Computer Issues

Toxxulian_sl said:

So I've been getting a random bsod lately

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What OS are you running? And which service pack?

Do you have MS updates installing automatically all the time?

How long has this been an issue? Have you made any hardware changes recently?

I believe I fixed it. Haven't gotten a bsod in the last three days, I lowered my OC and that seems to have fixed it. Not sure exactly why it started up, though. Had been running this set up for a month or so without any issue.

Toxxulian_sl said:

I believe I fixed it. Haven't gotten a bsod in the last three days, I lowered my OC and that seems to have fixed it. Not sure exactly why it started up, though. Had been running this set up for a month or so without any issue.

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Ambient temperature could have changed enough to affect stability, or fan performance changed or something. Or if you're really pushing voltage and temps, you could literally be wearing out your components.

Built a new PC and I can't get the video card to work in the PCI-E 3.0 slot. I'm assuming the slot on the motherboard is bad, but I want to make sure I'm not forgetting anything before I RMA it.

The power supply is fine (550w, something like 530 to the 12v rail).

Motherboard: ASRock Z75 Pro3
Video Card: HIS Radeon 7850

Basically, everything on the motherboard works with onboard video. Video card has a 6 pin connector, and with power on the fan spins. DVI cable is known good. Powering on with the DVI connected, I don't get any signal in the BIOS, and Windows doesn't show anything in device manager. BIOS is set for PCI-E to be the default input (I also tried changing it to PCI and nothing still). I also tried putting the video card in a PCI 2.0 slot and it worked. I feel like I'm missing a jumper or some kind of setting somewhere, but I have no clue. The 2.0 slot is really close to the bottom of the motherboard (and case) so it's going to get shit air flow. It's also blowing directly onto my wireless card. Plus, I don't want a half working motherboard.

The final weird thing is that I connected my old video card (Radeon 4830) in the 3.0 slot and it worked for a little bit before conflicts with the onboard made it stop working and I just got frustrated and took it back out.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know!

Definitely do a bios update if you haven't already. I had a ton of issues with my ASRock motherboard until I updated the bios, but it's been flawless ever since I updated it.

Companies really aren't harnessing PCIE3.0 yet, you most likely won't see any difference at all - I know, I write code for it. That said, update the BIOS and see if that fixes it and if not definitely RMA it.

I've updated the BIOS. I actually found something last night about Z77 boards and 7850's, and it sounds like you may have to run it as a 2.0 for it to work. I'm not really sure what to do with that information, since that means I'll have to hope that by the time I need/want actual 3.0 support that they'll have fixed it, or I'll have to get a different MB. But I'll try switching it after I get off work to see how that goes.

Basically, 3.0 won't be any better than 2.0 unless you're gaming at like 2560x1440 or above in resolution, you don't hit any restrictions with 2.0 bandwith until you get to REALLY high resolutions. And even at 2560x1440, you're only looking at maybe a 5% performance gain, if that, depending on the card.

Really 3.0 is there as something we might actually need 5 years from now, it does almost nothing with current common hardware configurations and what 99% of people do with their computers today.

Here are some benchmarks for reference:




Basically, I wouldn't really be bothered about running as 2.0. You'll probably have an entirely new PC or at least video card by the time 3.0 makes any significant difference several years from now.

Well, that's good to hear. And that worked. The BIOS (newest only) has an option to run the slot as "Gen 1," Gen 2," and "Gen 3." Gen 2 works. Appreciate the help!

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Do you have the newest bios version for your ASRock motherboard? I had all sorts of weird crash/lockup/reboot issues on my ASRock(not the same model as yours though) until I did a bios update. It was sketchy as hell out of the box with the default bios(even though I just bought it new 2 months ago, you'd think it would have had a fairly recent bios already installed, but no), but I love it now that it's updated.

Geez, that's almost the identical system to the one I just talked about a couple posts up. In case you didn't see what I did (even though it seems like a different issue), newest BIOS, and set the graphics card to Gen 2 (which is PCI 2.0). Haven't had any issues since making that change.

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Just download the Windows automatic bios flash from their site:

http://www.asrock.com/MB/overview.as...del=Z75%20Pro3

Download program
Run .exe
sit back and wait while your computer reboots and the bios updates, easy as can be.

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Alkorin_sl said:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Chances are the only thing you're doing is adding support for CPUs you don't have.

Read the BIOS update revision's change log, and if none of the fixes or additions apply to you, there's no reason to do the update. Granted, it's very unlikely that anything will go wrong when flashing, especially on today's models of motherboard -- they usually have a backup ROM just in case -- but again, if the new BIOS version doesn't give you anything you need, why bother?

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Just want to add that, for my Gigabyte motherboards at least, if you are moving from a traditional BIOS to a UEFI BIOS that it needed to be done from a dos boot disk, rather than from the OS or built-in BIOS update utility. Windows also required me to reauthorize my copy.