiency management to high performance.
    Then Max out all turbo mode parameters, just type in 999999 or something, it will change it to the highest it will take.

    Sorry for the unstructured post, short on time.
    If none of that helps, you may try running memory at default 2133.
     

  16. _cTn_

    _cTn_ Master Guru

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    I use RealBench (at least with that one the computer shuts down "reliably") so i can look for clues.

    And damn, that is a lot of settings to change, thank you, ill try to trace all of that stuff down in the BIOS to see if i can get any better results, since most of them i never tried to change.
    I will have to read a bit about them all so i won't end up destroying something with the wrong voltage settings.
     
  17. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    Everything i've listed is safe.
     
  18. _cTn_

    _cTn_ Master Guru

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    Hi, i followed your instructions, managed to find almost all settings you listed and change them (i missed "Max out all turbo mode parameters") somehow.
    But after doing this, the 4.2 GHz overclock was rock stable!

    Afterwards i started tinkering a little bit with the settings, to somewhat pinpoint which "auto" setting was causing me issues.

    I narrowed things down a bit, ended up with a rather simple setup which appears to be solid (needs more stress testing at this point, only ran RealBench stress test for about 20 minutes).

    This is what i ended up with in the end:
    CPU core ratio = 42
    CPU Input Voltage = 1.92
    CPU Core Voltage = adaptive mode, offset sign +, core voltage offset = 0.010, additional turbo mode CPU core voltage = 1.24
    CPU SVID support = disabled
    DRAM SVID support = disabled
    DRAM voltage = 1.23V
    VCCIO CPU 1.05 voltage = 1.1V

    (and i left CPU cache voltage as it was by default)

    This seems to work, i will test everything a bit more today.

    Regarding the AVX instruction set, i actually ended up needing this set on 0, since this machine is used for streaming (gaming + OBS on heavy preset) and AVX is used in x264 encoding (so it seems).

    If i missed some important settings that needs to be changed, please let me know, but either way, thank you so MUCH!

    You are the boss Agent-A01!
     

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