Loud noise from harddrives when rebooting / shutting down

[Newhost]

Hello!

Many hours with google didnt help, so I hope you can help me...
First my system (until a few days ago):

Asus P5WDG2 WS Professional
Intel Pentium D950
2 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 (2x 1 GB Kit)
EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX
Enermax Liberty 620W
XP Pro / Vista Business (both 32 Bit)

Everything was fine! A few days ago I bought an Intel Core2 E6850 and another 2 GB of RAM (same Kit). Since that I have that loud noise on every reboot or shut down - exactly where the screen turns black. I'm sure it comes from the harddisks - and it doesn't sound good! Further all fans stop turning and after 2-3 sec. everything turns on again if it was a reboot. Altogether it's the same like when you're pulling the power plug while the system is on. I can't imagine that my harddrives will survive that for a long time!

Meanwhile I was able to isolate the problem: It has got nothing to do with the AHCI-Mode which I'm using! (This is the only thing you find in google for this problem.) I disabled AHCI and ran everything in normal IDE-Mode - no change!
The problem for me is obviously the FSB: The E6850 runs at 333 FSB... As soon as I lower the FSB frequency at a max. of 310 everything works fine! No noise, the HDs and the fans stay on when rebooting.
My board is actually designed for a max. 266 FSB but with the newest BIOS (which I got) all new CPUs with 333 FSB are supported as well:

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=de-de&model=P5WDG2 WS Professional

Somehow it wasn't my intention to UNDERclock that CPU - rather the opposite!
Anybody got an idea, what I could try? Is there maybe some other BIOS-setting which could help or maybe some setting which I may have wrong? Btw: What is "VID CMOS setting"? It's supposed to have something to do with the CPU ratio or not?
I really hope some of you can help me!

Thanks for the long reading!

Newhost

 

[ceh4702]

That processor is rated at 1333 and the motherboard is rated at 1000. Does the Bios even recognize it? There is no guarantee it will work. Does the Bios Recognize the processor? If it does not you might need to upgrade the BIOS.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[firewolfrl]

the PSU could be under powered.
kick the voltage to the ram up till its 2.0 volts or higher and see if that helps (read the manufacturer specs to see if the ram is being underpowered by the motherboard)
call Asus tech support. they can walk you through the optimum settings for the CPU

wish you luck

 

[Newhost]

@ ceh4702

Yes, this is what I said in my post! After the BIOS-update my mobo SHOULD be rated at 1333 too. And the link I pasted should be the guarantee that it will work! And yes, the BIOS recognizes the CPU! Everything works great inside Windows! I only believe my HDs will die soon...

@ firewolfrl

Thanks, this is what I thought too! But my RAM voltage is already at 2.0 Volts and this is also compliant to the manufacturer specs. All other Voltages I have on "Auto" cause I'm not sure what to set. Do you really believe it has got to do with the RAM voltage? Shouldn't it rather be the Vcore or chipset voltage which I need to adjust?
There is also a setting called "FSB termination voltage" with settings from 1.2 to 1.5 Volts and "Auto". Maybe the problem is here! But I have no idea what to set!

And the ASUS tech support.... The Problem is there is no tech support in my country (Austria)! If I want to call them it's gonna be extremely expensive. Furthermore I called them once long time ago and they didn't help me at all!

Any further suggestions would be very appreciated!

 

[firewolfrl]

I posted this about ram voltage not too long ago.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1423743

somewhere along the line you have an incompatibility with the MB and CPU... I don't think the Bios update fully worked for your setup.

now as for the hard drives
unplug the hard drives and boot the system to see if it is a fan making the noise or the hard drive.
what bothers me on your post is:
"all fans stop turning and after 2-3 sec. everything turns on again if it was a reboot"

Do you have another Power supply you can test your system with? The hard drive may be making the noise because the power supply does not have enough initial startup juice and resets.
unplug the CD/DVD drives to see if they are an issue
I would be backing up your system just in case the hard drive is drawing too much power and dropping the system.

check the video card fan. they can be noisy

 

[BadBigBen]

After you changed the BIOS and inserted the new CPU, have you loaded DEFAULT SETTINGS and then Cleared ESCD or Clear NVRAM (the section where register are set that tell the board how to initialize the CPU and other components)...

as some mobo's need this to be done when you change CPU's... as it sounds like it is trying to initialize the P4 D cpu (voltage and all) whereas the Core2Duo is installed (different voltages etc.) and notices the mishap and goes into a crash situation... (this is only an assumption on my part)...





Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[Newhost]

Hello!

Thank you both again for your good suggestions! I really thought some of them may help but unfortunately they didn't! I didn't have time to test the last days but here I come with the results of the last hours experimenting:

@firewolfrl:
I've read your post about RAM-voltage. I know that for system-hangs this is often the solution! But as I have no problems while inside Windows and my RAM-voltage is already at 2.00V (which is the recommended voltage for my RAM) it doesn't seem to help me with my problem.
So I thought I'll disconnect some of my drives as you suggested! First to see what is actually making the noise and second to find out if there is really not enough "juice" for my current hardware. I have 2 DVD-drives and 3 HDs:
1 WD Raptor 150 GB (system-drive)
1 WD Caviar 250 GB
1 WD Caviar 400 GB
I disconnected both DVD-drives and both Caviar-HDs. On the next reboot the strange noise was gone BUT I noticed that the fans still stopped turning and also the Raptor did - only without that noise! So I reconnected the drives one by one to find out that both Caviar-HDs are making that noise!
So my conclusion is that it has got nothing to do with too little power as 4 disconnected drives don't change anything for the power-loss while rebooting.
Furthermore - as far as I know - the Pentium D needs much more power than any Core 2 Duo does. It seems that the Raptor only "handles" the abrupt power loss somehow better than the 2 Caviar do!
Because I wanted to be sure for that (abrupt) power-loss I then measured the Voltage during reboot with a multimeter. The result was as expected:
As long as the FSB is set to a value of max. 310 both the 5V and the 12V values stay uninterrupted at about 5.12V and 12.08V during reboot! As soon as I raise the FSB setting to 333 both values drop to almost zero before the system starts up again!

@BadBigBen
I updated the BIOS before I installed the new CPU. Then I didn't clear the CMOS as I was immediately prompted with the message: "New CPU installed! Please enter BIOS..."
Anyhow I followed your suggestion today and cleared the CMOS and loaded default settings - unfortunately no change!
(With "and then Cleared ESCD or Clear NVRAM" you mean the "CLRTC"-Jumper, right?)


As I posted my problem in 2 german forums as well and I didn't get ANY replies yet I thought firewolfrl was right and I wrote ASUS tech support. After 3 days (yesterday evening) I got an answer! Unbelieveable! They only said that this is an unknown problem for them and they sent me a new BIOS-version which officially isn't available for download. So I put all my hope in this new BIOS and updated today: NOTHING CHANGED! :-(

I also experimented by enabling / disabling various settings like "CPU Internal Thermal Control" or "Intel SpeedStep Tech."... Nothing helped.

I'm really stumped! Do you have any other ideas? Could it maybe help to set some other voltage manually? I'm afraid of experimenting there! Do you know what voltages I have to set with my hardware-config for these settings:
CPU Vcore
MCH Chipset
ICH Chipset and especially
FSB Termination Voltage ???
Currently they are all on "Auto". The "FSB Termination Voltage" has got only 4 settings from 1.20V to 1.50V.
Also the "VID CMOS setting" has got *something* to do with the Vcore Voltage - I can't find out exactly! The setting there ranges from 1 to 62 with 62 being the current (default) setting.

Goddamn, this wears me down! Thanks again for the long reading and I hope my english is always "understandable"...

Newhost

 

[firewolfrl]

oh I don't know. I did not reach stability with my ram till I hit the 2.25 voltage mark. I was stable at 2.20 but the ram manufacture told me to buffer up .5.
I was not stable at 2.0.
2.3 is the max before you have to use some type of active cooling on the ram itself
I found this thread about overclocking your CPU and it might help

http://www.xbitlabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11876

can you up the voltage to the CPU?

here is the base spec settings for your CPU

http://www.techpowerup.com/cpudb/324/Intel_Pentium_D_950.html

here is an interesting site

http://www.digital-daily.com/cpu/dualcore-cpu/index02.htm

these are some of the errors I was running till I reached the voltage sweet spot
OS would boot and I would have some type of error
burning CD/DVD would fail about 2/3rd of the time
Internet explorer would crash after opening 2 pages
games would reboot the computer
sometimes I had random reboots in both XP and Vista.
copy of data from one hard drive to another would lock up computer.
I had more but you have the idea

My processor runs at about 96 degrees and my ram is luke warm to the touch. just to be on the safe side I use the
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
and I also have cooling fins on the ram.
the case directly blows over the ram.
I have 6 hard drives and 2 DVD drives 4 of the hard drives have IDE to SATA converters(I could not see wasting IDE drives just because of a connector)
I have absolutely no heat issues at all

 

[BadBigBen]

@Newhost - dein Englisch ist sehr gut, mach dir keine sorgen...

Clearing the NVRAM, is usually done from within the BIOS, so no it is not the same as the CLRTC-jumper found on the Board...

Since you have done your homework there, with the PSU, I would consider another PSU from another manufacturer... at least you have a back up, if this does not work out...

I use an Enermax, aswell, rated at 600w, after my BeQuiet (600w) suddenly died... attached are 7 HDD's, a DVD burner, a TV tuner card, GFX card, PCI IDE card, SATA PCI card, but less RAM and older CPU and they are running great...

the suggestion from the others, especially about upping the RAM voltage to 2.2 or so should be attempted...

another thing you could try, is to remove the new RAM and see if the system still has problems... this might be just an incompatibility, not with the RAM, but with how many modules in use... may sound strange but I've seen mobo's that would not run correctly when fully stacked with 512mb modules (rare)...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[Newhost]

@BadBigBen: lol - Hab ja nicht gewusst, daß hier auch Deutsche reinschreiben! Aber danke! ;-)

Okay guys, many, many thanks for all the time and help you offered but I think I give up! I tested every single BIOS-setting and various voltages for everything, I tried to remove the new RAM, I raised RAM-voltage up to 2.20V.... I even installed ASUS AIBooster (Windows-based Tuning Utility) to see if it would change anything if I raise the FSB there.... No f***in change at all!
If I continue experimenting whis this crap I'll end up throwing my whole PC out of the window I guess...
I posted my problem in 2 german hardware forums, in the US-ASUS forum (specifically for my mainboard) and here. But apart from this great forum here I didn't get any replies - not even in the ASUS-forum! So it looks like you are the only 2 people in the world who have got some ideas for my problem! ;-)

firewolfrl, thanks for the good links too! I'm just unsure what you mean with "can you up the voltage to the CPU?". Do you mean raising the Vcore-voltage? I did.

BadBigBen, I was searching the BIOS for that "Clear NVRAM" but I didn't find anything. I've only seen - if I disable "QuickBoot" - it says "Loading NVRAM" while booting... But no setting to clear / reset it!?! On the other hand, shouldn't the NVRAM also be cleared if I clear the CMOS by using the CLRTC jumper?
Regarding the PSU: Like I said, I really can't imagine that this PSU is insufficient for my current hardware as I have tried to unplug 4 drives and according to firewolfrl's link (

http://www.techpowerup.com/cpudb/324/Intel_Pentium_D_950.html)

I was right that my new CPU needs much less power than my old one did!
Pentium D 950: 130W
Core 2 Duo E6850: 75W
(Good link again! Even on the Intel-website I wasn't able to find that!)
And I can't imagine that a PSU from another manufacturer would help... I was always perfectly satisfied with this one (compared to the Seasonic which I had before) and it has got the best marks by Tom's hardware... And they're not really cheap too!

I believe the only thing that would help is getting a new mainboard with a new Intel chipset which "natively" supports a FSB of 1333... But I paid € 300,- for this board half a year ago and don't really want to spend that much money for a new one!


At least I found out today that I can raise my FSB to an unbelievable value of 318 before the power loss occurs! (Last time I only tried in steps of 10 MHz.) 319 and above won't work. So currently I'm running my 3 GHz CPU at 2.86 GHz and my 800 MHz RAM at 795 MHz... I'm absolutely NOT happy with this as I'm sure that other people run the same CPU at 3.5 GHz and more but I really ran out of ideas what to do!
So, many thanks again and I'll let you know for sure if I find a solution what I really doubt!

So long
Newhost

 

[firewolfrl]

That is still fast
hey! if it works don't mess with it any more till you can just buy a new system at the current standards when you can afford it.
even if you just have to buy a piece at a time each month
I have done that....lol