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Long time lurker, looking for problem solving help on new build

A

akita53

Junior Member
Hi All,

First, thanks to all the people who post helpful info on this forum. I’ve been a long time lurker and always come back to this site for good info and guidance.

I’m looking for input / help on my new build. Apx 2 weeks ago I assembled this:

Intel I7-4790k
Crucial MX100 256B SSD
Gskill Ripjaws ram DDR3-1600, 16GB
EVGA 600w PSU (had ordered Corsair HX650, but replaced as Corsair PSU fan was running full speed 100% of time)
Asus Z97-Pro
XFX Radeon R9-280 vid card
Western Digital Blue 1TB HDD
Asus DVD drive
Windows 7
Rosewill Blackhawk Case

Believe that’s all of it. No overclocking, just a stock install. Windows went on the SSD.

The problem is that when my computer goes into a "sleep state" it wakes up inconsistently. About 30% of the time it wakes up fine, the PC and all device reactivate. About 70% of the time I'll tap the mouse or keyboard and the computer itself will wake up (lights on, drives, spinning, etc..) but then the monitor stays dark, and keyboard stays dark (I have lighted keyboards), the mouse will light up if tapped / moved.

The only way to recover is to hit the reset button or power button. It's weird how tapping the keyboard will wake it up, but then the keyboard will not function after that when the PC itself wakes up.

I spent time reading forums, posts, etc across the net and trying various fixes I read about. The whole "wake from sleep problem" has many many threads on the net, many of them reference SSD drives in particular. I’ve probably spent about 10 hours reading and experimenting. Some things I tried (vocab might be wrong, recalling this from the last few days)

*Power Setting - set it so windows could not turn off usb devices
*Power Setting - set it so windows could not turn of my PCI-e vid card (that wasn’t the exact verbiage, was about moderate power savings and such)
*Power settings - many settings here between sleep, hibernate, hard disk sleep time, more settings on how USB ports turn on and off.
*Device manager – setting USB hub contorllers so they could not be turned off (believe that was the toggle)
*Memtested my ram
*Tried some bios settings people said helped them (ERP, plus a few others I don’t recall)
*Flashed / updated my bios. Reset it to default.
*removed my HDD so only the SSD was installed
*Etc..

Finally, last night I just reinstalled windows. Since there was very little on the PC I figured why not. I was hopeful that maybe I had accidentally installed some bloatware that was causing problems. I installed the bare minimum drivers. Unfortunately the problem persisted.

The inconsistently of the problem bugs me, like I said maybe 1 out of 3 tries everything works fine.

One work around is to just disable all the sleep / hibernate powersaving stuff and leave the pc powered all the time. I read up that hibernate isn’t necessarily great for an SSD drive, but I’m hung up opn this as it bugs me that it's not working properly

So now my head is at this:

1) It could be just some wonky compatibility problem with the SSD. SSD's have been out awhile, so I would think this stuff would be worked out by now?
2) Maybe my motherboard has problems? I could RMA it and try swapping out another of the identical type. This wouldn't be too big a hassle other than having to re-install the CPU. (need more thermal goop!)

Really looking for opinions from more knowledgeable folks (you all). Does it sound like a hardware motherboard problem, an SSD compatibility problem I have to live with, or something else.

My next step I’m kicking is removing the SSD and installing windows to the HDD to see if the sleep problem persists. After that I’m considering RMA’s the motherboard for a direct replacement.

Thanks for any advice, I only build a PC every few years, and really woudl like to figure this out if possible
 
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Thanks for the quick reply.

1) The vid card driver is fresh
2) Your note on the PSU is not something I had seen before. I'll check it out when I get home. If mine is not compliant, hopefully I have older Corsair PSU's in my other 2 pc's (circa 2011 build) that I can swap in and try.

Would that sleep state be identified in the /powercfg command. When I did that I believe it returned that S3 was the only sleep state available. I did a quick google based on your note and see info about Haswell have a "C7" sleep state.

Thanks much
 
In the past, I've had two different "wake from sleep" issues.

The first is an AMD driver issue, when resuming from "zerocore power", where the GPU shuts off to save power when your screen is off. I still have issues with this intermittently. You can read about it here, but it can happen any time your monitor is turned off, even if your PC doesn't go to sleep.

The second is a blackscreen when resuming from actual sleep, and is an Intel thing. I fixed it by disabling various C-states in bios. C1E I left on, but C3, C6 and C7 I disabled and it went away.
 
This sounds like a video card that's not waking up, except for the part about the keyboard not lighting up.

Pull the R9 280 and run off of the motherboard video out for a while. See if that clears up the issue.

Frankly, I don't think it's the well-known Haswell sleep-state/PSU issue, due to the fact that the system wakes up, but doesn't fully power on the peripherals. Are you sure about the keyboard not lighting up? Maybe switch USB ports?
 
Many different things can be happening.

1. Power supply can be bad. Does the power supply provide enough watts for both the computer and the video card? Plug into 24 pin power connecter. Plug into the P4 motherboard power connector 4-8 pins. Plug into Video card if required. Plug the fans into the appropriate Motherboard fan jacks (CPU)(CASE). Plug into other fans.

2. Motherboard can be bad.

3. Adjust the bios so it does not go to sleep or not sleep in such a deep sleep state.

4. Reseat the 24 pin main power connector and the auxiliary Power connector (P4).
Hope you know to plug in the 4 or 8 pin P4 CPU power plug on the motherboard.

5. Maybe the Monitor does not turn on properly. Get better Monitor Driver and change the green energy settings. Microsoft installs a default monitor driver, might help to install a driver specifically for your monitor. This is completely separate from the Video card.

6. Keyboard drivers. Same thing goes for the Keyboard drivers. Try changing to better drivers.

7. Video card drivers. Yes install new video card drivers if needed. Some video cards need a PCIE power connector plugged into the video card. Try reseating the video card. to insure a good connection in the PCIE slot.

8. USB some USB connectors are powered and some are not used the powered ones for Keyboard and mouse. There may be specific USB ports recommended for use by Keyboard and Mouse. Some USB ports are not powered by default, but can be turned on.
 
Thanks everyone for the posts and helpful information.

I believe I've identified the problem. The USB ports I was plugging the keyboard into (but not the mouse) were the Asmedia USB ports.

When I was working on it today I had the keyboard plugged into the Intel USB ports and it seemed to be working fine. I turned down the sleep/hibernate/disk stop times to 1/2/3 so I could wake it from sleep many times, and it kept waking with no problems.

The punchline is I think my Asmedia USB controller or hardware is flaky. I noticed that the Asmedia controller was not showing up in device manager, even tho it was enabled in the bios. I could not install the Asmedia USB drivers either.

I got the Asmedia USB to show up in the device manager by turning it off in bios, restarting, then turning it back on. I could then install the Asmedia USB Drivers.

However it wouldn't stick. I let the PC sleep while the keyboard was pluggged into the Asmedia USB and my problem recreated when waking (pc wakes up, monitor dark, keyboard dark). The mouse lights up because it's hooked into the intel USB ports.

After rebooting from the hang, the Asmedia USB dissappeared from device manager.

I tried a few more times to get the Asmedia USB working, but it's inconsistent and flakes out. I ended up disabling it altogether in BIOS and am running with the intel ports.

Debating whether to hassle with returning it or not now.
 
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Sounds like a plausible cause, and one that would be nearly impossible to identify without troubleshooting. Glad I suggested changing the keyboard's USB port, although I'll confess, a problem with the dreaded Asmedia ports hadn't even crossed my mind.

🙂
 
Do the Asmedia ports have a history of being trouble.

When I finally figured it out, in the back of my mind I seemed to have recalled reading that someplace from when I was picking out my parts. Was some comment along the lines of "don't use the asus ports, always the intel ones".

I should have figured it out quicker what with the mouse lighting up and the keyboard not.

Oh well, learned a lot in the process
 
akita53 said:
Do the Asmedia ports have a history of being trouble.

When I finally figured it out, in the back of my mind I seemed to have recalled reading that someplace from when I was picking out my parts. Was some comment along the lines of "don't use the asus ports, always the intel ones".

I should have figured it out quicker what with the mouse lighting up and the keyboard not.

Oh well, learned a lot in the process
Click to expand...

Well, the ports are much slower than Intel's, but they also behave differently due to using different drivers. Nothing quite as bad as you're describing, however.
 
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