I WIN! 9590 & 295x2 with an 850w PSU!

[digitalwanderer]

So I finally got all my new toys working nicely together in my system and OH MY GODS IT ROXORS!!!!

Imma gonna cheat a bit and use cut-n-paste to cover the main points, feel free to laugh/comment/question after.

So a brief update...

I was going more than a bit nuts trying to figure out why my newly upgraded top-o-the-line system ran like a dog, I just couldn't nail down the problem! I ended up deciding it was the PSU and throwing a 955 in to lessen the power load and hopefully make it better...but it still sucked.

Fast forward a week or two, (with lots of fruitless and aggravating trouble-shooting/diagnosing), and I'm chatting with my good buddy AIStrong and he asks me "what is your slow switch set to?".

:|

"Slow switch"? Surely there isn't such a...

...yes there was. A little dip switch labelled "Slow", and it was on.

:|

Powered off, set the "slow switch" to off, rebooted, and the system was zippy quick! Much facepalming, but mainly happy that I'd found the problem...even if that problem was me being a moron and not reading the f-ing manual first! (Yes, I felt the irony) Was really happy, powered down and pulled the 955 to toss the 9590 in; and it wouldn't fit. Pull it out, look at the pins and there are just some bloody mangled ones! No clue how it happened, I'd thought I'd been careful as hell! (Honest, I usually am with the expensive bits) Bent to ****, nothing to do but straighten 'em out. Not fun, but not impossible.

-snap!-

****!

-snap!- -snap!-

F U C K ! !

-snap!- -snap!-

****.

5 broken pins. Got 'em all straight, but 5 snapped off. I was heartbroken, I'd been given a huge gift/opportunity and I'd gone and f-d it up. Felt sorry for myself, gave up, and fell in to a funk for a few days.

Then I got tired of being in a funk and giving up, so I did some googling on what to do for broken pins. Found some people recommending jamming a bit of ethernet wiring into the missing pin hole and fudging it that way, but then saw a viddy of a guy pulling some pins off an old CPU and using those in the holes. That seemed more sensible to me, muchly so!

So I dug an old 3500 out of the basement and tossed it in the oven at 420f for 20 minutes and pulled a bunch of pins out with a pair of tweezers and an oven mitt. Sat down and gave myself a serious headache looking and counting pins on the 9590 to chart out which ones were missing, got an even worse headache counting out and charting it on the socket after pulling the 955 and then nearly went nuts trying to manipulate pins that were too small for me to see into the correct holes with a pair of tweezers that felt HUUUGE! Finally got 'em all in, got the 9590 ready to drop in, (should mention that I had put her in the socket first to make sure I'd gotten the straightening right), and noticed I'd oriented myself the wrong way on the socket and had to pull all the pins and redo the whole county/pin-in-thingy. <sigh>

Finally managed to put all the pins in and get it right, hook everything back up, rig up my extry molex to 4-prong 12v CPU adapter I'd made, prayed to various computing gods, and fired her up.

AND SHE BOOTED!!! SHE FREAKING, GLORIOUSLY BOOTED!!!

She seems pretty stable, surprisingly so considering I'm still using a Corsair tx850 in a system needing 1200w. I fired up GTA IV real quick and was playing with everything pretty maxed at 3200x1800 and the fps never dipped below 53.

I LOVERS IT!!! IT WORKED!!! SOOOOOO HAPPY!!!

This upgrade has truly been a long, strange trip...but the destination is that much sweeter for the troubled journey. She's in no way completed, but man what a great step and I can't wait to finally see what AMD's fastest processor paired with the world's fastest graphics card can do!!!

Thank you again AMD, thank you so very much for all the joy you've given me over the years/decades now. Your hardware has become a part of my personal journey/history; and I find that slightly weird but very, VERY enjoyable! Big love, I can't wait to see what you come up with next! (Oh, and also to play with freesync...but I think Imma gonna get a new PSU before a new monitor! )

TL/DR: Dig got new toy, Dig broke new toy, Dig fixed new toy, Dig is happy dancing.

And before you ask, it's an Asus Crosshair Formula Z mobo and here's a picture of the switch in question. (It's on the right, above the LED readouts)



Sorry I haven't posted back here much since the original post about my new stuff, but I have been driving myself nuts trying to get it working. Now that it's working, the sky is the bloody limit! It games like a DREAM!!!

Big thanks to CavemanJim, big thanks to AMD, big thanks to AIStrong for finally figuring out what I was ****ing up.

[Lazy8s]

I love the post. Every last bit of it

What on earth is the purpose of the slow switch? I never would have guessed...

Power saving? Cheap man's throttling?

[digitalwanderer]

It's for severe LN2 overclocking, it helps with stabilization or something. With it on my system ran worse than when I had a Phenom 965 w/6970 in it....and that just didn't seem right!

It really is my own fault for not reading the manual, I'm sure I would have noticed something that odd and turned it off.

But now she's just INCREDIBLE! It's like I can play anything and play it WELL! Today I'm gonna have some serious fun with her because I'm pretty sick and got nothing better to do since my brain is loopy with fever and my wife and kids are giving me the day down...WOOO-HOOO!!!

[Seyiji]

Damn what a bumpy road you traveled

Glad you got it working and congrats on bringing the beast to life even if you had to go all hellraiser on the cpu

[CyanBlues]

would have loved to see the videos of you trying to put the pin back in

[digitalwanderer]

My phone was broke for a few weeks too so I was without a camera. (I fixed that too btw, WOO-HOO! )

[atomBomb]

Is that in there picture your _motherboard on grass_ ?

Im not sure thats what ecological means

[digitalwanderer]

Not my board, just a pict I found on the web of one.

[Lazy8s]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

It's for severe LN2 overclocking, it helps with stabilization or something. With it on my system ran worse than when I had a Phenom 965 w/6970 in it....and that just didn't seem right!

It really is my own fault for not reading the manual, I'm sure I would have noticed something that odd and turned it off.

But now she's just INCREDIBLE! It's like I can play anything and play it WELL! Today I'm gonna have some serious fun with her because I'm pretty sick and got nothing better to do since my brain is loopy with fever and my wife and kids are giving me the day down...WOOO-HOOO!!!

Ok thanks - I don't feel as bad about not knowing about when I've never been that route.

Either way, beastly system and glad you got it all sorted.

I'll never ask you for help straightening bent pins though.

[Ristogod]

My daughter uses that same motherboard rocking a single 290.

[gamefoo21]

I was wondering what that switch does on my MSI 970 Gaming... which is weird because it's got a hard power limit cut out, that caps overclocking the CPU...

I just wish NCIX wasn't still screwing me around on my order for a R9 290X, that they cancelled by mistake, then ran out of stock, mix it in with ignoring me, then remaking the order, but having no stock, with no plans of getting stock, mixed in with ignoring me(they say the msg system failed at multiple times), now it's been over a month of no card, spotty communication, and horrible customer service. They said they'd give me a deal on another card of my choice, well that was a week ago, and I've not heard from them since...