MSI Z68A-GD65 stops responding and goes into UEFI

**zidane** · 19-05-2012

I just brought a MSI Z68A-GD65 motherboard for my PC yesterday. After attaching the motherboard and other peripherals, I thought of overclocking it. So I entered the BIOS menu and increased the multiplier and voltage. After inserting the desired values for other settings of the motherboard, I saved the settings and exited. But the UEFI of the motherboard froze and I had to restart the system again.

I thought that motherboard was not properly connected to the hard disk or maybe some other peripheral which must be the reason for the non-responsive behavior. I checked the connection of all the peripherals on the motherboard and restarted again. I once again checked the settings in the BIOS if they were saved properly after its crash. But again after saving and exiting, the UEFI stopped responding. I asked one of my friends for the possible reason and he said to check the version of BIOS for any incompatibility. The version of BIOS was compatible with the MSI Z68A-GD65 motherboard but I found that pre-installed BIOS was out dated and many more new versions were available on internet. Also overclocking the motherboard successfully will need to have the latest version of BIOS, so I flashed my motherboard with a new version of BIOS.

But after updating the BIOS of my motherboard, the things went from bad to worse. Now after changing the settings, the motherboard stops responding even before I can save. In both the cases, that is before updating the BIOS and when having the old BIOS, the temperatures and the voltage were at normal value. The temperatures would neither rise above normal levels neither there was any fluctuation in voltage to the motherboard.

I cannot understand what the problem can be. Can anybody help me sort out this mess?

**Quasim** · 19-05-2012

I have overclocked many motherboards in past days and I can tell you that there must be something that you must be doing wrong. Did you clear the CMOS settings and after flashing the motherboard with new version of BIOS? Now that you are facing a bad problem, I suggest that you again flash the older version of BIOS in your motherboard which worked properly with your motherboard. Regarding the wrong step from your side, you need to cut off the power supply to motherboard for some time after updating the BIOS. Usually, I remove the power cable for half an hour and also remove the CMOS battery. In many motherboards, the DRAM voltage is set to ‘Read Only’ by default. This can also be one reason for non responsive BIOS in your motherboard. You need to set it to manual and set the value of it to approximately 1.521v. In the CPU settings, you will find an option by name EuP 2013 in the Eco Section. It will be enabled by default in your system; you will need to disable it too.

**crook** · 19-05-2012

username: crook
According to the description of your problem; it seems that this issue is related to the "Advanced Settings" section found in UEFI settings. The closest possibility can be that you must need to disable the onboard LAN, connection of the SATA and its compatibility or maybe the boot order that you must have set for your system. I think that you need to change the boot order and set the first priority to the hot swap available on SATA port1. Here are some settings that you can try and see if the BIOS freeze after changing the settings or not.
The options that you need to disable are,

EIST
Speedstep
Turbo boost
EuP2013
C-state
Overspeed protection
C1E Support
Power technology
Spread Sectrum

You will need to enable the Internal PLL Overvolt and XMP profile in the BIOS settings if they are disabled by default. You will need to set the value of CPU voltage to 1.325v and value of memory voltage needs to be set around 1.652v. If you will be using BCLK, then its frequency will need to be set at 100.2 MHz which will compensate for lower frequency of 99.7 MHz.

**Arun K** · 19-05-2012

I think you must try changing the BIOS settings without some peripheral that won’t stop working of your computer. For example, if you have a graphic card or sound card, removing them won’t affect the main working and purpose of your motherboard settings. Maybe the problem must be caused due to wrong assignments of peripherals in wrong slots. When changing the major settings of the motherboard, the PCI slots play a great role as they are bridged into PCI-E circuitry. As I said that you can try changing settings without graphic card and sound, if present and you still want them while change of settings. Then I recommend you to insert them in the PCI slots closest to the processor on your motherboard.

Find out if your motherboard had V-Checkpoint headers or not. If yes, then you will need to keep a check on the actual voltages that are being delivered to the motherboard. You can use Digital Multimeter for this purpose. Also check if you have set the VCore to lower values as it may result in giving you BSOD error screens frequently.

**LavinaD** · 19-05-2012

From my experience in working with the hardware, I can say that you need to check if your RAM is getting proper power supply or not. When using MSI Z68A-GD65 motherboard, it is recommended to use a 1600 MHz RAM for best performance. I don’t know which brand you are using, but if your RAM is needing 1.65v of power in ideal state than it can be cause of the BIOS freeze when settings are changed. I use Corsair which needs 1.50 v when in ideal stale. You should try running a RAM with frequency 1333 MHz as it will decide the compatibility of BIOS with motherboard. If the RAM properly works, then the current version of BIOS is compatible and if not then, your motherboard is facing incompatibility issue with the motherboard.