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In Reply to: RE: cMP - Gigabyte mainboard problem posted by alba63 on October 31, 2009 at 13:37:10
This problem will occur if you lower CPU voltage excessively or without sufficient “burn in”. It does not damage the motherboard. I recall Dawnrazor posted some info on this problem and its correction a short time ago; it would be worth your while to look that post up.
Essentially, you will need to reset the CMOS which will allow you to boot and re-establish your BIOS settings. (See mobo manual if you don’t know how to do this.) However, this time don’t go so far as to drop to 0.80V. Give it a week or so of use at say, 0.85V to burn in before attempting to lower CPU voltage again. Be aware that you might not be able to go below 0.80V as there seems to be some variability in what people can get to. (I have gotten down to 0.79375 @ 150MHz.)
Hope this helps.
Follow Ups:
Hey AB,
I can kind of get cics .75 v and 840mhz setting. Just not from a cold boot.
The best has been 900mhz and .85 v at cold start up so far. But that happens intermittently.
I ran it at 2.8ghz and 1.35 v for a few days and while that seemed to help, the lowest ones are still far away. ANd I did have a ceiling fan on when running 2.8ghz just in case, but still 35c was the highest temp IIRC. The top wasn't on either.
What I have noticed is that now it just seems to leave everything alone when it cant boot and resets only the
Aaaaahhhh! What a relief. Your posting is full of great info and very helpful. I checked the manual indeed and all one has to do is to short 2 pins on the Mobo with a screwdriver, then the cmos is reset.
Thank you very much indeed. I will not go lower than 0.85 for a while now. Then I try in very small steps.
Bernie
I’ve not been able to get a reliable cold boot at anything less than 200MHz and 1v, despite a couple of months of burn-in. What I can do is to use the Gigabyte EasyTune utility to reduce the voltage as low as 0.8v after I have successfully booted.
It would perhaps be nice if there was a utility that allowed conservative bios setting for a reliable cold boot and then automatically reset things to more optimum values for what we want. At shut-down the utility would restore the reliable cold boot settings.
What exactly are your components?
I have
- Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L (not "ES2L") with EIST disabled,
- ESI Juli@ soundcard, with analogue part removed (external DAC used)
- notebook HD (WD 500GB),
- 256MB RAM,
- Intel dual core E7200 with an arctic cooling blabla cooler (which is too loud).
- PSU is Earth Watts 430W (I think it is Asus). That's it.
BIOS and Windows configured as described on cics new cMP2 website.
I am not down to 0.85V which works - fortunately stable - however I haven't yet installed the modified BIOS/ firmware.
Those are the recommended components and if you use the same, it should work... I do not think the variation inside the same series is so big.
good luck
Bernie
My components are not very dissimilar from yours. The most significant difference, I suppose, is that I’ve got the GA-G31M-ES2L motherboard.
- Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L with EIST disabled
- Intel dual core E7300
- Thermalright AX-140 heatsink
- Notebook HD (Samsung 160GB),
- 1GB Kingston RAM
- Corsair HX-450 power supply
- ESI Juli@ soundcard
I made all the Windows configuration changes detailed on cics new cMP2 website and also the bios settings as far as I was able to.
I didn’t go immediately for the 256MB RAM because I wanted to preserve the ability to compare cPlay with Foobar. For the moment I’ve got 1GB.
Well I first had also the GA-G31M-ES2L and it worked with my configuration and 0.85V.
The bigger the RAM the more electricity it consumes - at least that's what I read. So 256MB would consume less than 1GB. You might try out 256.
What do you mean compare cplay with foobar? I use also other audio software, in my case J. River Media Jukebox - it sounds quite good, I could not hear a difference compared to foobar, but I do hear a difference in cplay which sounds better than Media Jukebox. In terms of useability, Media Jukebox is a Rolls Royce compared to cplay which is just a pain in the back. A lot of cue files do not work correctly with it here, it does not understand anything but WAV and flac, so for my other files I use Media Jukebox. I still run it with cMP software started...
Anyway, I think playback is possible with all those softwares when only 256MB are installed.
Whether the PSU makes a difference or not, I do not know, but I'd rather say no.
Good luck
Bernie
I used cPlay in some during some early experiments before I finally assembled my dedicated computer and I was concerned by its very basic interface, its lack of library facilities and its refusal to work with every cuesheet. I wanted to see if I could get acceptable results from Foobar once I had a good hardware setup. As it’s turned out, the sonic benefits of cPlay are rather substantial.
I’ll probably change my RAM to something smaller. I wasn’t sure if 256Mb would be ok for Foobar, so I played safe to begin with.
What I really need at the moment is to be able to boot with something better than 200Mhz and 1v.
What I have experienced is that when my pc resets bios it sometimes resets all settings (not just MIT). When I disable and reset per Cics specs then I can lower clock and voltage. Check out your bios.
What I have experienced is that when my pc resets bios it sometimes resets all settings (not just MIT). When I disable and reset per Cics specs then I can lower clock and voltage. Check out your bios.
Yes, indeed many BIOS, and also some Windows settings had to be redone. But after the first time you do that quicker than the first time....
And thanks to this forum (!) and the cMP2 HomePage and the engagement of cics I now have a dirt cheap audio PC that delivers excellent sound, better than anyting I had previously heard out of a computer...
regards
Bernie
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