ASUS Sabertooth X99 Problem

mothhive

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So a year ago I built a PC with the following specs:

Gigabyte GA-X99-Gaming 5P
Intel Core i7 5960X @ 4.25ghz 1.275v
NZXT Kraken X61 All-In-One Liquid Cooling Solution
16GB (4x4GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX PC3-24000 (3000) CAS 15-17-17-35 CMK16GX4M4B3000C15
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980Ti G1 Gaming
500GB Samsung 850 EVO
TB Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 7200
860W Corsair AX860

Everything worked perfectly for a while, but after a few months sometimes my PC would go into a boot loop when I turned it on. Looking online, this seems to be a big problem with Gigabyte X99 motherboards. It would normally only reset a few times before working again and being fine for a few weeks. As time went on, this became more common place and took more resets to fix. Everytime Gigabyte released a new BIOS, I would update to it in the hopes it would solve the problem permanently, tried various BIOS settings, etc, but unfortunately it did not seem to help. For the past month or 2 I had actually had no problems whatsoever and thought I had managed to fix it somehow, but a week ago the boot loop returned and did not end. For a few days I tried everything I could think of, tried suggestions people gave others with the same problem, but nothing I tried helped and I eventually decided to replace the motherboard with a non Gigabyte one and hope for the best.

Yesterday my new ASUS Sabertooth X99 arrived and I hooked everything up, turned on the PC, the fans started going, lights came on, but then nothing would appear on my monitor. The DRAM led remained on, indicating a problem with the RAM, and when I plugged my phone into the TUF Detective slot the post code that came up was 0053 - Detect Memory. I tried the MemOK! button, pressing it instantly reset the PC (was under the impression I was meant to hold it and that the test would just start) but then the DRAM light started to flash, and the post code changed to 00B6 - MemOK! Tuning. Unfortunately, after a while the light would become solid again and the mesage on TUF Detective would say MemOK! Fail.

I've tried resetting the CMOS, updating the BIOS to the latest version (1901 updated to 3101), removing all but one stick of RAM then trying it in each of the slots, etc, then using the MemOK! to test it each time, but it always failed. Looking online, I found a reviewer of the board having the same trouble (link) and they also had 1.35v RAM, and they had to use a different set of 1.2v RAM to actually get it to POST, then changed the voltage in the BIOS to 1.35v manually and swapped the other RAM back in to get it to work. I managed to borrow some RAM from a friend that was 1.2v (CMK16GX4M2A2400C14) and tried the same thing, but their RAM was also having the same issues and causing MemOK! Fails. I tried testing one in all the slots too, but nothing helped. The RAM has since gone back into his PC and is working fine.

So now I'm out of ideas. I've sent all this information to ASUS and am currently waiting for them to get back to me, but was hoping some of you might have some ideas that could help me in the meantime.

Thanks in advance!
 

mothhive

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Hey, thanks for the response. I'm not sure it's the CPU as I never had a problem with it, and using the TUF Detective app during post I can see that it proceeds past the CPU initial test and the CPU led on the motherboard isn't lit on the motherboard, which hopefully indicates it's ok.
 

mothhive

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Thanks! Is there any way I can tell for sure it's the CPU and not something else? Unfortunately I don't have a spare MB or CPU to test with.