help with potential ram problem on new system

Hi all

I have been experiencing a screen glitching problem which i think i have narrowed down to the setting of the xmp profile of the ram in the bios.

If i keep the ram at 2133 mhz speed using the default profile i dont get the issue, but if i enable xmp profile i do.

The ram is the corsair vengeance lpx 2x8gb 3200 mhz.
The motherboard is the gigabyte z170 k3.
The cpu is an i5-6600k.

I was advised to run memtest which i did and got no errors.

I was also advised to input the ram settings manually. However i have an issue doing this because the motherboard only increments the dram voltage in 0.02v steps. Thus i cannot input the 1.35v that is the rated ram voltage for 3200 mhz.

I wonder if this is the crux of the issue, that the xmp profile is trying to load 1.35v but the motherboard doesnt allow that as a value.

OCUK have said they will generate an RMA for the ram, but i dont know if this is the issue.

There are motherboard bios updates available which cite xmp compatibility, the latest one being in beta. Im not sure if i should try this first, although reflashing the bios is a risk and i dont know if it will solve the inability to enter the voltage manually at 1.35v because of the step that is allowed.

Would appreciate some help.

Thanks

I would update the BIOS, the latest on the website is F3H.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5720#bios

I had a look at the ram compatibility list and 1.35v appears to be fully supported on this board.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5720#memory support list

Ok so ok to go for a beta bios?

It is odd that the rated speed is 1.35v yet i can only go up in 0.02v steps. 1.34v or 1.36v are my choices at the moment, but i wonder if the xmp profile is leaving the ram at 1.2v default because 1.35v doesnt exist as an option.

Is it feasible that the bios update would change it so 0.01v steps were allowed? Is that the kind of change bios updates make?

the kit will be fine at 1.36v, have you tried booting with that voltage ?

Besty said:

the kit will be fine at 1.36v, have you tried booting with that voltage ?

Click to expand...

No because i wasnt sure what was safe to do if i cant select 1.35v.


Would you try that first, or bios update first? Ive never flashed a bios before.

I would just bump the voltage on the ram to 1.36v first, to be fair I have to bump lots of voltage sliders on my Skylake motherboard to get my 4200DDR4 kit running at 3700 but the ram voltage is not one of them.

Up to 1.4v should be just fine on the sticks themselves, so 1.36v wont touch the sides.

Dont panic if the system does not boot, it might just mean you need to increase the voltage on the motherboard and not the ram sticks themselve as the Gigabyte BIOS'es tend to under-volt everything as they like to play safe i.e. you get slightly lower voltage than what you set it to on the screen.

Should i test it with the ram settings except for voltage first, so wiyh the 32x multiplier, the correct latency value but leaving the default 1.20v dram voltage?

write down all the high level xmp setting and input them manually. dial up 1.36v and start at ddr3000 with the cpu at stock. if it works keep increasing the ram clock only until you hit the kits max speed.

if no boot at ddr3000 then you will probably need to raise the motherboard voltage settings for controller and io. once it boots at ddr3000 just rinse and repeat with higher ram clocks.

Something odd is going on here.

I logged in to the PC to read this latest reply, and then proceeded to restart it in order to apply the settings. However the motherboard lights went off and the pc went dead. I had to switch the power off at the PSU and restart it, at which point I got a BIOS boot error and had to load optimised defaults to restart.

I had not changed any of the settings yet!



Update - the 3000MHz settings with the 1.36V have worked for now - I'm in the PC and doing the same things that caused the glitches before and none are appeared yet.

Update 2. Im now in the pc at 3200 mhz and im not sure. I just got 1 screen glitch but its not happened again.

Update 3. Im getting the glitch at this speed now. It happens once every few minutes - only if the system is under a little load though.


Final update. I have dialled the RAM back to 3000MHz @ 1.36V, and also applied my CPU overclock on top which is 4.4GHz @ 1.23V. At the moment (touch wood), I have got no glitching. I think I'll leave it there for a few days now and see what happens.

my guess would be that you need to increase the voltage on the motherboard to allow the memory controller to go above ddr3000 this is perfectly normal and on my gigabyte skylake board a small bump in volts gets me to 3600 and I am on a cheap mitx board.

to test for stability install the Intel benchmarking tool and run the benchmark test.

Can you be specific on what voltage setting i would need to change and to what value?

Something is definitely not right.

I haven't changed any more settings yet when I switched the PC on for the first time tonight, it appeared to restart itself during POST, and then came up with this:



But I loaded in my saved profile (4.4GHz CPU, 3000MHz ram), and it rebooted fine and now its working.


I ran the Intel benchmark and it completed fine (score 1105 marks). The Realbench benchmark also completes with no errors or problems with a score around 120,000.


Its passed the intel stress test too for both CPU and RAM.

Yep this is normal on Skylake chips it seems :/

I have the same ram and have to run it at 3000mhz, or it just won't work with XMP settings in dual-channel mode.

The guy a few posts above said the motherboard voltage needs to be increased, it could be the same for you?

I don't know what setting this is though in the BIOS - if someone can chime in would be appreciated.

Figured it out. It's VCCIO voltage that needs to be increased slightly

What you set yours to? Has it helped?

Well it's stable at 4.4ghz with 3200mhz ram now so it's helped. I set it to 1.280v

What was it before?

I dont know about mine. There is a voltage displayed in the BIOS which is 0.960v but the bios is in auto mode so i have no idea what its actually running at. The bios tells me several real time voltages, but it appears not that one.

I have also tried several windows hardware monitors and none of them seem to show the VCCIO or VCCSA voltages.



Edit 22:07
I have set my VCCIO at 1.15V, ram at 3200MHz and ran a stress test - passed no issues. No sign (yet) of the screen glitch I was having.

Naster - from reading around I think 1.28V may be a tad high - have you tried yours lower?


I have also found that the BIOS is in auto mode for system agent voltage, and BIOS reports this is running at 1.3v which is the maximum allowed setting in the BIOS. I wonder if there is any merit in lowering this, perhaps to 1.25V?



Temperatures during the CPU and ram stress tests were just over 60 degrees. Running the RAM at 3000/3200 MHz has added 10 degrees easily to what the CPU overclock added.


I have noticed that my CPU fan is increasing speed as one would expect, but the two case fans are not - they are remaining static at mid 800's RPM.

Actually it's at 1.18 not 1.28

Whats your vccsa running at?