Irritating cold boot issue

[Radikal]

Hmm... can anyone with an AMI BIOS tell me if the BIOS gives you a message in case it shuts down due to overheating?

The message I'm getting is that "The system has failed to start several times...". I'm thinking that maybe the thermal compound has not made a perfect seal causing some gap to form due to constriction from the cold. Then when you first boot it it overheats and shuts down, after a couple of seconds the heat expands the compound and the system is stable. The temperatures in operation are low. Around 20C.

I know, it's a long shot! Anyone has a thermal warning message? Thanks.

 

[iamgenius]

When the 9-9-9-30 timings failed to fix the problem (no surprise there) I turned into something else. I had noticed that the Vcore voltage was pretty high (1,4V in AMD OD, 1,425V in CPUz) so when it failed to boot I entered the BIOS. The Vcore [on auto] was saying 1,376V, yet that's not what I was seeing. So I manually set the value to 1,365V [I think that was the closest value available]. Now I had a correct reading in both programs.

It is normal for the Vcore to be different between the BIOS and CPUZ. It is called Vdroop. You can google it.

 

[Radikal]

Just so that I don't leave this thread hanging (like so many others) I'll report my final findings.

The issue was (is) definitely temperature related. This whole week with the temperature no less than 15C I didn't have a single boot problem.

So, some component (I suspect the graphics card - because it's it's fan that makes the most noise - spins up and down on the failed boots), if left for couple of hours in low temperatures (maybe 11-12C) fails to boot.

I haven't changed a single setting all week, as a matter of fact everything is on auto or default settings, so this is as conclusive as it's going to get for now... Maybe I'll figure it out some time...

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

 

[Blazer]

have you pulled the video card to see if airflow is restricted ?, Remove heatsink/clean and reapply thermal paste ?, stress test the card and monitor temp with msi afterburner ?, just some things you may want to try.

 

[Radikal]

The card is new, as is the system, barely a month old. The card is an XFX 4770 and it has the shroud design, so it's kinda hard to see what going on in there.
I monitor the temperatures with AMD overdrive and they are nominal in use [around 40C]