GA-870A-UD3 and ram compatibility

[vernonf]

hi- i have the GA-870A-UD3  motherboard which is listed as being compatible with Corsair CMD4GX3M2B1600C8 ram. i have been unable to find this ram, or indeed any on the list of those officially supported, but was able to buy Corsair CMP4GX3M2B1600C8 ( i got a good deal on the motherboard which is why i went about things in a not so logical manner)

the rest of my specs are:

amd phenom ll x4 955
corsair hx-650
galaxy gtx 465
scythe muagen cooler

as the only difference in the ram seems to be some unspecified future proofness i was hoping this would also work ok but as it happens it doesnt....or else i just havent got the settings right for it in the bios.

i have tried loading optimised and fail safe deafults unchanged,  also loaded these then bumped the ram voltage to 1.64 in increments.
have  tried timings of
8-8-8-24
9-9-9-27
11-11-11-30
all at 1.64v with speed at both 1333 and 1600

none of them remain stable
currently have xp 32-bit installed but have also tried with windows 7 64-bit and still not getting a stable pc

and so to my actaul question....what would the bios settings be to run the listed ram CMD4GX3M2B1600C8 (at either 1333 or 1600)? once i know that then i can try with the ram i do have!
thanks

[absic]

Hi there and welcome to the forum,

Although my motherboard is a GA-790XTA-UD4 (BIOS F4A) and I am running a Phenom ii 1090T I also have 8Gb of the exact RAM that you have. I have learnt that, for me, the system is happiest running at Defaults when it comes to RAM Timings and Voltage.

Here are the settings taken from my own BIOS:
Set Memory Clock [AUTO] = 6.66 1333MHz
DCTs Mode - Unganged
CAS# latency - 11T
RAS to CAS R/W Delay - 11T
Row Precharge Time - 11T
Minimum RAS Active Time - 29T
1T/2T Command Timing - 2T
TwTr Timing - 6T
Trfc0 for DIMM1 - 110ns
Trfc2 for DIMM2 - 110ns
Trfc1 for DIMM3 - 110ns
Trfc3 for DIMM4 - 110ns
Write Recovery Time - 12T
Precharge Time - 6T
Row Cycle Time - 41T
RAS to RAS Delay - 5T
DRAM Voltage - 1.50V

With these settings my system is very stable but remember each system is slightly different so, what works for me might not work for you.

The latest BIOS for your Motherboard is F3D and if you are not running this it might be worthwhile updating to it. If you do update remember to use the QFlash utility not @BIOS

If you are still having problems then it would be a good idea to run Memtest on your RAM, to make sure there are not faulty.