- Jul 12, 2012
- 58
- 1
- 18,565
Hey forum.
I've been having an issue with my motherboard, it's an MSI 970A-G46 and lately every time I leave the computer off over the night it erases all settings and refuses to POST.
I did some research and found that the culprit was a dead CMOS battery. I tested the voltage and it was below 1volt so I replaced it with a new one. About a week later the same problem occurred, so I pulled out the new battery I replaced a week before and it was dead too.
Continuing my research on the problem someone suggested troubleshooting grounding issues on the mobo and PSU, so I took apart the whole internals and took off the not needed stands from my case. After removing the extra stands I even placed an insulating piece of packing material I had leftover from a motherboard's box below the CMOS battery area (between the mobo and case) and fired up the system again, after replacing the "new" dead battery.
The system did great from there, I didn't have any issues with it for over 2-3 weeks but yesterday it happened again.
Now, here's where it gets interesting; when I pulled out the battery again to test it it was on working order (3+ volts). So after reseting CMOS memory again I managed to boot. I did all my configurations manually again and tried to boot. I had yet again a no POST issue. After doing the same proccess described before many times, I tried going step by step configuring the BIOS instead of everything at the same time. Started with Sata mode from IDE to AHCI, ordered the drive boot order and so on, didn't touch any OC settings... Then it booted normally. I restarted and went to tweak power saving features, turned on APS mode to on, Cool-n-quiet, and everything else. Applied the settings and restarted, everything went normal again.
So, after reducing the number of variables that could go wrong I did the OC settings: I'm running an 8320 @4.5GHz with no voltage changes at all, just multiplier. I've tested this and it works fine, no problem. Also, the RAM is 4 sticks of LP Vengeance, with the XMP profile turned on (CL9 1600MHz). THIS is when I noticed something REALLY wrong in the settings, sometimes not all, I'd get a 7000MHz automatic CPU-NB frequency when just adjusting the CPU multiplier, and a 12800MHz HT-Link speed, just a note, this frequencies are not even possible with the available multipliers if I were manually adjusting them, which I'm not.
And that's where I believe my problem is, the computer is applying some crazy frequencies on cold boots, messing up the POST. The only way to get it to even POST is clearing CMOS battery OR, sometimes unplugging the SATA drives lets it POST (strange) and I'm greeted with a "The previous OC settings failed, press F1 to enter setup" message.
I'm currently running on BIOS v2.6, which is not the latest but I can't for the love of anything get it updated to 2.8. I've got the machine to "flash" the BIOS using the M-Flash utility but after it finishes it just doesn't work, still gives me the same old BIOS on the version.
I want to apologize if I don't make sense in some parts of this long post, I'd really appreciate some input on this, because I've exhausted my options and it gets really annoying to open the case every morning to clear the CMOS and apply my settings by hand one by one.
I've added some pictures that show the BIOS settings I have problems with and also the BIOS flash utility here: Imgur post
I've been having an issue with my motherboard, it's an MSI 970A-G46 and lately every time I leave the computer off over the night it erases all settings and refuses to POST.
I did some research and found that the culprit was a dead CMOS battery. I tested the voltage and it was below 1volt so I replaced it with a new one. About a week later the same problem occurred, so I pulled out the new battery I replaced a week before and it was dead too.
Continuing my research on the problem someone suggested troubleshooting grounding issues on the mobo and PSU, so I took apart the whole internals and took off the not needed stands from my case. After removing the extra stands I even placed an insulating piece of packing material I had leftover from a motherboard's box below the CMOS battery area (between the mobo and case) and fired up the system again, after replacing the "new" dead battery.
The system did great from there, I didn't have any issues with it for over 2-3 weeks but yesterday it happened again.
Now, here's where it gets interesting; when I pulled out the battery again to test it it was on working order (3+ volts). So after reseting CMOS memory again I managed to boot. I did all my configurations manually again and tried to boot. I had yet again a no POST issue. After doing the same proccess described before many times, I tried going step by step configuring the BIOS instead of everything at the same time. Started with Sata mode from IDE to AHCI, ordered the drive boot order and so on, didn't touch any OC settings... Then it booted normally. I restarted and went to tweak power saving features, turned on APS mode to on, Cool-n-quiet, and everything else. Applied the settings and restarted, everything went normal again.
So, after reducing the number of variables that could go wrong I did the OC settings: I'm running an 8320 @4.5GHz with no voltage changes at all, just multiplier. I've tested this and it works fine, no problem. Also, the RAM is 4 sticks of LP Vengeance, with the XMP profile turned on (CL9 1600MHz). THIS is when I noticed something REALLY wrong in the settings, sometimes not all, I'd get a 7000MHz automatic CPU-NB frequency when just adjusting the CPU multiplier, and a 12800MHz HT-Link speed, just a note, this frequencies are not even possible with the available multipliers if I were manually adjusting them, which I'm not.
And that's where I believe my problem is, the computer is applying some crazy frequencies on cold boots, messing up the POST. The only way to get it to even POST is clearing CMOS battery OR, sometimes unplugging the SATA drives lets it POST (strange) and I'm greeted with a "The previous OC settings failed, press F1 to enter setup" message.
I'm currently running on BIOS v2.6, which is not the latest but I can't for the love of anything get it updated to 2.8. I've got the machine to "flash" the BIOS using the M-Flash utility but after it finishes it just doesn't work, still gives me the same old BIOS on the version.
I want to apologize if I don't make sense in some parts of this long post, I'd really appreciate some input on this, because I've exhausted my options and it gets really annoying to open the case every morning to clear the CMOS and apply my settings by hand one by one.
I've added some pictures that show the BIOS settings I have problems with and also the BIOS flash utility here: Imgur post
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