Asus z97 Sabertooth mark 1 randomly restarts

[skycaptn]

My problem; computer randomly restarts for no reason;

My son decided he wanted to upgrade his computer so he bought the Asus z97 Sabertooth M1, a compatible packaged set of corsair DDR3 (and yes I made sure the ram was seated), and a new Intel I5-464690k. I did the install of the hardware and put a clean install of win 7 home premium on his Samsung 120GB SSD, with a second hard drive unhooked. I went to Asus website and downloaded everything that was on the installation CD onto a PNY 4gig flash drive. As soon as windows 7 completed I installed the updated bios version 2401, via the flash drive, chip set, both LAN drivers, SATA drivers, USB drivers and the last item I had to get from the Installation CD was that AMDA00_win7-8-8-1_V1010. Then I went into the bios again and set XMP to enable I then saw the correct timings for the DDR3 and chose the name generated by the bios and saved and exited.

After all the drivers were installed I added parts of the Asus AI Suite 3, the diagnostic utility was pretty pointless IMHO. Then I installed just the driver for His Asus GTX 660 TI without the 3d and physX and no Nvidia experience garbage he didn't need. He is running 2 monitors one is 24 inch LG flat panel and the second is a Samsung 32 inch flat panel TV. Also this is all on a Asus 750 watt PSU. There is also a 1.5TB western Digital we haven't hooked up to the system yet because of the restarts. at this point I have NOT installed any Microsoft updates or Samsung's Magician, I'm kinda waiting to see the response if any this gets. He likes to drag Live streams from the primary monitor to the second one and watch videos or play games on the primary monitor. I'm wondering if there is a conflict with the on board video and the Nvidia drivers, How would you disable the on board video to check that?

 

[MrTuRtLe03]

Could you describe the restarts a little more? Is Windows blue screening or does the screen just go black? If you are encountering the BSOD, please post the minidump file for further inspection.

I would start by disconnecting the TV and just working with the monitor for right now too. I would pull out the graphics card and just run onboard video as a start. If that doesn't solve your problem you might be having some Windows/driver errors - as you suspected. Uninstall all of the installed specelzed drivers and run strictly on the Windows Generic ones to test for the restart. If that solves your problem, then you are having driver conflicts or those drivers were corrupt.

Also, check that the RAM is in the correct slots in the right order. Most motherboards are listed as A1, B1, A2, B2, but yours could be different. Check the user guide that came with it. Reseating the RAM couldn't hurt either.

 

[skycaptn]

The restarts are a black screen then the boot process starts and the advanced startup screen. Ram is in the correct slots A1, B1, and has been tested and replaced once. This is the 3rd clean install trying to correct this problem. 3 days of reading all the boards with similar problems, that's the main reason I put all the installation drivers for the MB on a flash drive.

I have some experience building computers I've put together around 20 or 30 for friends and relatives, repair a lot for friends also but I've never had this kind of an issue with a motherboard. This last install with all the drivers on a flash drive we had one restart before I enabled the XMP. I didn't have a lot of test time after that I'm hoping that it's more stable this morning. It will be a little while before I can get in and test things.

 

[skycaptn]

Could you describe the restarts a little more? Is Windows blue screening or does the screen just go black? If you are encountering the BSOD, please post the minidump file for further inspection.

I would start by disconnecting the TV and just working with the monitor for right now too. I would pull out the graphics card and just run onboard video as a start. If that doesn't solve your problem you might be having some Windows/driver errors - as you suspected. Uninstall all of the installed specelzed drivers and run strictly on the Windows Generic ones to test for the restart. If that solves your problem, then you are having driver conflicts or those drivers were corrupt.

Also, check that the RAM is in the correct slots in the right order. Most motherboards are listed as A1, B1, A2, B2, but yours could be different. Check the user guide that came with it. Reseating the RAM couldn't hurt either.

We have been testing most of the day and no black screen/restarts I went as far as hooking up the second hard drive with no problems and changed in bios/advanced/ 3.6.4 System agent control/ Graphics configuration>Primary Display to PCIE from Auto. If I'm reading the manual correctly, this sets the video card as primary and the on board is no longer primary. I'd like to know what the CPU Graphics Multi-monitor set to Disable, what does this do? I also hooked up the second Hard drive. I still haven't installed any Microsoft updates or Samsung magician for the SSD.
One thing I'm unsure of is the way Windows 7 handles dual monitors, the monitor/tv with the newest date is automatically set to #1 and you can't change it, you can however change what monitor is primary in the windows software. Does the GTX 660 treat them differently? does the on board graphic drivers treat them differently?

 

[skycaptn]

It just black screened and restarted 3 times in a row, My son whom is 27 decided he's done he has no patients to find out what the trouble is. he is returning the MB RAM and the I5 back to frys for something else...kids these days have no respect or patients...

 

[MrTuRtLe03]

I would agree with that statement. While he is returning his components, I would really suggest grabbing another PSU, or trying the current PSU in a known-good computer. I still think that that (or the motherbaord) is the real issue. Faulty RAM and/or processor would not have this happen - so keep those and grab a new board and PSU if anything.

 

[skycaptn]

I would agree with that statement. While he is returning his components, I would really suggest grabbing another PSU, or trying the current PSU in a known-good computer. I still think that that (or the motherbaord) is the real issue. Faulty RAM and/or processor would not have this happen - so keep those and grab a new board and PSU if anything.

Well Fry's wouldn't let him return the board so he traded the CPU and memory for new sticks. His friend convinced him that if he traded his 2x8 gig stick set for 2-2x4 gig sets, he said the smaller the mem stick is, the faster it is, I lol'd. Anyway Fry's said the reason they didn't take the board back was because a couple of the pins were bent. He said they showed him but i'm not sure he knows what he's looking at. Fry's says they unbent them. Anyway, long story short his friend reinstalled everything but video card and reinstalled win 7 and all the updates and basically put it back the way I had it except he let microsoft load all 209 updates <sigh>, it's doing the same thing it was doing when I was troubleshooting it. It also Black screened and restarted without the GTX660 being in the machine. My son thinks it only restarts when he tries to play a video. He can make it black screen by playing videos. Win7 event viewer shows kernal critical error shutdown. we are tracking down the warnings and error messages using event viewer, leading up to each shutdown.

 

[MrTuRtLe03]

Could you post a few of the event logs, they might be helpful if you can't/don't want to decipher them. I know AVG can cause some unexpected shutdowns like that in the event log. You don't happen to have that installed now do you?

 

[skycaptn]

We fixed the computer last night. It was easy to run down all the error messages prior to each crash, that proved to be a dead end. I also found out My son ran the 750 watt PSU upside down completely blocking its fan for almost 18 months. When I took apart the PSU to clean it the fan had that burned varnish smell so we put another PSU in 950 w, it ran all night and most of today with no restarts. There are a couple of Graphic intense bench mark trials we dl'd and ran. the board performed flawlessly. I also found out he ran his SSD for the same time period without any optimization like with Samsung magician has.