Asus Maximus BIOS memory settings

guddler

guddler

guddler

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Hi all,

I built myself a new system over the weekend from Overclockers. I specifically wanted to go down to mATX size this time so I went with the Maximus VIII Gene board. I am loving it so far, but of course there is a problem or I would not be here asking questions...

Full specs:
CPU: i7 6700k
Board: Asus Maximus VIII Gene
MEM: Kingston HyperX (LINK)
GPU: MSI GTX970
PSU: Corsair RM750
HDD's: Samsung 830 for OS, Seagate 2TB Hybrid data drive, Samsung 830 for flight sim drive.

I know the PSU is overkill right now but I intend to add a second 970, just not this month :D

SO, anyway, I can see I'm not alone in this but I cannot get the machine to come up if I set my memory frequency to 2666Mhz. 2133Mhz is OK (everything else on auto), but above that and it won't go past an error code 55.

Phoned the good people at OC and was told that I need to manually enter the settings for the 15-15-15-36-2 parameters. Fair enough. And also fair enough, t's not their job to teach me this stuff, hence I've come here.

So can anyone tell me exactly what I enter where in the BIOS please?? There's about 30 different settings in there for memory!! I've taken a couple of guesses but each time it ends up with a 55 error code so there's little point me sitting here guessing all day long, I could damage something.

OC recommended a voltage of 1.3v, strangely kingston spec for that RAM says it's tested to 2666Mhz without increasing the 1.2v so don't know on that.

If there is somewhere I can go and read up all about this in relation to an ASUS motherboard then I'm happy to put in the homework, just need some guidance to get me going.

Otherwise the system is great and I'm really happy. I wasn't on Saturday but that's down to MS and their free upgrade blacklisting my activation code when I changed motherboards. I had to go back to a clean W7 install, upgrade, then wipe and boy what a pain that was!!! I simply could not get W7 onto the Asus board for love nor money. In the end I did it in my old 950 based system and moved the drive afterwards.

System now seems nice and stable, played some games with no problems. Would just like to get this memory to run at it's stated speed.

Thanks.
 
Have u tried enabling XMP on the memory this should do everything for you. Option is first at the top of overclocking page. Should be on AUTO set to XMP.

Reboot. Done.
 
I have, yes.

I've watched a few videos now and read a bit and I think I get what it's meant to do now, but it just doesn't seem to want to do it.

If I use the XMP profile it will go through it's numbers on the LED display, pauses for a while on one of the (I will have to re-run when I've finished work to remember which) and ultimately sits on '55' - which according to the manual means memory not installed (but of course it is).

Interestingly, the config given by the XMP profile is not 15-15-15-36-2 which the memory is spec'd to. Again, I forget what they are, something like 15-17-17-35?

This evening I will try XMP with one module (each one) and see if that works. No good long term but might help to see if there is a dodgy module or socket.

Just for info, am currently using A2/B2 sockets as per manual.
 
There's a few quircks with the microcode on earlier UEFI builds, make sure you're on the latest BIOS. I found once stable that setting FCLK (System Agent Clock) under Tuners Paradise to 800Mhz manually resolved a few sporadic training issues I was getting, with '55'. Even though the memory was stress app and HCI memtest stable.

Might want to make sure that the XMP profile is setting the DRAM voltage correctly also
 
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I'm on 0801 - there are 0902 and 0907 but they are beta so I wasn't sure whether to go to them or not and figured probably best not to :)

I believe the XMP profile is setting the voltage to 1.2v - again, will check later. I haven't done anything inside tweaker's paradise. I thought it best to stay out of there for now. I've built many of my own machines in the past but have never really bothered with overclocking. In fact, I think the only machines I've ever bought off the shelf were Mac's
 
OK, so I'm posting this from the PC with both sticks of memory in and running at 2666Mhz.

BUT (there's always a but!!)...

Here's what I found. Sticks are 8GB each

Stick 1 in A2: OK
Stick 2 in A2: OK
(Therefore assume RAM sticks are fine)

Stick 1 in A2, Stick 2 in B2: Error 55 @ 2666Mhz
Stick 1 in A2, Stick 2 in B2: OK @ 2133Mhz

Stick 1 in A1, Stick 2 in B1: OK @ 2666Mhz

That was all using XMP.

Once I established that the x1 slots worked OK I switched off XMP and set the 15-15-15-36-2 profile as per the Kingston website and I'm still golden.

So what now?

1. Does it really matter that the manual recommends slots A2/B2 when only using 2 sticks and yet I'm having to use A1/B1?

2. Do I possibly have a dodgy B2 slot?

I'm really not convinced that I do have a dodgy B2 slot. BUT, I'd hate in the future to decide that I want to add 2 additional 8GB sticks (for 32GB total) and hit the problem when the board is then out of warranty.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.
 
Hi, I'm really interested in this topic.

I have the exact same build as you, except PSU and I have no HDD yet.
So if you get any updates or solutions etc, I'd love you to post them, I can't do crap while I wait for my HDD(samsung950).

That said,I also had some RAM issue in getting to post, I have the exact same CPU, MB and RAM as you. Q-code indicated RAM issue.
However once I'd booted with just 1 stick in the (manual's recommended) slot, it posted. I then took out the 1 stick, put the other stick in that slot, and it also booted to POST just fine.

I then tried again with them both in, in the manuals recommend slots for two sticks, and it POSTED just fine, might be worth you trying if you haven't already.
 
Sorry, as always - fixed the issue and forgot to come back to the thread to update!

So, overall I've found the motherboard to be really picky about RAM, and this RAM is not on it's certified / approved / whatever they call it list. I've settled on two things:

1. I'm using the detected XMP Profile 1 from the sticks themselves. It's not quite the settings that Kingston say match the RAM but it's close and unless you're crunching raw benchmark results I doubt you'll see a real-world difference.

2. I'm using the opposite slots to what the manual recommends.

On no. 2, try as I might I could not get the system to work if both sticks were in A2/B2 as per the manual's recommendation. But in A1/B1 everything is happy as Larry. I contacted support (at OC) and they said that generally on motherboards for Intel, they would go with the slots closest to the CPU, for AMD furthest. So thats what I'm doing and it all works fine.

I don't know if i should be concerned or not. My real concern is that there could be something up that I won't find until one day I buy an extra 16GB and try to populate all 4 slots. But while I know we all thought we'd never need 16GB 5 years ago, I genuinely can't see me wanting 32GB in a hurry and even if I do it's no great issue to sell these and buy a complete set. I only bought 16GB this time because it was so little extra than what 8GB would have cost. 8GB would have been enough for me.

For sure the memory sticks themselves are fine as I've swapped them about and proved it. And I'm pretty sure there is nothing physically up with the slots or I doubt it would work at any speed.

So game on I guess :)

PS: I'm hoping this is a BIOS thing that will settle down in time with extra revisions. I just hope it's not down to the rev.0 motherboard. That will be a kick in the teeth for early adopters!
 
Thanks you for posting the update! That's some good (though personally I hope unneeded) info on the RAM placings.

Happy you got it sorted. :) How's the build performing for you in other regards? What did you migrate from?
 
Thanks - so far it's working out great.

I had a fairly reasonable system to start off with so the difference for me is not stellar, apart from the boot times. When booting from cold the machine is pretty much at the Windows login screen around the same time as my monitor wakes up!!

My last machine was an Intel 950 i7 on a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R with 12Gb of triple channel memory (6 sticks) which was nearly 5 years old. But I had upgraded the graphics card twice in that time - once by choice and then last Xmas due to a fault I got a free bump under manufacturer warranty - and also upgraded to SSDs for the various OS's (I used to run OS X on it as well). SO I'm on Samsung 830 SSDs and an MSI Nvidia GTX 970.

Basically the old machine was still OK. For the most part it could play all the games I had at full settings (latest being GTAV) but it was beginning to show it's age in the CPU department. In MMOs as soon as I went to a middle populated area frame rates would drop. And in flight sims (FS X, XP10) I was struggling to get above 20fps.

So far I've not seen anything drop below 60fps, apart from in flight sims - but they're nice and smooth now. And the system is SO quiet too! I have it in a nice funky White Xigmatek Aquila case :)

Very happy, have to say.

Finally, I have a 29" Dell 2560x1080 monitor. I keep a regular eye on the price of the 34" super-wide screens at the higher resolution. Once they come down in price to something more reasonable I intend to grab one and add a 2nd GTX970 to be able to push the resolution. But it's all about the money really and right now the system simply doesn't need the second card and 300 notes, is 300 notes :D
 
No it's good to read, I'm coming from a 5.5 year old System, (AMD 965) so can expect a similar, slightly more noticeable boost. You seem happy with it so that's positive - if you're planning on upgrading your monitor, that means your settled with the system, so that's encouraging :)
 
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