New processor won't POST!

Specs:
M5A97 R 2.0
Corsair CX500
R7770
4 GB 1333 RAM

Swapped out my Intel Core i5-2500K for an Intel Core i7-3770K and now it just won't POST.

So, before I swapped the Processor, I updated the BIOS—everything was working fine then. Checked the settings too, made sure the Processor settings were on auto, all good. Then came the actual swap. Took the old one out, popped the new one in. The socket felt solid, so I don't think I messed that part up. Everything else stayed plugged in where it should be. Applied some thermal paste, mounted the cooler...

But when I try to boot it up, the hard drive acts like it's resetting constantly (it didn't die on me during those 15-20 minutes of trying). There's this weird clicking sound whenever the computer resets, I have no clue what it is. Here's a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW1Y...ature=youtu.be

I tried clearing the CMOS, moving jumpers around following the manual. Messed with the RAM too... Niente, nothing. Always the same thing. If you guys have any ideas, please... I really hope it's not the Processor... No beep codes, keyboard isn't responding. Nothing.
If I can't figure it out, I'll probably just take it down to the guys at Micro Center and let them take a look.

EDIT: Been messing with it a bit more just now. Sometimes it actually boots, but other times it just flat out refuses. And without those clicking sounds.

Kenneth Jackson3 said:Specs:
M5A97 R 2.0
Corsair CX500
R7770
4 GB 1333 RAM

Swapped out my Intel Core i5-2500K for an Intel Core i7-3770K and now it just won't POST.

So, before I swapped the Processor, I updated the BIOS—everything was working fine then. Checked the settings too, made sure the Processor settings were on auto, all good. Then came the actual swap. Took the old one out, popped the new one in. The socket felt solid, so I don't think I messed that part up. Everything else stayed plugged in where it should be. Applied some thermal paste, mounted the cooler...

But when I try to boot it up, the hard drive acts like it's resetting constantly (it didn't die on me during those 15-20 minutes of trying). There's this weird clicking sound whenever the computer resets, I have no clue what it is. Here's a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW1Y...ature=youtu.be

I tried clearing the CMOS, moving jumpers around following the manual. Messed with the RAM too... Niente, nothing. Always the same thing. If you guys have any ideas, please... I really hope it's not the Processor... No beep codes, keyboard isn't responding. Nothing.
If I can't figure it out, I'll probably just take it down to the guys at Micro Center and let them take a look.

EDIT: Been messing with it a bit more just now. Sometimes it actually boots, but other times it just flat out refuses. And without those clicking sounds.

If you're feeling up to it, try tearing it all down again and putting the old processor back in to see if it works. To me, it sounds like the hard drive is making a weird noise and skipping; if you can borrow a drive from someone to test it, try that. I think the drive is definitely the culprit. But hey, try putting the old processor back in first—if it boots with that, then the drive is fine and the new Processor is likely the problem.

It’s probably not even a hardware issue 100% of the time. It's pretty new, and honestly, it won't even boot if I just shut this one down and leave the other two alone. That clicking sound? It sounds just like when you force-shutdown a PC. Now it’s doing that—like it's trying to restart itself but getting stuck on something. I think I'll try swapping in my old processor tomorrow. Only thing is, dealing with this Cooler Master Hyper 212 is such a massive pain in the neck to take on and off. Anyway, I’m gonna head out, grab some air, clear my head, and we'll see what happens in the morning.

P.S. Just wanted to check off a few more things. I pulled the battery, popped out the graphics card... no beeping without the card, which is weird because there should be a beep. Tried a bunch of different drive combinations too. Everything fails except for when I use the old processor. I'll tackle that tomorrow. Man, I really hope the motherboard didn't just fry out on me...

Kenneth Jackson3 said:It’s probably not even a hardware issue 100% of the time. It's pretty new, and honestly, it won't even boot if I just shut this one down and leave the other two alone. That clicking sound? It sounds just like when you force-shutdown a PC. Now it’s doing that—like it's trying to restart itself but getting stuck on something. I think I'll try swapping in my old processor tomorrow. Only thing is, dealing with this Cooler Master Hyper 212 is such a massive pain in the neck to take on and off. Anyway, I’m gonna head out, grab some air, clear my head, and we'll see what happens in the morning.

P.S. Just wanted to check off a few more things. I pulled the battery, popped out the graphics card... no beeping without the card, which is weird because there should be a beep. Tried a bunch of different drive combinations too. Everything fails except for when I use the old processor. I'll tackle that tomorrow. Man, I really hope the motherboard didn't just fry out on me...

We'll have a better idea once you pop that old Processor back in to see if everything runs smoothly. If it does, then it’s not the motherboard, the graphics card, or the storage—it's just that new Processor. You could also try testing it with a different graphics card before you go through the hassle of tearing everything apart.

Did you actually secure the CPU power cable to the motherboard properly? I'd suggest double-checking all your connections. It’s highly unlikely the board gave out if everything was running fine with the Intel Core i5-2500K.

Alright. I took it all apart, put it back together, and it’s actually running now. I think maybe I messed up those mounting screws on the motherboard. They don't even have washers or anything, so I might have gone outside the white ring area and caused a little short circuit. That's my best guess, anyway. At least the main thing is working. But... now I can't get online. I'm wondering if maybe pulling the battery and doing that massive hard reset totally fried something? It says it's connected to the network and everything looks fine, but browsers, Steam... nothing will actually connect to the web. I didn't want to start a whole new thread, but if anyone knows what's going on, let me know.

Check out the date,

So, after messing around with a few restarts on my PC and the router, everything just... kind of fixed itself? I guess? It’s all working perfectly now 👍

I ended up firing up Black Flag, Ground Zeroes, and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings while I was waiting. Gotta say, things look way, way better now 😁😁😁🎉

It’s possible your network card has kicked the bucket, but just to cover all bases, try reinstalling your LAN drivers first. If that doesn't work, you might want to try resetting your BIOS to its factory defaults—a quick CMOS reset should do the trick.

Also, try letting the machine run for a bit. I had an issue once where my network card would only start behaving after the PC had been powered on for a while; sometimes it took thirty minutes, other times closer to two or three hours before it finally stabilized.

edit

Glad to hear everything is back up and running!

All sorted now. 🙂
Sorry to bug you guys again, but I was looking at this... which temperature reading is actually the right one for the Processor?



Also, I’ve been thinking about trying to undervolt it a little bit. Just enough to pull a bit less power than it normally would, I guess.

Maybe something like 1.275V? Has anyone here tried undervolting an Intel Core i7-3770K while keeping it at stock speeds?

It really depends on which software you’re using to monitor things (though people can never quite agree on whether you should trust socket temps versus actual Processor temps)

So, just scroll here—look for this green section

Regarding voltage, it all comes down to the specific chip you have. It's easily possible to stay under 1.3v, especially since those newer high-end models I mentioned have lower leakage, so they tend to perform better... It also heavily depends on your motherboard. In my experience, the Intel Core i7-3770 is generally one of the tougher ones to overclock effectively.

My Intel Core i7-3770 at 1.2vcore holds steady at 4.1 GHz.
For an Intel Core i7-3770K, I need 1.39vcore to hit 4.9 GHz, but it stays stable at 4.4 GHz with 1.2625v.

That's the 8320 paired with your motherboard.

On that same motherboard, I can hit 4.2 GHz at 1.308V under full load, even though the BIOS shows 1.275V.

You need to disable all those power-saving features (like C&C and similar). Also, if you notice a voltage drop—which you can see via CPU-Z in Windows while under max load compared to what's set in your BIOS—you should enable LLC (Load Line Calibration). That will stabilize your voltages, though it does bump up your temperatures slightly.

Alright, sweet. I’m seeing about 30-33 at idle... I gave Far Cry 4, Black Flag, The Witcher 3, and some modded Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a spin. It didn't even touch 41. I'm pretty happy with that, honestly. Might play around with the voltage a little bit now, though. 😬

Kenneth Jackson3 said:Alright, sweet. I’m seeing about 30-33 at idle... I gave Far Cry 4, Black Flag, The Witcher 3, and some modded Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a spin. It didn't even touch 41. I'm pretty happy with that, honestly. Might play around with the voltage a little bit now, though. 😬

Give me a break... where though? 😬

analogtiger19 said:Give me a break... where though? 😬

Oh man, The Witcher 2 hahaha. I totally missed that one. 😬

Kenneth Jackson3 said:
Alright, great. It's sitting around 30-33 degrees at idle. I tested out Far Cry 4, Black Flag, The Witcher 3, and some modded Skyrim. It didn't break 41. I'm happy with that. Now I'm just going to play around with the voltage a bit. 😬

You really ought to test the load using something more demanding—since those games won't quite max it out—like Prime95 or OCCT. You should run it for several hours, but at least one hour where the temperature stays under 62C. That’s how you actually verify stability and fine-tune your undervolting. Though, in the real world, unless you're doing heavy 3D rendering, you likely won't hit the kind of load you get from these synthetic benchmarks.

The trick with undervolting is to dial it down until the PC can't even boot into Windows, then bump it up one increment at a time until it can handle a sustained load. For actual overclocking, though:

Overclocking these chips is pretty simple. Hop into the BIOS, change the vcore from auto to 1.3875V (which I believe is stock for the 965be), then bump the multiplier up from 17 to 17.5. That will bring you up to 3.5GHz. Save and see if you load into Windows. If you do, restart your PC and push the multiplier up to 18, which will bring you up to 3.6GHz. Save and load into Windows. Assuming you do, repeat until you can't load into Windows. Bump your vcore one step (to 1.4000V) and see if that lets you load into Windows. If it doesn't, bump it another step up (1.4125V) and try again. Once you're able to load into Windows, start to move your multiplier up again, bumping vcore whenever you fail to load into Windows, until you get your Processor up to x19 multiplier (3.8GHz).

Make sure you're able to load into Windows. Then download and run Prime95; I personally like the Blend test because it exposes an unstable machine pretty quickly and really pushes the temperatures high. Keep a close eye on your Processor temps with something like CoreTemp. If Prime crashes back to the desktop, or your system simply suffers a black screen restart while temps never rose above 55C, you've likely undervolted your Processor too much. Go back into the BIOS, raise the vcore another step, and try again. Keep increasing the vcore by one step until you're able to run Prime95 for a few hours.

If you're nice and stable in Prime95, and your Processor temps aren't breaking 55C-60C after a few hours, I'd say you have a solid overclock.

That advice applies to the Phenom series, so ignore the specific voltage and multiplier combos, but the principle remains identical.
Try pushing it to 4.2 - 4.4GHz and find that "sweet spot" voltage (the lowest possible setting where it remains fully stable). Or, if you don't want to increase speed, just leave the multiplier alone.

I mean, I don't know. I actually undervolted my Phenom on day one. My whole strategy was basically just cranking it down until I started hitting those blue screens while playing Battlefield 3. Once that happened, I backed it off by one notch and I haven't had a single issue since. xD

What an absolute mess of complications surrounding that AMD overclocking process, haha. Honestly, thank God I went with Intel; reading through this just makes me feel much better about my choice.

When you actually sit down and tally everything up, it ends up being significantly more expensive and far more complicated than anything on the Intel side, though I suppose some people enjoy that struggle. 🙂They’ll spend days or even nights messing around just to squeeze out a few extra frames, buying overpriced coolers, motherboards, memory modules, and power supplies—it all becomes this interconnected web of dependencies.

It’s an expensive hobby, and once you factor in the total cost, you really have to ask yourself if those marginal FPS gains are actually worth the investment.

Man, you're talking nonsense here.😁 I mean, any sane person is going to pick up decent cooling if they're even thinking about overclocking. Doesn't matter if it's an Intel or an AMD setup. I think you might have gotten your modules a little mixed up.😬

For an AMD setup like this, you'll definitely want an aftermarket cooler. Also, keep in mind that every FX Processor comes unlocked. Since a decent motherboard is recommended for this type of processor—and the one being used here qualifies—the overclocking potential is already built-in. It really just comes down to whether the user actually wants to push it. You don't have to deal with the extra expense of buying a "K" series Intel processor and a high-end Z-series motherboard just to get that flexibility.

To put it this way: pairing an Intel Core i7-3770 with a solid cooler and a mid-to-high range motherboard ends up costing about the same as an entry-level i5 paired with a budget motherboard.

Kenneth Jackson3 said:Man, you're talking nonsense here.😁 I mean, any sane person is going to pick up decent cooling if they're even thinking about overclocking. Doesn't matter if it's an Intel or an AMD setup. I think you might have gotten your modules a little mixed up.😬

Off course AMD

Stock amd ,,standard board <$167 and just go for it!!!!