dentedcapacitor

Razor Stealth because I can't imagine lugging around a GPU with me to work and a GTX1060 should be more than enough

Entered.

Thanks guys for the helpful advice. Unfortunately even the Zotac AMP! carries a $100 price premium. Might just settle for a reference card then.

Need some advice. For some reason where I live, all the aftermarket factory overclocked 980tis carry a $200 premium. Need some opinions about the reference card such as heat and noise. I am looking at an MSI one but does MSI manufacture the card or is it like the Fury X where they just stamp their name on them?

I recently sent my few months old Maximus VI Gene in for an RMA and they are having difficulty locating a new one to replace it with and is offering a me a choice to upgrade to a Maximus VII Gene. I know one is a Z87 board and the other is a Z97 board but I went with the M6G because I liked the fact that it had the red LED PCB shielding like the Hero and it has two extra USB ports at the back which in the case of M7G has a removable SupremeFX soundcard like the Impact and a useless PS/2 port. My concern is with the soundcard being separate and literally floating right above the GPU which I am concerned may make contact with the backplate and short itself out plus you have to run the front audio cable right through the middle of the case. Does anyone have any experience regarding the difference between these two boards?

I been playing around with Afterburner to try and see how much of an overclock I can get out of my MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G. I managed to get a stable overclock of 1528MHz on the core with boost and 7990MHz on the memory running Valley and Heaven. Stock voltage for this card under gaming load peaks at 1.026V with an ASIC Quality of 74.1%. I noticed something odd about the VDDC sensor reading in GPU-Z when I first applied the settings and ran FurMark. The VDDC reading peaks at 1.000V in the early 5 minutes of the test but later the voltage goes up to 1.200V and peaks at 1.225V half an hour later. I didn't touch core voltage since it was locked out in Afterburner and it was not reading it's value. Was GPU-Z providing me inaccurate readings or was the card automatically raising the voltage based on my overclock?

From a previous thread, I need to clarify PCIE compatibility to fully diagnose a problem. Will a PCIE2.0x16 graphics card work in PCIE3.0x8 slot? Does a PCIE3.0x16 graphics card still utilize all 16 lanes even when it is used in a PCIE2.0x16 slot or it only utilizes 8 lanes?

I was using 347.88 previously as I always keep my drivers updated. It was the same even before going to 350.12. Right now, I am more focused on why the board does not detect the PCIE2.0 cards since technically PCIE3.0 is backwards compatible with older cards.

So I tested the GTX980 in another PC. The other PC I tested with had an i3-3220 with a B75 board which was my home media server so it didn't had a PCIE graphics card. The B75 board was supposed to be PCI-E3.0 compatible but it was only running at PCI-E2.0. However, GPU-Z reports: "PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x16 2.0" which means all the PCI-E lanes were able to be utilized, hence I think I can rule out the card unless I am mistaken. The Maximus though is a different story. I tried it with a spare GTX550Ti and 8400GS which are PCI-E2.0 x16 cards. Here's the thing, the board will not detect these cards either in the PCIE_X16/X8_1 slot or the PCIE_X8_2 slot. It loaded the IGP instead and going through the BIOS, it reports the PCIE port is not connected even though the fans of the GTX550Ti are spinning. Anyone can give point me in the right direction here? I am thinking the motherboard is faulty but I need to do some more troubleshooting before sending the board off for a month long RMA.

Yes, I have. I checked under Advanced > System Agent Configuration > NB PCIe Configuration. I can only select the link speed. Either Auto, Gen 1, Gen 2 and Gen 3. Reason I brought up USB3.0 and SATA ports, it's been mentioned in similar topics on the ROG forums. @Leonard I have updated my drivers to 350.12 if that's what you mean and what is wrong with the latest drivers?

I have a MSI GTX980 Gaming 4G connected to the top PCIE_X16/X8_1 slot on a Maximus VI Gene (Latest BIOS: 1603) board. I have no other expansion cards (not in a SLI config) and the processor is a i7 4790k. When I checked in the BIOS, it tells me it is running at x8 native. This is confirmed by GPU-Z, which tells me "PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x8 3.0" even after running the render test from the ? symbol along with Valley and Heaven. Removed the CPU/GPU, checked the contacts even cleaned the slots, reset the CMOS and it still tells me it is running at x8 native. What is going on here and how can I get the GPU to run at x16 native? From my research, the board has additional Asmedia USB3.0 and SATA ports. Could these be causing the PCIE lanes to be occupied and how do I disable them in the BIOS? Any help would be appreciated.

You make a good point Abir. I was thinking of doing that from the start but the rig was still a week old and I didn't want to mess about it too much until I was 100% confident that everything works and was just thrown off by how much heat that the Devil's Canyon generates even with aftermarket cooling. Its basically still in its burn in stage to see what drivers are needed and making sure everything works etc.before installing the final programs. I was concerned of selecting the wrong voltage field in the BIOS as I was more familiar with Gigabyte BIOS from my old board than the ROG one. The ROG BIOS has an initial CPU input voltage and an eventual one so that threw me off. Will give it a try later.

@kuhcuk, you just said what I was afraid of. Yeah, I most likely would like to get the chip changed. I have a Malaysian chip which ironically was locally made. Should have trusted the Vietnamese ones. @Abir Vandergriff Thanks for your prompt reply. I would undervolt it but like I said it was unusually high temps given my E6600 runs at 1.250V VCORE max. I did not want to run high volts on the processor because I was hoping this would last me for at least 5 years and anything to decrease the lifespan was a big no-no. Should have gotten a 4670K like you at since they are from more established Costa Rican fabs.

Hi All, I recently managed to save up to start on my dream build. But I since hit into a bit of issues that needs some second opinions. This is by no means my first build but I would call it my first enthuasist build. I am unable to provide screenshots as I am at work while writing this. Specs as follows:- CPU: Intel i7-4790K RAM: Kingston HyperX BEAST 16GB Dual Channel Kit (HX324C11T3K2/16) GPU: MSI GTX 980 4G Lightning Mobo: Asus Maximus VI Gene (Latest BIOS: 1603, BIOS updated with no previous processor using Asus USB BIOS Flashback button, original BIOS was initial release) PSU: CoolerMaster V850 HDD: Toshiba Q Series Pro 128GB SSD Case: Corsair 350D Case fans: 3x CoolerMaster JetFlo 120 PWM (Two in front of the casing as intake and one in the rear as exhaust, fronts run at 1200rpm and exhaust is purely PWM with 1600rpm average) CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster Nepton 240M in pull configuration OS: Windows 7 Home Premium x64 One of the first issues I encountered was the inability for the PC to boot up with the RAM set to its maximum XMP profile which is profile 1 with DDR3-2400 CL11-13-14 @1.65V. I was only able to boot it three times out of the ten times I selected it, most of the time it would display a Q-Code of 55. As a result, I am only able to run it at its second profile of DDR3-2133 CL11-13-13 @1.6V. I have read about issues of the IMC of the 4790K having issues with higher rated RAM and as such is a common problem. I have tried raising the System Agent voltage to 1.1V from 0.836V but it still won't boot. Even if it does boot with the first profile, there is gremlin like behaviour ie. the keyboard would stop functioning and from a cold boot the same cycle persists until the motherboard says overclocked failed in the BIOS startup. I have ran Memtest x86 on both the stock JEDEC DDR3-1600 speeds and DDR-2133 and there are no errors. What was weird was that I was originally able to install Windows 7 on the machine on its first boot with the 2400MHz profile after the training mode and the two reboots during the installation was successful. Second of the issues is CPU heat related. While I was hoping for a good overclocker, I am somewhat satisfied with the chip I have gotten. On first boot (cleared CMOS), the stock VCORE was 1.088V. Basically all the settings were left on auto, as a result the final VCORE after booting into Windows 7 was 1.264V. This was at stock speeds of 4.0GHz with the turbo mode activated for 4.4GHz. Since this was a fairly new build I wasn't going to try and kill it that early on in its life, the only overclocking I did was to see how low of a VCORE the CPU can use for higher multipliers. The motherboard auto sets a setting of 1.299V VCORE for a multiplier of 47x when booted into Windows. The only stress test I ran was Intel XTU for 5 minutes (like I said earlier, not trying to kill it but to get a feel for the thing). This was wise because even with my aftermarket Nepton water cooler, it was reaching a max of 79C-84C on stock speeds based on info from XTU and HWInfo64. I have since exchanged coolers between the runnings of the test as the first one was having an annoying pump rattle. And the results are still the same. Ambient temps mind you in my part of the world are about 33C average on a good day (tropical weather) but I run it in an air conditioned room with an average of 24C-27C. So I wasn't expecting much in terms of idle temps but 41C average on idle with the side case panel and 39C average without the side case panel is really not much the reason of buying a liquid cooling solution. Average temps on gaming load are 60-70C. I have checked the spread of the thermal paste twice on both coolers and they covered most of the IHS properly and tightened the pump adequately without damaging the board. I am using the stock thermal paste from the cooler for the time being but the temperatures should not be getting this high. I have an older rig in the room with a E6600 with a stock cooler and el cheapo generic thermal paste and it is staying at 35C on idle alone and 56C on casual load. Since this was a backup rig it sat in a corner of the room with poor ventilation and an open side case panel in an enclosed space under a desk and quieter with generic case fans and regular HDD. Of course, the E6600 has an iridium solder instead of that TIM that Intel currently uses but still. I basically have a grace period of one week on the parts I purchased for a one on one exchanged. If the problem is the processor is kinda hard for them diagnose for overheating or memory problems and being an expensive processor I highly doubt they will be very willing to give me a new one. So if anyone here can give me a hand, it will be much appreciated.