GA-H87M-D3H BSOD problem

[Jan_AU]

Hi everyone.
Just did search and and read through some posts that showed but not sure if any of that is related to issue im having.
I have the following setup:

Intel i5 4570
GA-H87M-D3H motherboard
Kingston 4gb 1600MHZ  ram
WD 1TB HDD
LG DVD writer
Antec 650 Power Supply
Using integrated VGA from i5.

The machine is about 3months only and when i first got it, it was BSOD alot. I returned it to supplier and they replaced the motherboard. The pc boots fine and i can install Win 7 with SP1 from oem disk 64bit version. Upto this stage the PC is fine.

Once i download the drivers from the Gigabyte motherboard cd and pc reboot, within 10-30 mins, it will seem like freezing for couple seconds and screen will look weird and then go to a BSOD error.

I have updated the BIOS from F3 to latest which is F9. Tested RAM, tested HDD in another computer, have done stress on CPU using Intel software.

Checked the Gigabyte website FAQ and saw that there was something about Windows crashing if running Adobe software. I do not have anything else of Adobe beside the Flash player. I have however updated the Realteck driver as advised on the FAQ and this BSOD is still happening.

I have re-installed Windows a few times and other times just used drivers straight from the Gigabyte website only and not from cd, still same BSOD happens. Im wondering if there is anyone else that is having this issue or anyway i can get this fixed as i do not want to go to supplier again and wait for weeks for another motherboard.

[Jan_AU]

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,13468.msg86168.html#msg86168

This post above seems to have fixed the issue. The motherboard does not work with 1600mhz RAM.

I borrowed 1333mhz RAM from a workmate and since my last post till now system is running fine.

This is kinda like false advertising if you ask me, saying that the motherboard works with 1600mhz RAM when it doesn't.

[Moopere]

Mmm.  I think there is an issue with this MB as you describe.  Had this board for several months but was too busy to troubleshoot it.  Got a system built and it would BSOD or simply not boot properly, or boot to BIOS then reboot (with its own power cycle event).

Started pulling everything from the system and eventually the RAM, Kingston KHX16C10B1K2/16x (comes as a pair, 2x8GB) - http://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KHX16C10B1K2_16X.pdf  

First pulled one, and the system booted, but failed upon subsequent power on/off cycles.  Very odd behaviour.

Anyway, after a _lot_ of monkeying around, I'm convinced now that this RAM isn't happy in this motherboard.  I have now set the following parameters in the BIOS:

A) Memory Boot Mode: Disable fast boot
B) Memory Initialization Mode: Normal
C) Memory Enhancement Settings: Enhance Stability


Which appears to be working.  Need to do some significant stability tests though to be sure.  Not sure what A) is to be honest sounds more like something hard disk related ... but who knows?

I suspect this is something that can be fixed in a future BIOS release.  I'm always uneasy with a system that isn't stable with default BIOS settings.

[Moopere]

More on this.

Eventually problems still appeared with the GA-H87M-D3H and this Kingston KHX16C10B1K2 DDR1600 RAM, even given some settings tweaks as described above.

I think the problem is related to the motherboard incorrectly detecting or differentiating between JEDEC RAM timings and XMP.  My build was for a home server and I'm not interested in overclocking, as such, I made sure that XMP RAM timings were turned off in the BIOS.  Its my understanding that DDR3 standard JEDEC timings top out at DDR1333, everything above this is an XMP profile.  Yes, of course, memory is sold  advertising DDR1600 or 2000 or 2400 or whatever, but I think this is referring to high spec memory guaranteed to work at XMP timing profiles, not std JEDEC timings (I'm open to correction on this though, things might have changed in the last year).

In any event, I had another of my servers motherboards fail (unrelated) and it was time therefore for a full rebuild on thatmachine.  Bought a GA-H97-HD3 this time and some pretty standard Kingston ValueRAM to go with it (2x8GB KHX1600C10D3/8GX).  This is 11/11/11 at 1600, so, lower spec than the previously purchased Hyper-X which is 10/10/10.

As a test, I popped this new Kingston RAM into the problematic motherboard ... still getting detected as DDR1600 without any obvious way to change it to the JEDEC std DDR1333 but, of course, its timings are slower (11/11/11) and so far it seems stable.

More telling perhaps is that I stuck the original problematic Hyper-X into my new board (the GA-H97-HD3) and low and behold, its _correctly_ detected as JEDEC 1333 - also stable in the new board.

My guess .... the H87M-D3H needs a bios tweek, by Gigabyte, to correctly determine the JEDEC RAM settings as opposed to the XMP settings.  I'm sure these problems would go away as a result.  Either that or allow underclocking the RAM directly from the BIOS (a feature gigabyte boards used to have, but no longer it seems).

For the time being and/or presuming a BIOS update doesn't arrive, I'd suggest _only_ putting DDR1333 RAM into these boards.  The reason I bought 1600 RAM even though I'm not interested in overclocking was that unbelievably both times I  purchased the 1600 was cheaper than the 1333.