Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P freezing with two memory sticks

[MrEs]

Hey all,

I did a bit of an upgrade on my PC last night, changed motherboard, RAM and CPU... these are my new specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P (rev. 1.0)
Processor: AMD Phenom II X3 Triple Core 720 Black
Memory: Corsair TW3X4G1333C9 4 Gigabytes total (2 X 2 Gigabytes) 1333 Megahertz DDR3 RAM
Video card: gigabyte HD 4870 1gig
Power supply: Cool Master Real power pro 650w

So I'm having an issue that's bugging me, whenever I have the two sticks of DDR3 in the computer freezes randomly and anywhere. It’s frozen on me when installing windows, it's frozen on me IN the bios, it's frozen on my when posting (and displaying the memory/cpu info).

Thing of notable interest:
* Putting in one stick at a time, of either stick works fine!
* The memory is listed (on the packaging) 1.5V !! However when i go into the bios it's running at 1.6V... ! I can't 'down-clock’ this either I can only UP the voltage from within the BIOS.
* Sometimes it won’t even post (20% of the time) and I get "Repeated Long Beeps" (which points to memory error, but that could be for any large number of reasons)
* Every time I boot I get an "AMD data change...Update new data to DMI!" message. Is that anything to think about... ?

Things I've tried:
* I also tried upgrading the bios (from F4 to F4G) and that didn’t help.
* I've tried memory slots configurations: 1/2, 1/3, 3/4 to no avail.
* bumping up the northbridge voltage didn't help
* 'down-clocking' the ram to 800MHz didn’t help.
* tried setting the timing on the ram manually (9-9-9-24)
* i tried manually bumping the Trfc0 up from ~110ns to ~165ns ( I can’t remember the EXACT numbers at the moment but they were there abouts, I'm currently at work )

Tonight I’m going to try memtest each memory stick individually and see how that goes. Any other thoughts? Has anybody else encountered such issues? I will be able to get my hands on another set of DDR3 memory on Sunday from a mate to test that out.

[musicman53]

trfc for first two slots should be 195ns because you have 2x2Gb ram.
You can drop the ram volts(I know because I have same board).
In the bios(M.I.T.)look for DDR3 Voltage control and when set to manual, select -0.025, or -0.050 or whatever til it gives you 1.5v.
You can select a minus value, I know because like I said, I have the same board.

[MrEs]

Thanks musicman, I'll give the voltage drop and the higher trfc  a shot tonight. When I had a look yesterday I couldn't find -VE 'DDR3 Voltage' adjustments only +ve ones... I'll have another look but maybe different bios versions have different functionality here... ? :\

I'll let you know who it goes

[oggmonster]

What were the results of the memtest when doing each one seperatly?

[MrEs]

What were the results of the memtest when doing each one seperatly?

Well it turns out that one of the sticks were stuffed, but it only seemed to have an 'impact' when it was used with another stick which is weird... However it's all fixed now!


Also i can report that I couldn't drop the DDR3 Voltage control like musicman53 said, well not in BIOS F4G.
Even with the hidden BIOS functions that the 'control' button reveals, there's no '-VE' options on the  DDR3 Voltage so musicman53 was wrong... at least with my motherboard/BIOS.

[oggmonster]

Is that the latest BIOS? But glad you got your RAM issue sorted!

[mark rumsey]

I don't think dropping the DDR3 voltage is going to be a good idea. If you check the Corsair website the spec for the TW3X4G1333C9 sticks is 1.6V, so it looks like the BIOS is spot on and the Corsair packaging was wrong. I would guess that if you managed to drop the voltage to 1.5V you might start getting the odd memory error again.

[runn3R]

Is that the latest BIOS? (...)

Here is the latest bios F5b