P67A D3-B3 Memory Issues

[Petha]

Greetings guys 

I recently purchased this  motherboard and so far i had been running my system on  default settings flawlessly for about a month.Here are the specs :

CPU : i5 2300
GFX : Nvidia GTX 550Ti
Ram : Corsair  XMS  1600 , 9-9-924 1 ,65  V CMX4GX3M2A1600C9
HDD's : 1x TB WD, 1x250 Seagate
PSU : Coolermaster eXtreme power plus 500
1 DVD and 2 case fan connected.

All was well, until i inserted the extra  4 GB's of memory, another pair of the ones  mentioned above, to the total of 8GB. After upgrading, my system would crash in windows with all 4 sticks inserted.What i've done so far

1)Left everything at default settings, left the mem running at 1333 Mhz and 1.50V .
2) Used the  XMS profile in bios, which upped the speed to 1600 MHz , voltage to 1.65 and Vtt to 1.15

 Neither worked . Tried the same after upgrading the bios to F4 (altho i have seen F5 mentioned, i saw no link on the official website), tried both of the above, didnt work.

Then i went into the bios,  used the default settings of 1333Mhz and 9-9-24,  but upped the voltage to 1.66  and Vtt to 1.20 (bios would now show dram voltage to be about 1,65) , was stable for a couple of days, but eventually had some minor glitches in game and finally ,another blue screen.

Have tried the old memory in  both memory slot pairs, so it's not an  issue of faulty dimm slots. Admittedly tho, i have only ran memtest for 2 passes on the new  sticks, so i guess i should do more tests to exclude faulty memory .

Apart from that, what other settings can i tweak if it's only a voltage issue and the motherboard just needs a little boost to cope with all dimm slots being full ?. Regarding QPI/VTT, is there any limit i should definitely avoid breaking ? apart from that and Dram voltage, what else can i chance in bios to try and stabilise my rig ?

Also, would you think that maybe the PSU is having issues providing sufficient power ?

Sorry about the long topic, just tried to describe the situation as clearly as possible   Thank you in advance for your help

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome.

What you have tried so far is right but you haven't gone far enough. The memory you are using isn't ideal for this board as it should be 1.5v really so you are starting at a disadvantage to begin with. When filling all the memory banks you will probably have to increase the dram voltage to 1.68v maybe even 1.7v. The QPI/Vtt voltage will probably be ok now but you could increase it a touch if necessary. Manually enter all the timings in the BIOS too.

[TigetLi]

Hello Petha,

Give the testing of your memory sticks with Memtest86+ TOP priority. Your initial post stated that the problem started when you added the a second pair of RAM sticks to your system. This is a good hint to confirm the stability of your new 4 RAM sticks setup before you do anything else. Use the DRAM Voltages suggested by DM's post above. Max Vtt for your CPU is 1.21. Use minimum Vtt required to stabilize RAM up to a  max of 1.20 V if needed. If increases in DRAM voltage and Vtt are not sufficient to pass Memtest86+, try raising your Vcore slightly in small increments to see if that helps. Remember to run Memtest86+ for a minimum of 8 passes or until you notice an error. Run 4 RAM sticks first, then if unable to pass test with voltages maxed out, goto pairs and then single sticks in turns. Post your results.

CAUTION: insure good ventilation of PC while testing & monitor temperatures.

For your information: XMS profiles will normally work with a single pair of RAM sticks in dual channel. Populating all four RAM slots generally requires BIOS settings to be inputted manually. Voltages usually need to be raised slightly from those set or not touched by XMS profile. I have also noted that company that sell computers with i5 2300 and 8 gigs of RAM have then oveclocked and running at 3.1 GHz.

Good Luck,