Killer 4790k? Literally?

[Kenmitch]

Purchased a 4790k last week and dropped it into my rig.

1st motherboard fatality.
Gigabyte z97mx-gaming 5

2nd motherboard fatality.
Gigabyte z97x-ud5h

Common denominators in both rigs when they died.

4790k
Windows 10 x64 uEFI install

Symptoms:
Boot loop of death
Hang in bios black screen blinking cursor upper left.
z97x-ud5h has led that hangs at A9 which is shown as entering setup. One of the bios. 2nd bios boot loops over and over.

Thought I had the gaming 5 fixed with bios flash. Dropped 4670k in it and it was working for a day or so.

Bad luck?
CPU?

Nothing crazy on clocks for 4790k at time of death. 4.8GHz @ 1.27v's or so.

Stress testing bsods in windows due to not enough vcore somehow triggered the early demise....Twice!

 

[Burpo]

The only corruption I've seen after blue-screen (low voltage) is hard drive, though I suppose it could corrupt bios too.

 

[daveybrat]

Just speaking from my own personal experience, i haven't had much luck with higher end Gigabyte boards based on Z97 chipset. Much better luck with ASRock boards.

Maybe just bad luck? Time to change brands?

 

[Kenmitch]

Just speaking from my own personal experience, i haven't had much luck with higher end Gigabyte boards based on Z97 chipset. Much better luck with ASRock boards.

Maybe just bad luck? Time to change brands?

Z97mx-gaming 5 was working great. Would need to check but thinking its maybe 1yr old.

UD5H just bought off amazon.

Maybe Windows 10 and uEFI install combined with Gigabyte bios is the issue?

 

[PliotronX]

The glaring common theme is the manufacturer of the board.. my ASRock has been solid as well. My fan controller crapped out and so my Noctua fans weren't spinning for a while when stress testing 4.8GHz and I think one of the memory channels was damaged as a result but the thing still refuses to die, board or 4670k.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

First encountered boot looping on a Gigabyte Z68 board. Returned it and went with Asrock.

Second time encountered was with a Gigabyte Z87 board. Returned that and went for a lower-end Gigabyte (I was buying local).

Was considering Gigabyte again for my X99 build. Read numerous reports of boot looping with both boards I was looking at (a Gaming G1 and a UD5 iirc). Supposedly fixed with newer BIOS revisions, but I was still skeptical. Went with Asrock.

I'm pretty leery of Gigabyte at this point. Back in the 939 days GB was fine with me and Asrock was the brand I skipped, but now the tables have turned.

 

[MongGrel]

Hmm, really no clue here.

I did move from Gigabyte to Asus myself many years ago, that is a personal preference I suppose, but had problems with them myself in the past. Was a long time back, bulging capacitors, etc.

I'm an Asus fanboi these days really.

Have never used an ASRock myself, but as they are an Asus spinoff...

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

Try over night Cmos clear, longer then 12 hours..................

 

[trungma]

First encountered boot looping on a Gigabyte Z68 board. Returned it and went with Asrock.

Second time encountered was with a Gigabyte Z87 board. Returned that and went for a lower-end Gigabyte (I was buying local).

Was considering Gigabyte again for my X99 build. Read numerous reports of boot looping with both boards I was looking at (a Gaming G1 and a UD5 iirc). Supposedly fixed with newer BIOS revisions, but I was still skeptical. Went with Asrock.

I'm pretty leery of Gigabyte at this point. Back in the 939 days GB was fine with me and Asrock was the brand I skipped, but now the tables have turned.

I have the same issue with a Gigabyte X68P-UD4. Boot loop all the time. Not touching another Gigabyte board ever.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

I have the same issue with a Gigabyte X68P-UD4. Boot loop all the time. Not touching another Gigabyte board ever.

Heh, that's the board I was talking about (Z68XP-UD4).

 

[Kenmitch]

Ordered a replacement UD5H from Amazon and sending the defective one back. I'll give it one more shot. Board will be delivered today.

Spent too much time installing windows 7 sp1 followed by 217 updated to get to win 10 pro on the UD5H. Hopefully it will still be activated.

The Gaming 5 board will have to be rma to Gigabyte. Haven't played around with it again yet. Gonna see if I can get it to boot and reflash bios again. If it does I'll flash it twice this time.

 

[ehume]

Ordered a replacement UD5H from Amazon and sending the defective one back. I'll give it one more shot. Board will be delivered today.

Spent too much time installing windows 7 sp1 followed by 217 updated to get to win 10 pro on the UD5H. Hopefully it will still be activated.

The Gaming 5 board will have to be rma to Gigabyte. Haven't played around with it again yet. Gonna see if I can get it to boot and reflash bios again. If it does I'll flash it twice this time.

Am I understanding this right? Two boards down and one chip? The UD5H was working fine for a year with the old chip in it? Perhaps Windows 10, the BIOS, or the CPU itself is the miscreant here. My experience with this brand has been positive. My experience with Z97X has been positive. So naturally I'm inclined to look somewhere else. The fact that both boards have died suggests that you look at what you did to both of them -- software, firmware or hardware.

 

[Kenmitch]

Am I understanding this right? Two boards down and one chip? The UD5H was working fine for a year with the old chip in it? Perhaps Windows 10, the BIOS, or the CPU itself is the miscreant here. My experience with this brand has been positive. My experience with Z97X has been positive. So naturally I'm inclined to look somewhere else. The fact that both boards have died suggests that you look at what you did to both of them -- software, firmware or hardware.

Almost. The z97mx-Gaming 5 board is about a year old. I was running a 4690k in it all that time without any issues. I upgraded the cpu with a 4790k. Board went south a couple hours later. I figured MB maybe just went belly up as they sometimes do.

Never had issues with Gigabyte until the 4790k. Maybe it's cursed?

The z97x-UD5H was recently bought. Was contemplated moving back to ATX for a while. Kind of want to play around with dual gpus since I got a 144hz monitor.

Strange how it pretty much went belly up with the same symptoms as the Gaming 5. Guess it could just be defective.

4790k, Windows 10 pro x64 uEFI install, and Gigabyte are the only common denominators. Corrupted bios looks to be the culprit. Not sure how or why it happened.

Other common denominator I guess would be 3-4 bsods at 4.8GHz during stress testing the 4790k.

Sounds silly when you think about it.

 

[2is]

Just speaking from my own personal experience, i haven't had much luck with higher end Gigabyte boards based on Z97 chipset. Much better luck with ASRock boards.

Maybe just bad luck? Time to change brands?

I don't have any experience with gigabytes Z97 boards because I had enough with their Z77 boards. Ironically, also boot loop issues. Seems to be a chronic issue with Gigabyte and they don't seem to know how to fix the problem.

 

[ehume]

I'm on my second GA-Z97X Gaming 7 -- I shorted out the first one and killed it. The chip I'm using is the i7 4790k. OS is Win 8.1-64. I do lots of heatsink-swapping because this is my review system. These motherboards have been steadfast troopers -- except when I killed one. I would look to what both boards have in common -- CPU, RAM, etc. -- that could have killed them. Two different boards dying doesn't sound like the boards. I'm guessing that a board from another mfr would do the same as your Gigabyte boards: die.

And I don't think it's from OC'ing. I've had my 4790k up to 5.1GHz. And I've failed a 4.6GHz 1-hour stress test with Linpack + AVX2. The systems have always returned. Both boards.

 

[Ketchup]

I did see an abnormally high amount of bad reviews on Z97 Gigabyte boards (Newegg). The two boards I had before now were Gigabytes. And builds done years ago were Gigabytes (no issues).

But there are troubleshooting steps I either missed or weren't mentioned (resetting the BIOS, unplugging all but one memory stick, unplugging all drives).

Your issues could also be caused by a failing power supply.

I guess my question would be: when these boards were sent back for RMA, was a problem found with them and relayed to you?

 

[Kenmitch]

Amazon dropped off motherboard last night.

Rebuilt rig and powered on. Hung at A9 just like the board it replaced.

Was pretty late so gave up.

This AM I dropped my 4690k in the new board. Booted right up with bios warning. Loaded optimize defaults and rebooted. Working fine now.

Downside win 10 shows not activated now. Go online to activate and it won't. Showing key is blocked....Ugh! Was activated with the original UD5H this board replaced.

Ultra rare defective cpu!

 

[ehume]

Amazon dropped off motherboard last night.

Rebuilt rig and powered on. Hung at A9 just like the board it replaced.

Was pretty late so gave up.

This AM I dropped my 4690k in the new board. Booted right up with bios warning. Loaded optimize defaults and rebooted. Working fine now.

Downside win 10 shows not activated now. Go online to activate and it won't. Showing key is blocked....Ugh! Was activated with the original UD5H this board replaced.

Ultra rare defective cpu!

Since you have to RMA the 4709K, why not trade it in for a 5775K?

 

[Ketchup]

Wow, very rare indeed. Glad you figured it out.

 

[richierich1212]

Since you have to RMA the 4709K, why not trade it in for a 5775K?

How would he do that?

 

[Kenmitch]

Since you have to RMA the 4709K, why not trade it in for a 5775K?

I'm at day 13 of 14 in frys return policy. Dread the drive but it's quickest way.

Aren't those rarer than a defective Intel CPU?

 

[ehume]

I'm at day 13 of 14 in frys return policy. Dread the drive but it's quickest way.

Aren't those rarer than a defective Intel CPU?

Rarer than steak tartar.

 

[Kenmitch]

Wow, very rare indeed. Glad you figured it out.

Bad thing is it was probably a 4.8GHz chip.

Got the replacement sitting on the table waiting. Paying tribute to the silicone lottery gods before I drop it in.

 

[Burpo]

Bad thing is it was probably a Defective chip.

Rarer than steak tartar.

Considering no such thing as a 5775K, I'd say so..

 

[AntonioHG]

I had a bad one as well, but there were some circumstances like the possibility of a bad PSU that caused damage -- kind of like chicken/egg scenario.

In any case, no board worked properly with the chip. Could not install or run Windows, lol. It would just give me an error on load and reboot. RMAing was easy with Intel though. Explained the situation in live chat, got an RMA approved and sent in the busted one, got the new one pretty fast.