Z87 and 4x Crucial DIMMS

[unhealthy13]

I'm about to buy a Haswell motherboard and CPU and was strongly considering the Z87x-OC or Z87x-UD4H.  However, I've seen a number of separate threads regarding issues with both Crucial memory and with running 4x DIMMS and I've currently got 4x4Gb of Crucial Ballistix 1866MHz RAM (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0069OG1RM/) which is not on the supported memory list for either motherboard.  The memory is from a previous build so returning it is not an option.

So would I basically just be wasting my time and end up tearing my hair out if I bought either of these boards at this point?

Cheers for any insight.

[flexmanta]

Enough people are having problems with 4 dimms to call it a non isolated issue. I've 4x8Gb. Trust me, it HURTS having to use only 16Gb of the 32Gb I bought... even if the performance difference is almost non-existant for what I do with this computer.

At the moment, the solutions given by Gigabyte are of the "did you try turning it off and on again" type. I guess they're gathering information from everyone's support tickets and running their tests. They'll end up fixing it sooner or later. I just hope it gets fixed through a BIOS update rather than having to RMA all our mobos.

If you really need to go Gigabyte for any reason (hackintosh), you should probably wait and see if this gets solved. If not, well, it's your call, but the Asus Maximus Formula is as good as it gets, it's in the same price range and the build quality is mindblowing.

[unhealthy13]

Thanks for the response.  I've seen some of the supposed workarounds of cranking the memory voltages or disabling C-States but I don't consider those as valid fixes.  Similar to you having to run with half your memory, it just seems pointless having to reduce features or performance to get the system running normally.  DDR3 memory prices are quite high at the moment which makes the issue even more significant.

I might give it a little longer to see if anything changes with BIOS updates but given the lack of acknowledgement or response by Gigabyte on the issue I guess it might just be wiser to go an alternative route.  Really don't fancy buying a new system and having to mess about experimenting with memory instability from Day 1.

[flexmanta]

Exactly. There are many options available to you to not put yourself through the pain of having unnecessary inexplicable undeserved BSODs in the middle of work or play.

Also, all those solutions (disabling C-States, increasing voltage) only work for people who have other types of issues with their mobos/components. For those of us having the real 4 DIMM freeze, no BIOS setting has provided a cure.

[No457 Snowy]

Agreed, you have many other options so go another route. It's obvious now that Gigabyte has not thoroughly tested their Z87 boards using 4 DIMMS and are not acknowledging or standing behind customers who have bought these boards. Given the Z87 issues and the poor response to fixing or even acknowledging the issues it would be very hard to recommend using a Gigabyte board as a basis for any system build.

I also have 4 brand new sticks of DDR3 Corsair Ram of which 2 sticks are useless to me now.

[KonsG]

Hi,

GA-87-D3H boards are faulty and have problems working with 4 memory sticks. A lot of people are experiencing the same problem including myself. See here:
http://forum.corsair.com/FORUMS/showthread.php?t=119923&page=4
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,13267.0.html

I swapped to Asus Z87-A and had no problems with the same 4 modules for over 2 months.