Asus P5E WS Pro POSTS with three dimms but not four

Tyler Durden

Tyler Durden

Tyler Durden

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28 Oct 2002
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I had to POST my new Asus P5E WS Pro (a replacement for a failed Asus P5K WS) with a single dimm to enter the BIOS and manually set the 2.3V DRAM voltage required by my four 1Gb OCZ Flex 9200 RAM.
Having tested, I conclude that changing the voltage from auto allows me to POST with three dimms but not four. I can interchange the third and fourth sticks and it will POST with either but not both.
I shall attempt to manually set the Northbridge voltage at 1.5V to see if that is required for four dimm support.

Anyone got this board or similar and has experience with its RAM requirements?
I shall have to run memtest to check the system assuming I can get it to POST with four sticks by adjusting the NB voltage.
My problem is that I need to test everything before I replace the stock NB/mosfet heatpipe with cooling blocks and add the RAM to the loop. Ideally, I need to be comfortable nothing is fried before I customise the board so I am curious if this board or the x38 chipset has issues POSTing similar RAM at auto?
 
Only booting for short periods to avoid overheat with liquid cooling unconnected, I have manually set the NB voltage to 1.45V and then 1.55V and the DRAM to 2.35V.
Now tested again after reading on various boards that the Asus P5E series has overvoltage issues and deciding to try at 2V
The result is still the same - I can POST with any three dimms but not four. Very odd.
The board is unmodified and new, the RAM must be the issue but it is hard to know whether to return them all as damaged given that they do POST, albeit not together. As it POSTs with any three, it would indicate all are equally damaged. Hard to fry four sticks surely? So that leads back to the brand new board.

Any thoughts?

A previous thread reply suggested another forum where P5E boards are discussed as having RAM issues. Anyone know if the OCZ Flex 9200 is incompatible?
Anyone running an x38 board with OCZ 9200 Flex? Or even better an Asus version?
 
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The P5E series have issues with 4 sticks of DDR2.

The way i got around it was to set the RAM to 667mhz, up the RAM voltage as well as the northbridge a notch. Although not what i wanted to do with 800mhz RAM, it'll do for now. :)

Edit: This was with Corsair XMS2 4x1GB sticks
 
Thanks m8,

I had begun to suspect as much. It seems OCZ are publishing guides to some boards - especially for 4 dimm support. I shall try to POST by seriously underclocking the RAM. Not ideal but perhaps an imminent BIOS fix will sort it....

From what I gather, Asus may have set the refresh rate too tight at 42 max, perhaps requiring a 60 setting be added in a BIOS revision.
 
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