Strange symtoms

January 11, 2016

Okay build:

Fx-8320 overclocked to 4.8 @ 1.464 v temperatures sub 60c under load on both CPU and VRMs

Msi 970 Gaming board

XFX R9 390

Psu: EVGA Supernova 750w

16gb vengeance ram @ 1866

I have like 6 case fans?

a SSD and HD (128gb/1tb respectively)

So my first MSI gaming board was DOA (had a R7 370 at the time)

My second one comes and I rejoice! (My first build in years, so the initial sour impression was rough)

It's a champion of a board, could not be happier with it. However, all of a sudden (two weeks into having it) it starts intermittent start-ups, the exact same symptom it had originally (which was spinning fans for half a second and ceasing).

However, I picked up a R9 390 instead of the 370, it ran like a champ first boot, not a single issue. I've been running it and I'm actually running it right now. The second motherboard starts experiencing the same symptoms of when the board was DOA. So this half boot cease thing completely goes away when I unhooked even a single connector to the GPU (this particular GPU has a 6 and 8 pin). It boots 100% of the time (don't actually know if it's posting, however). But, as soon as I plug it back in, it just seems like chance if it will boot or not and once booted it works great.

Makes me think it's not the motherboard and maybe the PSU. I was wondering if maybe I need to investigate how the rails are set up on my PSU to get a better idea of certain one's working better than others. I still have a sneaking suspicion it's the motherboard in some way. I was also thinking of switching where the ram is in the board, I read a few things regarding faulty ram. I'm planning on running memtest86 today.

Any thoughts? These 970 boards seem like a nightmare, in general.

Edit: Oh, and I've cleared CMOS (in order to obtain factory setting with voltage and clock) and still have the intermittent boots when both GPU power is connected.

January 11, 2016

Okay build:

Fx-8320 overclocked to 4.8 @ 1.464 v temperatures sub 60c under load on both CPU and VRMs

Msi 970 Gaming board

XFX R9 390

Psu: EVGA Supernova 750w

16gb vengeance ram @ 1866

I have like 6 case fans?

a SSD and HD (128gb/1tb respectively)

So my first MSI gaming board was DOA (had a R7 370 at the time)

My second one comes and I rejoice! (My first build in years, so the initial sour impression was rough)

It's a champion of a board, could not be happier with it. However, all of a sudden (two weeks into having it) it starts intermittent start-ups, the exact same symptom it had originally (which was spinning fans for half a second and ceasing).

However, I picked up a R9 390 instead of the 370, it ran like a champ first boot, not a single issue. I've been running it and I'm actually running it right now. The second board starts experiencing the same symptoms of when the board was DOA. So this half boot cease thing completely goes away when I unhooked even a single connector to the GPU. It boots 100% of the time (don't actually know if it's posting, however). But, as soon as I plug it back in, it just seems like chance if it will boot or not and once booted it works great.

Makes me think it's not the motherboard and maybe the PSU. I was wondering if maybe I need to investigate how the rails are set up on my PSU to get a better idea of certain one's working better than others. I still have a sneaking suspicion it's the motherboard in some way. I was also thinking of switching where the ram is in the board, I read a few things regarding faulty ram. I'm planning on running memtest86 today.

Any thoughts? These 970 boards seem like a nightmare, in general.

Edit: Oh, and I've cleared CMOS (in order to obtain factory setting with voltage and clock) and still have the intermittent boots when both GPU power is connected.

Have you ran it without the overclock?

January 11, 2016

Have you ran it without the overclock?

Yes sir! I edited OP with that info, you may have missed it.

It has the same behavior with or without the overclock.

January 11, 2016

I am thinking it's the PSU, it was a refurbished unit. I think it's making a coil whine sort of noise. this noise, which I've been hearing for a while, only seems to come about when under load. I was thinking it was a bad bearing on a case fan, but just went around and stopped each fan at a time and verified it is not. Now, I guess this sound could be coming from the GPU (these are notorious for coil whine), but I had the same noise when I had the 370 installed (which was a MSI unit and not a a Hawaii chip).