Top Tip if you plan on fitting 16Gb sticks

Pooh · 2 May 2016 at 19:42

I spent last week building up my new rig, as per my sig.

Took a couple of days, got it all plumbed up, ready to go.....

That moment when you press the power button for the 1st time, hold your breath.... and no POST :mad:

I had bought and fitted two of these kits :- Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB 2X16GB Dual Channel DDR4 2400MHz PC3-19200 DIMM

Managed to find the pair of them for £230 so seemed like a bit of no brainer.

A bit of digging about showed that the motherboard was hanging at a memory initiation phase ( Error 53 ).

I had checked to see if the ASUS X99 Pro would take them and it seemed OK. 64Gb Max yes, 16Gb sticks yes.

Problem was that Asus updated the bios to accept 16Gb sticks I n April 2015 and I had a feeling that my board was running on a old BIOS.

Next problem was that I didn't have any other DDR4 RAM to stick in and get the system to POST and check the BIOS version so I had to buy a single 4Gb stick of 2133Mhz RAM just to get the board to POST.

£12 for the RAM and another £12 for Saturday am delivery :rolleyes:

New RAM arrived, plugged it in, board POSTed 1st time and as suspected the BIOS was from 2014.

BIOS update to latest version (3006), swapped the RAM out and put in the 4 16Gb sticks, pressed the bottom, TADA !!!!

All's sweetness and light.

Make sure you're got some el chaepo small DDR4 kicking about if you're planning on fitting the big sticks to a new motherboard that may need a newer bios.

Hope this helps someone else aviod my frustration

ANDARIAL · 11 May 2016 at 21:20

Thanks for the info.

Steampunk · 11 May 2016 at 21:34

Doesn't Asus USB flashback allow you to flash a BIOS without RAM or CPU installed for just such a problem?

Pooh · 11 May 2016 at 21:35

Tried that - couldn't get it to work

Steampunk · 11 May 2016 at 21:37

Pooh said:
Tried that - couldn't get it to work

They can be quite fussy about USB stick and BIOS naming, so people recommend you try a few different sticks if the first one doesn't work.

FredFlint · 12 May 2016 at 06:32

The USB flash back should work with no ram in, only works with the USB port with the green around it.

Pooh · 12 May 2016 at 06:47

FredFlint said:
The USB flash back should work with no ram in, only works with the USB port with the green around it.

Yup - that's the port I tried.

Followed the instructions from the manual as well.

Only tried a single usb stick though. Maybe that was the issue.

FredFlint · 12 May 2016 at 09:23

Pooh said:
Yup - that's the port I tried.

Followed the instructions from the manual as well.

Only tried a single usb stick though. Maybe that was the issue.

I have not tried the flashback but have updated the BIOS from a USB, once it did not find the drive so i had to unplug it and plug it back in. It’s a good feature to have, downer that it did not work

Silent_Scone · 12 May 2016 at 19:21

Yeah you forgot the part where you warn people about buying high density kits for the wrong platform and then mixing them, too.

But apart from that, the length you went to was at least entertaining, if not unnecessary.

7/10 would read again periodically for a chuckle.

Pooh · 12 May 2016 at 19:27

Silent_Scone said:
Yeah you forgot the part where you warn people about buying high density kits for the wrong platform and then mixing them, too.

But apart from that, the length you went to was at least entertaining, if not unnecessary.

7/10 would read again periodically for a chuckle.

Really - thanks for the constructive comments.

For your information the board is listed as supporting 16gb sticks with the correct BIOS.

As for mixing " Kits " for the wrong platform what do you base this on. I've been building PC's since 386s so have a bit of an idea what I'm doing. Do you really think I'd buy 64GB of RAM without researching if the platform supported it. As for mixing kits, you're just showing your naivety. As long as you're not clocking the nuts off your RAM you can pretty much mix and match to your heart's content, different speeds, capacities etc. If you have a decent board it will just standardise to the lowest common denominator.

Why don't you spend your time and effort with something constructive.

I'll just think of you as one of the " Chuckle Brothers " if that's OK.

Silent_Scone · 12 May 2016 at 19:47

Pooh said:
Really - thanks for the constructive comments.

For your information the board is listed as supporting 16gb sticks with the correct BIOS.

As for mixing " Kits " for the wrong platform what do you base this on. I've been building PC's since 386s so have a bit of an idea what I'm doing. Do you really think I'd buy 64GB of RAM without researching if the platform supported it. As for mixing kits, you're just showing your naivety. As long as you're not clocking the nuts off your RAM you can pretty much mix and match to your heart's content, different speeds, capacities etc. If you have a decent board it will just standardise to the lowest common denominator.

Why don't you spend your time and effort with something constructive.

I'll just think of you as one of the " Chuckle Brothers " if that's OK.

Hope this is of some use to you

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...e-memory-kits!-The-meat-and-potatoes-overview

It even mentions you in there somewhere regarding "building PCs for 20 years".

Mixing two dual channel kits on on X99 had a high probability of not working out very well for you regardless of the fact you weren't able to use Flashback correctly. Fortunately for you, it's a fairly low bin.

There is a lesson in there somewhere, but it's certainly not to make sure you have 'spare memory'

.

From one Chuckle Brother to a Chucklehead.

P.S might still be an idea to run a memory stress test like HCI Memtest pro for a few laps to make sure it's actually stable.

Pooh · 12 May 2016 at 20:36

Like I said.

Silent_Scone · 12 May 2016 at 20:59

Hehe, yeah.

On the other hand though if you'd like some tips feel free to post up some results there.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1569364/...well-e-24-7-ddr4-memory-stability-thread/0_40

Pooh · 13 May 2016 at 08:02

As long as you're not clocking the nuts off your RAM.....

I got a bit bored with opening up clients.

Silent_Scone · 13 May 2016 at 08:25

That's certainly an interesting screenshot. If you want to test these things quicker i'd suggest Google Stress app, as the test can be left for 1 to 2 hours instead of waiting for HCI to cover that much memory for as little as two passes. Like i said, you were fortunate it is a fairly low bin. The ideal configuration for HCI is one instance per thread.

The consensus stands for others mixing kits, but I am
sure with all your experience you did not read the article I linked you. All one need really take away from this to learn to flash via the safest method, that being flashback.

Pooh · 13 May 2016 at 10:40

Silent_Scone said:
That's certainly an interesting screenshot. If you want to test these things quicker i'd suggest Google Stress app, as the test can be left for 1 to 2 hours instead of waiting for HCI to cover that much memory for as little as two passes. Like i said, you were fortunate it is a fairly low bin. The ideal configuration for HCI is one instance per thread.

The consensus stands for others mixing kits, but I am
sure with all your experience you did not read the article I linked you. All one need really take away from this to learn to flash via the safest method, that being flashback.

Last time I looked there were over 1300 posts to that thread, so, no I didn't waste a week of my life reading it when my system seems to be working OK. I guess I must just be lucky, nothing to do with experience.

bledd · 23 May 2016 at 07:49

Handbags at dawn!

Stop the bickering fellas.

Pooh · 23 May 2016 at 08:50

BoatyMcBoatface said:
Handbags at dawn!

Stop the bickering fellas.

You did check the date of the last post to this thread I guess before your sage words of counsel.