Asus P8Z77-M sometimes doesn't POST

[swiftynz]

Long time since I've posted in here, hoping someone might have seen this problem before!

I recently built myself a new PC for the first time in what feels like 10 years. In actual fact it's about 6, but either way, I'm a bit out of practice when it comes to hardware troubleshooting!

About 50% of the time I turn the PC on the ASUS logo will show up (with the "press delete to enter setup message") and stay there for a very long time. Sometimes it continues after about a minute, sometimes not. The other 50% it will post after a few seconds.

When it happens I have to turn off the PSU and wait the board to discharge (about 10 seconds) to get it to boot again.

It happens with and without the graphics card and DVDRW installed. I haven't done any more testing with other components disconnected, but there's really not much to disconnect.

The bios is that new-fangled UEFI thingy. I've messed around with the various boot options (USB detection, fast boot, boot order, etc), and legacy compatibility modes, but nothing has worked. I don't think it's getting to the point of trying to load the OS, because when I disable the full screen logo I get a blank screen instead of the old-school text screen which shows you CPU speed, ram etc.

System is perfectly stable when the OS loads, in Windows and Linux, and I've stress-tested it with Hyper-pi, 3dmark and general gaming. I've also updated the bios to the latest release. So the way I see it there's a bios config issue somewhere, I just don't know where to look!

System specs:

• Asus P8Z77-M
• Core i5 3750K
• 16GB ram (4x4GB)
• OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
• Seagate 2TB HDD
• XFX AMD 6870
• Seasonic 380W PSU
• Dell U2312HM

TIA

[varkk]

I would continue the troubleshooting steps and see if it will POST without any hard drives. It may be the Disk controller or one of the drives not detecting properly. The other thing to check is USB devices, especially card readers. I saw one PC recently which would not reliably POST if the printer was connected, I think it was hanging on scanning the card reader in the printer for a bootable block device. Another one I saw was a PC which had a faulty USB keyboard, it seemed there was a short in the keyboard which prevented it from booting, that was a fun one to troubleshoot.

[Craig]

Try updating the bios. If that fails, RMA it.

Also are you really running a 6870 on a 380watt PSU or is that a typo.

[SnoSalmon]

Would agree with Varkk - unplus all USB devices. I have seen plenty of boards that have issues ID'ing USB drives/devices or try to boot from USB drives.

[swiftynz]

Cheers for the replies, I did manage to fix this.

I tried unplugging all USB devices (with the exception of my keyboard/mouse receiver), but it still did it. Don't have a PS2 keyboard any more!

What fixed it was manually setting memory timings, I saw this back in the day with bioses setting timings from the first stick of ram which were too fast for the rest. Never thought I'd have this problem with a matched set, but there you go. I think it's a bios bug as when I set the timings manually (to the speeds it detected anyway), it works fine.

Bios is already the latest but hopefully it'll get fixed in a later update.

380W is not a typo, to be honest I didn't realise how much power the 6870s consume, thought they were supposed to be cooler running than the 5800 series. I should have done more homework here, this thing is hot and the fan loud. That said, this PSU cost £50 ($100NZD). It's not a generic 380W and will outperform a lot of 500W models (review here).

I've been watching the rails, and the PSU fan never ramps up which would be the first indication it's under stress. The air coming out of it is cooler than the 120mm case fan above! The design is good for 500W, the differences between this and the higher rated models is the fan speed and a higher-rated main capacitor and coil. It's also mounted in the bottom of the case with air coming directly from the floor which should give more head room.

So I'm comfortable with it handling the load, and it's not like I want to make it louder by doing something as silly as overclocking.

[imdying]

Had the pleasure of setting up a high end system recently too.

Interestingly, same experience... for all the flash new features, they're still full of the same old bugs and bull****.

The quality of Asus motherboards hasn't increased, that's for sure (luckily they've always been adequate).

[Anarchy]

Yep, also having 'issues' with a new setup as well (gigabyte z77x d3h). Weird (undocumented) things like:
- Can only boot from specific USB ports on the back.
- Booting from USB is intermittent, generally takes a few attempts. Perhaps I should try your fix of removing all other USB devices.
- Using all four DIMM slots giving random BSODs (memtest passes fine). Turns out some mobos can struggle with 4 sticks and need various voltage increases. Currently running 3 sticks, don't know if I can be bothered to tweak it to get it to run 4.

These things should be a thing of the past by now!

[SnoSalmon]

Originally Posted by imdying

The quality of Asus motherboards hasn't increased, that's for sure (luckily they've always been adequate).

I've come to the realization that unless the RAM is on the Asus QVL list for the particular board you are likely to have all sorts of problems!

[swiftynz]

It would seem Asus (and apparently Gigabyte as well) know that they can get away with buggy bioses when they they're selling to tweakers. I have zero interest in tweaking memory timings, I just want it to work!

I simply wanted quality components, but you wouldn't have this problem on a bargain-basement OEM board...

[imdying]

Indeed, budget boards still play nice. Good tip about the QVL.