I have been flying with my current machine for about five four years now. It is an Asus p8z68-v MB with an Intel i5 SB2600 Gpu, overclocked to 4.6Ghz with watercooling, separate SSD drives and a GTX 770 4Gb card. For some time now I have been experiencing the odd freeze and blue screen. It's a bummer because up until about 6 months ago it was as stable as a rock and I was experiencing little or no issues such as these. Recently it has become more frequent, and this week I was on a flight and the whole sim began to stutter dreadfully and drop frames into single figures. Then on another flight the whole sim just froze. After rebooting I noticed that the overclock had returned to the default of 3.3Ghz. This is very strange as I have not made any such changes. I then decided to go into the bios. This proved impossible as I could not access the bios in the normal way by hitting delete on startup. This has always worked in the past. Now I have to persist to actually get the PC to start. The entire machine seems to be getting worse and worse to the point now where I cannot boot into Windows. It has been suggested to me by my computer guru that he suspects the motherboard has taken a dive. Can anyone offer an opinion?

 

If it appears the MB is at fault, then I have two options, replace the current setup with like for like, or upgrade to a different and improved MB and CPU. If I do the latter, is there any way of moving my Acronis backup of Windows and FSX back onto a brand new Windows install? Or will I have to start afresh? Which if that is the case I may consider calling it a day rather than spend 3-4 weeks of reinstalling!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Symptoms like this can have many causes, so difficult to be definitive. As usual it's a process of elimination.

 

It must be remembered though that it's not unusual for an overclock to become unstable in time. It may have been a rock solid overclock initially, but that doesn't mean it is now. For that reason, I would reset the CMOS. Then see if you can access the BIOS. If you can, then leave the system with no overclock and test.

 

The usual checks should be applied. CPU temp under load, GPU temp under load, PSU tested with a PSU tester or multimeter, hard drives checked with something like Crystal Disk Info, trying one stick of RAM at a time and in different slots. Check motherboard for ant loose connections and for any dodgy looking capacitors. Check PSU cables, especially the ATX cable for scorched pins.

 

If the sim dropped to low frame rate then it may have been due to the CPU throttling back, Freezing can occur for the same reason, so.... do check your CPU temp under load!

Howard I just went through a very similar ordeal where my OC stopped working and all sorts of blue screen dramas . I eventually asked for advice at the ROG forums and was told to clear the CMOS memory on the actual mobo and then reflash the bios and it worked

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/131623/how-to-clear-your-computers-cmos-to-reset-bios-settings/

 

page 2 of your mobo manual

 

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z68V/HelpDesk_Manual/

 

edit

Just saw martin above posted the same

I had a similar story after 2 years of stability on a OC'd processor : cpu started to overheat.

Removed ventirad, cleaned processor with nail polish remover, put some new paste and mounted everything back in order, and voilà !

 

Looks like your cpu has overheated, or has lost OC stability over time. That happens !

If I were you,I'd slow the OC a bit to the 4.3-4.4 range and run some tests again. If it gets stable, chances are your processor is getting old. I know my 3820 can't OC as fast as it used to.

 

I noticed that the overclock had returned to the default of 3.3Ghz. This is very strange as I have not made any such changes.

 

Actually that is a safety feature when processor is unstable.

Most if not all BIOS does that to allow the system to boot again when processor is unstable.

What sort of CPU temperatures are you getting? High temps can cause processor throttling and other intermittent problems. If checking the CPU cooler/fans and re-seating it on the CPU doesn't help, it may be worth looking at the PSU. The components in power supplies do deteriorate over time and can cause many seemingly unrelated problems even with good quality units.

Thanks for all the advice fellas, very much appreciated. I have to admit that I too was thinking it may be the CPU. I have already reset the CMOS manually, but at the moment it still refuses to boot into the BIOS.  ???

Thanks for all the advice fellas, very much appreciated. I have to admit that I too was thinking it may be the CPU. I have already reset the CMOS manually, but at the moment it still refuses to boot into the BIOS.  ???

 

 

EDIT. Yup, stuck here with the darn thing refusing to boot into BIOS. I have tried the CMOS button and also removing the small lithium battery.

You probably know but the PC should be off at the wall, and the CMOS button pressed for 5-10 seconds. I would go for 10.

Thanks Martin. Looks like I may have found the culprit. I discovered by a search on the web that it could have been the keyboard. After trying a  different keyboard in a different usb port, it allowed me to enter the BIOS! Clearly there was a fault with it. I was banging away time after time on the del button with nothing happening! I have now gone into the OC part of the BIOS and changed the OC from 4.6 down to 4.4. The voltage is left as it was and tomorrow I will do some temp tests. Any opinions fellas?

I still think that the CPU/cooler (temperature, re-seat) then PSU is the way to go.

Yup been there some older motherboards require serial keyboard to get in - real pain - glad those days are over 

Some thermal pastes tend to dry up. I've seen it several times. I would try that first.

 

Hopefully you aren't starting to suffer from electromigration, if it is your OC will get less and less and eventually you will not be able to use the CPU anymore even at stock speeds. 

I've seen my Asus mobo reset its CPU and RAM settings if it hit difficulty during the POST of the bios.  For me this happened when I goofed up on my ram speed; all clocks got set to default.  Just for completeness, you might consider running a memory diag too.  Windows 7 has a built in ram test, or use memtest86 to really wring out any ram issues.

 

Something else to toss out there:  with a whole new build it may be possible to boot it using your old system's boot drive.  I've done that as an accident.  I put an old winXP system drive into a totally new build to pull some files off and inadvertently booted the new system with it.  It seem to work fine, I had not seen that desktop in several months.  The only issue was windows was unhappy with the license and I had only a limited number of days to fix it.  The major surprise was that the winXP computer was an AMD 4200+ X2 and the new an intel i7 860.  I didn't bother pushing it any with new drivers but I don't see why that would not be possible.  If something like that could really work in the long run, your currently existing FSX drive(s) could be mounted with their original letters and ta-da...every is there as you left it, ready to use, without any reinstall.  If anyone has good darts to throw at this please do...I want to know about this as well.

Interesting. Thanks for all the help and advice fellas, appreciated.

That's great news Howard. May have been as I said perhaps, simply an overclock that became unstable over time. I've seen it before. Sometimes when you are already on the edge of stability and don't realise it. A minor reduction in the CPU's capabilities, a natural factor as a CPU ages, nudges the CPU into an unstable state. A good reason why Five Way Optimisation from Asus adds a tad more voltage than purely a stable voltage.

 

I would reset everything to default. Absolutely no overclock. Then run something like ROG RealBence to test for stability at stock settings. As most of us that responded have said, check the CPU temp under load, just in case there was a throttling issue at play.

 

If all good, then rethink your overclock, taking the same steps you would with any overclock.