Question A Dry Windy Day, a Vaping Pen, a Static Charge -- A Disaster -- seeking opinions

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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,879
1,549
126
The title says it all. It happened within the course of an hour's time.

My Skylake system was the best I'd ever built. I'm getting older, and am not too keen these days about keeping up with the latest processors and chipsets. This system was purrr-feck, like the SUV of my obsession in the "Garage" forum. The OS is on a Sammy 1TB NVME drive, but most (MOST!) of my data files are on a Crucial 1TB SSD and a 2.5" Seagate HDD.

I had been getting careless about how I used the front USB ports on the system. Right away, let me advise others: Don't use your best computer as a charging station for vaping pens, cell-phones -- tablets. All those things can be charged with the proper adapter from a wall-socket.

So I was managing my digital music library, and consolidating albums under a subdirectory structure so that I could recognize categories of albums on the tiny 2" screen in my SUV MP3 player and Android "dashboard" tablet. Everything was to be dumped onto a Sandisk Cruzer Fit 64GB USB. I had just purchased -- for about $0.99 each -- a good portion of the "Bach Guild" classical music remastered collections or "Big [composer-name] Box" 1TB downloads from Amazon. (Check it out -- you can get Vienna State Opera Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Warsaw and Moscow Radio Orchestras and other offerings, some recorded in the "Golden Age of Stereo" and others later. Mostly -- Ninety-nine cents for things like "The Big Beethoven Box" or "The Big Mozart Box". Sorry to digress.) I was balancing my giant rock-and-roll and jazz collections with the new acquisitions.

Just before the finishing touches on the Cruzer Fit and a backup of its contents and organization, I noticed that I'd left a cannabis vaping pen charging in a USB port, and its green light was signaling a full charge. I thoughtlessly reached over to grab it without grounding myself. I felt a small static discharge from my fingertip. I finished my final copying to the USB drive. All was well. Then, I pulled the Sandisk USB drive from the USB port -- very stiff fit with those little things -- rushed out the garage to evaluate my handiwork. Returned about 20 minutes later -- (I just had to check out the sound quality for "I'm a Man" by Chicago on my new Polk Audio speakers).

Before rushing out to the garage, however, I noticed Windows behaving sort of "redacted". I'd select the "Safely Remove" icon, find the USB drive and click on it, but no message of "You can now safely remove". Instead, clicking on it again, the USB drive would be missing from the list. It seemed strange.

So, resuming with my return from the garage, I put the Cruzer Fit back into the USB port. Nothing. No message about "device recognized". Then, tried to move my mouse. The system was frozen.

I finally shut it down for a reboot. But it would post the BIOS info and list of storage devices, followed by the message "USB Over-voltage detected -- shutting down in 15 seconds".

Followed all the online advice -- unplugged the USB wires between the front-panel USB2 and USB3 ports and the motherboard. Blew out all the cruft in every USB port, front and rear. But boot-up shows "USB Overvoltage . . . 15 seconds". The next step would be to reset the CMOS. After that, I must assume that something like the onboard USB controller has taken a dump. Needs -- at least -- a new motherboard.

Looking ahead, trying to avoid any Windows re-installations, I ran my web-searches to find my ASUS Sabertooth Z170 S motherboard. I'm a little wary: you'd figure a lot of people who'd had that board had also overclocked them. The most promising options would be bundles with a CPU and RAM -- people routinely rebuilding their systems with latest-gen chipset and hardware, selling their "whole enchilada" in a bundle. So, trusting the promises of "fully functional" from a USA seller, I bought a "pre-owned" Sabertooth Z170S -- but not in a bundle.

I also found another ASUS Z170 board which I might have coveted four years ago but thought unnecessary and high-priced: An ATX ASUS Z170-WS -- the "workstation motherboard with many more PCIE lanes. There were six of these, and they were all configured with I7-6700 (non-K) processors and 8GB of RAM. Unlikely that they were ever "stressed" by enthusiasts. So I picked up one of those -- the bundle -- as well.

As for "money" -- I'll get my stimulus money, and it's time to replace two Sandy-Bridge systems used by the fam-damn-ily. So the extra parts are not wasted, and it's about time for me to upgrade the Sandy boxes. More than "about time" -- ten-year-old technology, one running for ten years, the other for six years. So let's not talk about money.

Once I've made the motherboard and CPU swap, I can mail my original Sabertooth to ASUS under RMA. The warranty on the Sabertooth runs out in September, 2021. And -- it's never failed that a refurbished RMA board would come in handy later. Been through that experience twice in the last 15 years.

QUESTION: The Z170-WS board uses the same chipset as the Sabertooth and the same processor options. Would I have any trouble simply replacing the Sabertooth with the WS board? Or shouldn't it boot into Windows without fail, even if some onboard devices need driver updates?

AND -- ANYBODY ELSE GONE THROUGH THIS ORDEAL with their mobos and USB controllers?

Shame -- all because of a recharging vaping pen and static from the carpetl.

Also -- one more -- what are the odds that this could mean a failed PSU? My PSU is a 650W Seasonic Flagship Titanium 80+ Active PFC model -- something like a 10 or 12-year warranty. It just doesn't seem likely to me. The boot-time message refers to USB Overvoltage, the Windows behavior points to a USB malfunction -- and the rest of it with the vaping pen and static charge.

We have a zero tolerance policy for profanity in the tech sub-forums.
Don't do it again.

Iron Woode

Super Moderator
 
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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,879
1,549
126
I mean, worst case, you can backstop with a $3 W10 Pro key off of eBay. It's not like you didn't start with a license at all.

I guess it's however you feel, ethically, but I've found W10 to be exceedingly resilient at changing hardware and haven't had to jump through reactivation hoops.
Well, all legitimate Wijndows users are equal? That's the way it seems to me, too. I'm thinking I had one mixup between the skylake desktop and my laptop over a mistake about the license key on a disc, and I got it resolved. Otherwise, never any previous HW changes. I don't think I've used up any "chances" if they ration them.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,879
1,549
126
LOG ENTRY - 1-31-21

The Sabertooth system has sat next to my desk for nearly a week, power-plugs removed from the motherboard. I think we have resolved the "end game" pertaining to the OS license.

I've been cleaning my room. I don't want to take this machine apart without a dust-free work-area and a "bench" of some sort. My bench is a coffee table with a 1-inch thick glass top. Today, I'm sweeping the floor, in addition to changing my Moms' bed-sheets, her absorbent bed-pads, her Depends disposable underpants, making sure she eats well, takes her pills and keeping her comfortable. I also have another chore on my plate: I've used a Coleman 13' canopy on my patio for 16 years, replacing the top every two years with a plastic tarp. It has collapsed. I may have to use a cut-off saw to take it apart, but the replacement has been ordered.

Now I'm thinking about the BIOS and my OC settings. If the old motherboard cannot be resurrected -- and signs vaguely suggest that it can't* -- the replacement motherboard will be "starting from scratch". I have 18 pages of OC'ing notes stored on my server for the Skylake. On one of the Skylake's storage drives (not the boot disk), there should be some JPG snaps of BIOS screens. I just hope I have all of them.

Disassembly of the system just to test the old board gets work out of the way for installing the new one: removal of a Coolermaster barrel-fan, color-coding SATA cables to the drives and mobo ports, removal of the PCIE NVME boot drive and NVME caching drive.

Taxes due April 15 -- no Win 10 systems currently running in the house, and Intuit software no longer installs to Win 7. In a pinch, it should take me a day to get the numbers right, and another several hours to produce the source-document summary table of Schedule E expenses. I'm not going to worry at this point. If I continue at the current pace, I should have all this resolved before end of February.

----------------------------------
* When the USB ports stopped working and the system would halt upon boot to the message "USB Overvoltage detected -- restarting in 15 seconds", I noticed that the KVM switch selection light was dim. I could plug in an LED keyboard and LED gaming mouse, so that the keyboard LEDs would light but the mouse LEDs wouldn't. So I really think I borked the USB controller. Likely nothing else damaged, looking at the Z170 architecture scheme. USB is connected to the chipset. All other peripherals separately connected, processor and RAM otherwise isolated except for a connection to the chipset.

A FREAKING VAPING PEN! AND A CARELESS OLD FART . . . .
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,879
1,549
126
Well, like Ray Lucca said to the FBI man in the 1980s crime drama "Crime Story" -- "I'm back . . . I'm bad . . . I'm on top . . . those wing-tip bozos don't have nuthin' on me . . . "

I think it's going to take a few days to test a 2x16GB=32GB memory kit.

Everything seems to "work" with the surplus replacement board I bought.

I have a theory as to why the original purchaser returned to board to the reseller.

I got into the BIOS and of course looked first to setting the clock date and time. I couldn't find it! I poked around in the menus for about an hour! I choose the "Advanced Setup" menus instead of "EZ-Setup".

Apparently, nobody thought to give an indication for the purpose of an obscure icon located near the time display. I'll bet the original owner of the board had the same confusion, decided there must be something wrong with it, and returned it to the reseller.

Only thing left to do now is to re-activate the OS. A minor obstacle, I should think. OH, but we're going to have fun with the spare parts -- no doubt about it!
 

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
10,575
2,145
146
Sounds promising, and I kind of like the oversized font, too. And I especially like that you still have some passion for PC hardware, which, as far as I can tell, is the thing that united us all in the first place. :)
 
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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,879
1,549
126
Sounds promising, and I kind of like the oversized font, too. And I especially like that you still have some passion for PC hardware, which, as far as I can tell, is the thing that united us all in the first place. :)
The latest news -- three days running a 2016 4.5 version of HCI Memtest 64, to get 371% coverage on the RAM. I use the Windows GUI version of the program for faster testing later on when OC'ing, but I prefer the primitive interface for a new set of RAM sticks.

As posted in the "OS" forum, there was absolutely no Windows reactivation issue once I booted into Win 10 on this beast. Apparently, Win 10 has a digital activation ID tied to my MS account, and is not bound to the hardware. But! This was a dual-boot system with Win 7. I think I left notes and BIOS screen captures for my OC progress and settings under Win 7 on partitions that don't have drive labels in Win 10, and I'm inclined to resume the OC'ing recovery on Win 7. But Win 7 doesn't have a digital activation ID, and it is indeed bound to the hardware.

As for the Kaby Lake processor upgraded with some Silicon Lottery TLC. I ran a pass of AIDA64's stress test just to get an idea of the stock Tj temperatures. The four temperature values bounce around between 58C and 62C. I saw customer reviews of the Kaby wherein people complained that they couldn't even begin overclocking their CPU because the processor was throttling at stock settings to compensate for temperatures that must have been 90C.

Without an "all Cores" setting in the BIOS, this thing turbos at stock to 4.5, when the Skylake OC'd settings gave me 4.7. So there's no hurry about this, as I figure out what I need to do with that Win 7 installation.

Before the vaping-pen static-charge disaster, I was troubleshooting a problem with a 4x8GB=32GB RAM configuration, in which the system would throw an error-code 41 critical stop in the Event Viewer logs when attempting to return from hibernation and sleep.

I have a theory about it now. I'd added the extra two sticks of TridentZ RAM and hadn't bothered to tweak the RAM and VCCIO voltages. I even ran the HCI Memtest 64 program within Windows after doubling the memory -- with no problem. But with hibernate and sleep, the features depend on a standby trickle of power; the RAM has to be powered via standby. It may be that there was no intrinsic hardware failure before the vaping-pen episode: I'd just forgotten to account for the extra RAM in the BIOS settings.

Anyway, I can get my taxes done on time, and then fiddle with this later.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,879
1,549
126
Good to hear it's working okay, congrats!
Well -- not com-PLETELY out of the woods. I started a thread in CPUs and OCing today. I don't remember doing anything special when I installed my first kit of TridentZ 3200 sticks. I think I simply selected "Manual" instead of "XMP", and chose "DDR4-3200" to key in the latency settings. Or -- maybe I DID choose XMP. But the board didn't choose to volt the VCCIO to 1.328V on "Auto"! Maybe this is what a newer BIOS version does.

Also -- before I zapped the motherboard USB controller -- I had uncovered a problem returning from hibernate and sleep with the old hardware. I was just preparing to troubleshoot it when I caused the accident. It's still there -- with new board, new RAM and new CPU. There are indications -- "intelligence" -- that it might be a storage driver.
 

killster1

Banned
Mar 15, 2007
6,205
475
126
Well -- not com-PLETELY out of the woods. I started a thread in CPUs and OCing today. I don't remember doing anything special when I installed my first kit of TridentZ 3200 sticks. I think I simply selected "Manual" instead of "XMP", and chose "DDR4-3200" to key in the latency settings. Or -- maybe I DID choose XMP. But the board didn't choose to volt the VCCIO to 1.328V on "Auto"! Maybe this is what a newer BIOS version does.

Also -- before I zapped the motherboard USB controller -- I had uncovered a problem returning from hibernate and sleep with the old hardware. I was just preparing to troubleshoot it when I caused the accident. It's still there -- with new board, new RAM and new CPU. There are indications -- "intelligence" -- that it might be a storage driver.
is there a good reason for 16 pages of notes for a overclock? just use the known working settings to get anywhere close to stock and call it a day, (that is unless you have a twitch feed or competitive gamer but i imagine you are not :) )
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,879
1,549
126
is there a good reason for 16 pages of notes for a overclock? just use the known working settings to get anywhere close to stock and call it a day, (that is unless you have a twitch feed or competitive gamer but i imagine you are not :) )
What would we DO without our NOTES?! It wasn't 16 pages -- it was 18 pages! But ALL I REALLY NEEDED was the final SETTINGS! And I just didn't LIST them at the end! Somewhere, there's an Excel file where I transferred those notes. You have to understand! Lefties like me and Obama learn to write with a cramped style. I don't know about him, but my class notes were always so atrocious to read easily that I had to transfer them in some way as soon as possible after the lecture. And I had to soak my left arm in a hot bath after a full day of classes.

But what do we know? I only know the RAM settings now for 2133 and 2666 Mhz, assuming the same timings in the spec -- 14-14-14-34. The motherboard Auto settings give me the voltages for the two lower speeds. Which ones to use? I suppose I'll have to re-run HCI-Memtest 64 for at least a 100% single pass.

And -- as for the over-clocking? I can perhaps wait until after Turbo-Tax spits out my returns for IRS and two states. This processor is plenty fast at 4.5 Ghz.

But! Do you understand ADDICTION?! Do you KNOW what it's LIKE?! After running this thing with the Skylake 6700K for four years, after something like 15 years of successful over-clocking, do you think it's POSSIBLE to JUST . . LET . . GO?!

NO! I CAN'T DO IT! I have one more possible fallback, though, to save me extra time with Prime95, Linx, RealBench and IBT. I have to look through a box of USB sticks to (possibly) find the one which (might) contain BIOS screen captures.

Where's my last little bag of white powder?! My last chunk of crack!? That roach that I dropped on the floor a month ago?! I gotta have it! I need a fix!

TROUBLE SLEEPING?! The answer is not a tab of Xanax or warm milk . . .

I finally did a search on "Fails to wake up properly after Windows 10 sleep" -- this time, with the Bug-Check string from BlueScreenView: "INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR".

Like magic! Even though Samsung Magician failed to tell me! Took me right to a troubleshooting forum! Outdated Samsung NVME driver! DONE! FINITO!

I'm just sad that I just missed the recipe with cabbage, potato and cheese from Stanley Tucci's new food program. I've already stolen about four recipes! Tomorrow night, we're frying Calzone!

So . . . . Gimme all ya got! Show me those Kaby OC settings, I tell ya!
 
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killster1

Banned
Mar 15, 2007
6,205
475
126
What would we DO without our NOTES?! It wasn't 16 pages -- it was 18 pages! But ALL I REALLY NEEDED was the final SETTINGS! And I just didn't LIST them at the end! Somewhere, there's an Excel file where I transferred those notes. You have to understand! Lefties like me and Obama learn to write with a cramped style. I don't know about him, but my class notes were always so atrocious to read easily that I had to transfer them in some way as soon as possible after the lecture. And I had to soak my left arm in a hot bath after a full day of classes.

But what do we know? I only know the RAM settings now for 2133 and 2666 Mhz, assuming the same timings in the spec -- 14-14-14-34. The motherboard Auto settings give me the voltages for the two lower speeds. Which ones to use? I suppose I'll have to re-run HCI-Memtest 64 for at least a 100% single pass.

And -- as for the over-clocking? I can perhaps wait until after Turbo-Tax spits out my returns for IRS and two states. This processor is plenty fast at 4.5 Ghz.

But! Do you understand ADDICTION?! Do you KNOW what it's LIKE?! After running this thing with the Skylake 6700K for four years, after something like 15 years of successful over-clocking, do you think it's POSSIBLE to JUST . . LET . . GO?!

NO! I CAN'T DO IT! I have one more possible fallback, though, to save me extra time with Prime95, Linx, RealBench and IBT. I have to look through a box of USB sticks to (possibly) find the one which (might) contain BIOS screen captures.

Where's my last little bag of white powder?! My last chunk of crack!? That roach that I dropped on the floor a month ago?! I gotta have it! I need a fix!

TROUBLE SLEEPING?! The answer is not a tab of Xanax or warm milk . . .

I finally did a search on "Fails to wake up properly after Windows 10 sleep" -- this time, with the Bug-Check string from BlueScreenView: "INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR".

Like magic! Even though Samsung Magician failed to tell me! Took me right to a troubleshooting forum! Outdated Samsung NVME driver! DONE! FINITO!

I'm just sad that I just missed the recipe with cabbage, potato and cheese from Stanley Tucci's new food program. I've already stolen about four recipes! Tomorrow night, we're frying Calzone!

So . . . . Gimme all ya got! Show me those Kaby OC settings, I tell ya!
yea i was addicted too back when you could buy a barton laptop cpu and put it in a desktop and overclock it like crazy but nowdays whats the point? to use more power and get minimal results. like i said unless you are a twitch gamer or have a screen than can do 1440p@144hz i dont think there is much worry for your optimized overclock. seems like you are thinking about to many things at once ;P
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,879
1,549
126
yea i was addicted too back when you could buy a barton laptop cpu and put it in a desktop and overclock it like crazy but nowdays whats the point? to use more power and get minimal results. like i said unless you are a twitch gamer or have a screen than can do 1440p@144hz i dont think there is much worry for your optimized overclock. seems like you are thinking about to many things at once ;P
I'm always thinking about too many things at once. You are truly, abso-tively, posi-lutely correct, though. I have to manage a lot of things including my 95-year-old Moms' twice-daily diaper change-outs. We're spending a lot of time at home; every trip out in the world has to be planned. I need to get the early start on my vegetable garden; I need to keep the fridge stocked with spaghetti-Bolognese and steak-fajitas taco filling. All the activity gives purpose to my life, and keeping all the household PCs connected and running is part of it.

What has REALLY been a difference for me in this (these?) builds was the two-tier caching concept. Of course, today, if everyone is using 10th-gen processors and motherboards with Optane, one has that feature as an extra option (option, Optane) to work with. But if you can socket 32GB to 64GB of RAM (and some insist on more for this, like 128GB), your "mainstream-serious" usage and gaming both benefit from a hierarchy of storage, with RAM and NVMe at the top of the pyramid.

The problem with the Samsung NVMe driver causing INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR and a critical stop Event-ID 41 returning from sleep or hibernate caused me to pause all my caching to RAM until it was fixed. Now -- I'm reelly-reelly-reelly back-in-bidniss.

The motherboard swap arising from the vape-pen-static accident by itself would still have forced me to recalibrate my settings because of improvements in the BIOS versions since I built the rig. I mean -- I'm stunned -- there were a total of five (5) level options for LLC/load-line-calibration under my original board's BIOS version. Now I find there are NINE (9) of them! I remember that I had very carefully chosen a modest setting based on actual measurement estimates I'd made back in 2017 for VDroop, so I could always rest assured that the voltage spike going from load to idle would never push beyond about 0.02V above the load level.

Then there is the "fine-tuning". Who was the forum member -- what was his "handle" -- who had posted an extensive thread on de-lidding the I7-3770K Ivy Bridge? He had also given me an idea for tuning an overclock voltage regime once total stability was achieved. You can see how minor shortcomings in VCORE lead to variations in LinX iteration run-times [CORRECTION: GFlops per iteration] that show a larger range of those GFLOPS in a sample of 10 or 25 iterations. This was due to error-correction for voltage falling a tad short, so you can bump up the Offset or Adaptive voltage settings to squeeze them down to a narrow range. I'd have to do all of that work again because of the new hardware.

The most significant thing I get out of this had nothing to do with the vape-pen accident. I can now resume the RAM caching and feel confident for hibernating the computer so that the cache is preserved. That was a really nice icing on the caching cake.

PS I DO have a BenQ monitor that can do 1440P @ 144hz. Of course, my favorite games don't need the graphics refinement, and one thing I've noticed while reminding myself today to make an appointment with my eye-doctor -- running my screen resolutiion above HD settings makes it harder to read stuff for day-to-day regular work -- like e-mails and accounting.

AN UPDATE ABOUT FINDING THE "OLD" VCCIO AND VCCSA SETTINGS FOR THE SAME G.SKILL TRIDENTZ DDR4-3200 14 14 14 34 RAM STICKS

Started looking through the last 8 pages of my scribbly 2017 ;notes. I DID overclock the SKYLAKE according to accepted method: started with setting the RAM at 2133 Mhz before I finally reached about 4.6 Ghz for the CPU clock speed. At that point, I made a note "DDR4-3200!!" and marked down the VCCIO and VCCSA set and reported values that worked. VCCIO set was 1.120V and VCCSA was 1.200V. These values are both lower than the "Auto" values for DDR4-2666 of 1.144 and 1.224V respectively.

I should be able to run stock Kaby Lake CPU base and turbo frequencies and still lower the Tj temperatures a bit by using my own recorded IMC/VCCIO and VCCSA set values. The monitoring software shows that turbo frequencies pull VCORE voltage between 1.25+V and 1.28V. The skinny on the street says you should be able to run the Kaby at closer to 1.20+V, and reach 5Ghz at 1.28V with a Noctua -NH-D15. So --- sure! -- I'm gonna OC this sucker, even if I don't "need" to . . .

All the newer generation Intel chips still use the Skylake architecture. Thus, it makes sense for anybody looking for "OC insights" from online guides to take a gander at older guides when you find them, in addition to any you find for your new-gen processor and motherboard. IF you use ASUS boards, ASUS ROG and "Edge-Up" web pages usually have good info. I found this one: Kaby Lake Over-Clocking Guide -- 49 MS Word pages! Printing it out, not so fun -- there goes my HP "XL" black ink cartridge . . . . Those high-end ASUS boards all have BIOS screens with a black background. . . . The TweakTown web-site also offers up an overclocking guide for the high-end K processors. People should be able to find good info online for everything. It's like having a bookshelf that contains both Julia Childs' and Craig Claiborne's memorable cook-books.

I need to start taking Prevagen or Focus Factor. I should remember all this s***, anyway. . . but I don't remember all of it.
 
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