[b0b1man]

Guys, it's been 2 days since I unlocked my 4-th core in my Phenom II X3 710 processor and everything worked just perfect under windows 7 64 Ultimate. The system was perfectly stable, I had my BIOS flashed to 2005 version (on my ASUS M4A77TD PRO mobo).

Yesterday, I bought a SSD disk, namely the A-Data 592 32GB SSD and plugged it in. I had some problems trying to get the BIOS to recognize it. I managed to do that and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 x64 Ultimate on it. I also have my HDD 320GB HITACHI as a secondary drive to keep my music in (got about 220gb of music). And everything was perfect, after each restart the system boot up nicely.

But...yesterday I finally shut down the PC for the first time after I had my SSD installed. And today, as I turned it on, the BIOS didnt recognize my SSD that I was using the day before. I played around with the cables in the case, but there was no problem whatsoever (I switched cables with the HDD and everything worked). As a last resort, I turned off the 4-th core in my CPU and....surprise! The SSD was recognized again by the BIOS. Every time I turn on the 4-th core, the BIOS forgets about my SSD and doesent find it. With the 4-th core turned off, everything is normal. And this happens ONLY when I power off the PC. When I restart with the 4-th core turned on, the SSD is working fine.

What could possibly be the problem? Some crazy BIOS fault maybe? The CPU is perfectly stable at all 4 cores running...Please, help me out guys!

 

[EvoBeardy]

Did you install your SSD with the 4th core unlocked?

'cos a rule of thumb is to always disable the unlock when installing a new component (sometimes programs too), 'cos it can have adverse effects in both the installation and running of, even though the unlock is stable, it's still not supposed to be there.

Maybe someone else with experience with SSD's on an unlocked CPU can be of more help, but that's the only thing I can think of that may have caused the error.

 

[Silvos00]

First of all welcome to OCN ^^. You should add your system to your sig in the User Control Panel, then click on add system, this helps us figure out what hardware you have.

As for the issue, unlocking a core will never guarantee everything works perfect. It's been disabled because it has "any" fault at all, typically. To clarify, you can "restart" but not "shut down"? That seems very odd...being that it's only when the core is unlocked I'd blame it on that. If "any" portion of a core is not 100% AMD will bin it. It's possible your 4th core is 99%, but this is also baring that I don't know much about SSD's. Just going on what you said about disablign the 4th core.

 

[b0b1man]

First of all, thanks for the quick replies guys!

Back on-topic - I think its some kind of BIOS bug. The core is 100% functional, but maybe the BIOS messes things up. The odd thing is that the problem occurs only when i turn off the PC. No matter how many times I restart, I get no problems whatsoever.

I dont get it - what does the CPU have to do with the SSD not being detected? It doesent make any sense... Maybe I should put the SSD on SATA 6 channel (now its SATA 1 and my HDD is on SATA 2) and see if the HDD gets detected where the SSD was. I will have to do that at home... I will update my profile as you guys said, fill in all the PC specs.

 

[Silvos00]

It could possibly be a BIOS bug, you might have to call ASUS. Since they advertise a feature of core unlocking they should help you troubleshoot it. And this is a shot in the dark...but unlocking cores uses more wats. It could be possible a 400W PSU can't handle it, but I don't know much about PSUs, so I highly doubt it.

 

[coonmanx]

Call tech support. Sounds a lot like a BIOS issue. Your workaround for now sounds like booting in as a tri core, restarting and going to quad core. The second suspect in this would of course be the 400W power supply.

 

[Markeh]

I'd look closely at your PSU. 400w SHOULD be enough to power your system. But if it's an unknown brand PSU, it may not be as powerful as advertised.

 

[b0b1man]

I have thought about this as well. But here is what I came up with - it couldn't be the PSU, since my video card takes a lot more when at full power than the SSD could possibly take. And the PSU runs fine under fully powered HD5770. The SSD takes MAXIMUM 2 watts, or even 1 watt of power and the video card is not cranked while booting the windows.

But...thats just my opinion. BTW, I live in Bulgaria (thats where I am from) and I cant call ASUS support, cause' we do not have an asus customer service in this country. And it would cost me a lot to call the US customer support for help.

Right now, I have clocked the CPU at 8% using 3 cores, so it runs at 2815mhz instead of the normal 2600mhz and the system is bootin up fine. The SSD is recognized and I dont get any problems. I get problems only when switching to 4 core... I dont wanna have to lock and unlock the core every time I shut down the PC, so there has to be another way to do this...

I will try some switching between the SATA connectors some day this weekend and hopefully I may be able to solve this...I really wanna use my 4-th core since it works perfectly fine.

Again, thanks for the responses guys, I apreciate your efforts! Oh, and greetings from Bulgaria!

 

[coonmanx]

Your best bet would be to find some online tech support so you don't have to call anyone on the phone. This is always how I get a hold of tech support. Check the Asus website.

 

[b0b1man]

Posted in the Asus forum, noone replied...guess they dont care about their customers after all.