Problems with Z170m Pro4s
Printed From: ASRock.com
Category: Technical Support
Forum Name: Intel Motherboards
Forum Description: Question about ASRock Intel Motherboards
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1517
Printed Date: 24 Dec 2024 at 10:53am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Problems with Z170m Pro4s
Posted By: Claf1109
Subject: Problems with Z170m Pro4s
Date Posted: 14 Dec 2015 at 7:55pm
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Hi Guys, I just bought this motherboard to fit my new i5 6600k. I ran into a few issues while installing but updating the bios solved most of them. I'm running Windows 10 Pro after upgrading it from Windows 8.1 Pro Now i still have 2 issues that bother me : 1) RAM and XMP Profile : I bought two kits of HyperX DDR4 2x4 GB 2666 Mhz (HX426C15FBK2/8) and installed each one properly into their respective dual channel slot. But even with the bios update, the computer won't boot at all if i use the XMP profile, and i can't manage to go higher than 2400 mhz without stability issues. 2) OVerclocking the CPU : Even Though it was not easy, i managed to stabilize my 6600k at 4.6 Ghz and 1.328 Vcore under Windows 8.1. The temps were ok, it never went above 65°C But since i upgraded to Windows 10, i can't go above 4.5 ghz at the same voltage, and it requires 1.4v Vcore to work at 4.6 Ghz I followed the same overclocking process, disabled speedstep and C states, set curent limits to max and set CPu llc to 1 or 2 depending on the vcore. I manage the Vcore through the Vcore Offset setting, first trying to find a stable voltage and then going down 5mV until it gets unstable under OCCT Is there something i can try to get a little more from my setup or is it just an optimization problem with windows 10 ?
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Replies:
Posted By: Claf1109
Date Posted: 16 Dec 2015 at 6:21pm
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Hi Again, I'm still trying to get the Ram to work at its rated speed I tried a common troubleshooting procedure with ddr4 and skylake : - Reset the Bios - Only put 1 Ram stick on the motherboard and then load the XMP Profile - Up the ram voltage (1.3v), VCCSA (1.2) - I should also up the VCCIO a little but i can't find the setting in my motherboard's bios - Then, once the XMP profile is recognized, connect one stick at a time. The system is perfectly stable at 2666 mhz with 1,2, and 3 sticks in. But whatever i do, it doesn't boot with 4 So : - How can i change the VCCIO ? It seems to be fixed at 0.95 (Hwinfo64) no matter what the ram speed or the other voltage settings are. - If i can't, what can i do to make it more stable ?
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Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 16 Dec 2015 at 6:54pm
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Ok, so you have two kits of 8GB(2x4GB) First, get them sorted so that the serial numbers are lined up between the two kits. This is important! Using two consecutively serial numbered sticks place them in their proper slots per your MB manuals two stick suggestion. Use a program such as CPU-z to record what the SPD tab shows for all values. Remember, you must look at BOTH sticks SPD tab, so changing the memory slot in CPU-zs upper left is req'd. Record both sticks, all the info displayed. Does it boot? Great. Now pull those two and place aside, then insert the other two. Does it boot? Great. Now do the same as above using CPU-z. Both sticks here too! Do all four sticks display the exact same numbers from within CPU-z, row for row and column for column? < id="kpm_plugin" ="application/x-KPMPlugin">
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Posted By: Claf1109
Date Posted: 16 Dec 2015 at 11:04pm
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Ok, thanks for the help! Everything was setup in the right order. I tried your method with the first kit in slot A2 and B2: - It Boots with the XMP Profil - Every setting is exactly the same (apart from the serial number obviously) Then i did it with the second kit: - Same thing, it boots properly - Every setting is the same When i try to connect the lot - No Boot I Forgot to make a screenshot of the SPD screens of the firt kits but here is the rest :   |
Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 17 Dec 2015 at 4:03pm
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Let me get parsec's attention to help you with the IMC voltage, as that's what I think is holding you back. I'm an AMD and memory person who knows little of Intel chipsets. |
Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 17 Dec 2015 at 4:13pm
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While waiting, if you want to play some in seeing if we can get all four sticks working ......... In the pic with the four CPU-z screenies, manually set your timings to JEDEC #9 specs as listed. If it boots with these timings, next change the timings to JEDEC #8 timings. And so on till it won't boot with all four sticks. |
Posted By: Claf1109
Date Posted: 17 Dec 2015 at 5:42pm
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I do also think it is a voltage problem, but it seems Asrock didn't wan't (yet) to include the setting in my motherboard's bios. It's a shame as they say it's compatible up to 3200 mhz. I tried to fiddle with the JEDEC settings and the timings, but it didn't boot either.
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Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 12:25am
Now, keep in mind more importantly it takes a CPU that's capable of 3200 too. Simply putting 100 octane fuel in a Volkswagon isn't alone going to allow it to run 6sec 1/4 mile times. |
Claf1109 wrote:Posted By: Claf1109
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 12:57am
I get that, but i guess an I5 6600K overclocked at 4.5 Ghz is not exactly slow either. Anyways, i think i'll have to wait until the next bios update to see if there's something new. Until then, my vccio is fixed at 0.952V which seems a little low for 4 sticks of "high speed" RAM
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Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 1:07am
No. 4.5 is good. Still, asking the memory controller to keep up allthewhile using FOUR 3200 sticks puts the CPU's internal memory controller under serious stress. Unfortunately, all silicon isn't created equally. That isn't to say yours cant, just that it'll take some doing on your part to persuade it to. What settings are you using for 4.5? They're not in the screenies you posted. EDITED: silicon wardog, not silicone |
Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 1:16am
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Here's a ROG guide but you should still be able to interpret what the differences are between you board and the board that the guide is using. http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?53306-DDR4-3000-Setup-Guide-For-Rampage-V-Extreme" rel="nofollow - http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?53306-DDR4-3000-Setup-Guide-For-Rampage-V-Extreme |
Posted By: Claf1109
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 1:22am
After some additional BCLK tweaking, at full load, i get a 1.296 Vcore and a 1.315 VID. It passed both 6hours of OCCT and ~8hours of X264(16T]. Using the same method i managed to push up to 4.6 with 1.328 Vcore and 1.345 VID, but the max temps were hitting 75°C, and I thought it was maybe a bit too much on a long term basis. I also managed to boot an "almost" stable 4.7 with 1.376 Vcore but it didn't pass the overnight test. |
Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 3:01am
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Meh, IMO all those overnight stress tests aren't needed and may in fact be harmful or at least somewhat harmful to the MB and certainly to your CPU. If this/was a server I might say sure, but even then not under those amounts of time. |
Posted By: Claf1109
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 3:26am
Thanks for the link, another thing i learned in the process of overclocking My CPU & RAM :-) But in my case, there's not much i can do. It says to up the VCCSA 1 mV at a time. In the Z170M Pro4s Bios, there's only 2 VCCSA settings : 1.05 and 1.20. As for the overnight tests, i wanted to be cautious as it was my first overclock. I didn't use softwares such as Prime that put (in my opinion) way too much pressure on the machine. But since i tend to do really long gaming sessions when i get a day off (sometimes between 12 and 16 hours) i thought it was worth the time and effort Anyways 4.5 is more than enough right now to do everything i want. I get a passmark score of about 10.000, which is at the same level as a "base" 4770k.
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Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 3:55am
Yea, that's common on mATX boards, regardless of manufacturer. Lack of full spread of settings available. Are you running the latest BIOS? |
Posted By: Claf1109
Date Posted: 18 Dec 2015 at 4:02am
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i started with the latest stable bios : 2.20 But i saw that beta bios 2.22 was supposed to help with Ram overclocking. So I flashed it, but no improvement so far. I saw yesterday that a new beta bios (2.23) was out, but I think i'll pass on that one and wait for the next stable one. It's only supposed to allow BCLK overclocking for non-K processors.
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Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 19 Dec 2015 at 2:57am
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Claf1109, don't worry about increasing the voltage beyond 1.2V if you are using two DIMMs per channel. Intel has always been very (overly) conservative with voltages, particularly with memory. I'm using two 4GB G.SKILL Trident Z DIMMs rated at 3200, whose XMP profile sets the memory voltage to 1.35V, in my ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ board, with an i5-6600K at 4.4GHz. I can OC that memory to 3800 manually, and the memory voltage is now at... 1.384V. Your memory is listed in your board's Memory Support list, using two DIMMs per channel. I'm glad to see you are using HWiNFO, can you see your memory voltage in the section with all the voltage data? If so, is it 1.2V? Do you have a System Agent (VCCSA) voltage setting in your board's UEFI/BIOS? Do you see that voltage in HWiNFO? You're using two different two-DIMM kits of your HyperX memory. While I have had good luck mixing different kits of Crucial DDR4 memory on my X99 board, it is not a given that unmatched kits of memory will work well together. DDR3 memory is well known to be finicky about mixing kits of the same memory, if the DIMMs were not a matched set. An interesting test would be just using two DIMMs, one in each channel, and try to OC it to the next level. If that fails to boot, that would indicate you don't have any overhead in the memory's ability to OC. That also indicates using four DIMMs will need voltage tweaks. My suggestions for using all four DIMMs are:
Your 4.6GHz OC is 1.1GHz over the base clock of 3.5GHz for our CPU. That is a great OC, expecting more may not be realistic. What CPU cooler are you using? Skylake processors run cooler than earlier processor in my experience. Skylake processors seem to be more robust regarding the VCore, the stock VID is much higher than Haswell processors. A VCore of 1.4V for Skylake is not excessive for a high OC, given what I have seen other users post on various forums. The change with Win 10 is odd, I use Win 10 and my 4.4GHz OC is stable at 1.264V. All CPUs are different, you may have had bad luck with the "silicon lottery". But a 4.6GHz OC is certainly not bad at all, it's very good. Expecting more with your board and CPU cooler may be not practical. What PSU are you using? ------------- http://valid.x86.fr/48rujh" rel="nofollow"> 
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Posted By: Claf1109
Date Posted: 19 Dec 2015 at 7:45am
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Hi, Lots of questions to answer ! I'll do my best to remember the settings as i'm working the night shift and don't have access to my computer.
If i use the XMP profile, it automatically sets the voltage to 1.250 in the bios. In Hwinfo, i get 1.264 If i use profiles available in the "DRAM tweaker" it sets the voltage to 1.20 and i get 1.216 in Hwinfo
I do have have a VCCSA setting in the bios, with only two possible choices : 1.05 & 1.20 Volts. In Hwinfo, i get 1.072, but i don't remember the result of the 1.2 setting in hwinfo.
I tried that earlier today while i was following the recommandations of Asrock support to solve my problems. I managed to boot at 2800 mhz and 1.25 voltage. I didn't test for stability but i didn't get any error message or glitches. It seemed manageable. I still have to do the same thing with the other kit to see if there's a limitation on that side, but both booted with no problem at 2666 mhz.
As i mentionned, 1.25 is already the auto setting with the XMP profile, but it doesn't help. I've also tried 1.30 a few time, but never pushed to 1.35. As for the step by step setting, the bios only allows me to make 50mV bumps at a time.
This is also something I already tried in combination with a higher ram voltage. Since i don't have much choice, i set it directly to 1.2V
If i remember Well, that's what happens when i enable the XMP profile, but i'm not 100% certain so i'll have to check again.
I don't have a setting in the bios, but i remember getting the same voltage as you in HWinfo.
Indeed, it does not at the moment. But i'm not giving up on ASRock yet 
I'm perfectly aware of that. It's my first overclock and at the end of the day, i'm really happy with the result. It took me endless hours of reading, tweaking in the bios, and falling asleep in front of stress tests.
I'm using an Enermax Liqmax II 120 AIO. Honestly i'm really glad i went with that one. I got it for only 60 Euro and it's perfect in terms of bang for the buck.
Yeah i read that too. I also read in an Intel release note that they could guarantee stability up to 1.52V. Still, these are scary numbers to me.
Since the first post, i've done some serious tweaking, and i managed to get really close to what i managed to achieve under Windows 8.1. I did have to fiddle with both the multiplier and the BCLK. Which did not help with the ram stability at first. But i ended up hitting the Sweet Spot at 1.296 Vcore for 4.5ghz, and 1.328 Vcore for 4.582 Ghz (LLC level 1 in both cases) Both are super stable, and i don't think i'm going to push higher as i have no real necessity for it. Plus, as you mentionned, i don't want to stress the motherboard too much.
I'm using a Be Quiet! Pure Power L8 630 CM. We'll see in the long run, but at the moment it's enough to cover both my 6600k and my r9 380 with a little headroom. It's really silent. The cables don't look great (a bit too colourful for my taste) and the GPU cables are quite short, but it's not a problem in my mATX build. |