BIOS

[lolage]

Before when ive built PC's ive never had to set up the BIOS. But apparently because i have a Gigabyte DS3R im going to have to set up BIOS?

Not a clue what to do..?

Any help very much appriciated. Thanks.

 

[MumboJumbo]

You only have to change the voltages of your memory. The default or the board is 1.8v but that is not enough for DDR2 ram to work stabley. Just change it to the volts indicated on the box. If you dont want to overclock or raid then you dont need to do any more. Other then tell it to boot from floppy for mobo drivers/updated bios and cd for vista/xp

 

[Kobrakai]

Depends really, My RAM says 2.1v but I run it at 1.8v (4-4-4-12) and it passed a whole night of running Memtest. Try it at the default value and if it works / is stable then why change? More volts = more heat = shorter lifespan.

1.8v is actually in the official spec for DDR2.

 

[Tetras]

1.8v is the official spec for standard memory, not performance memory. There isn't even a spec past PC2-6400 and it depends on the memory chips as to what voltage they prefer. The regular stuff you get from the likes of Crucial (not Ballistix) should be fine but it is very common for performance memory to be unstable @ 1.8v and not many people would be willing to run memtest all night to find out. If it is the rated voltage then it is warranted voltage and as memory tends to have a lifetime warranty it is no big deal, it'll be useless long before it dies.

Anyway on topic, I doubt you'll have to do anything more than that, the BIOS will auto-detect the hard drives, graphics card, CPU etc...

 

[MumboJumbo]

The regular stuff you get from the likes of Crucial (not Ballistix) should be fine but it is very common for performance memory to be unstable @ 1.8v and not many people would be willing to run memtest all night to find out.

What do you mean when you say "regular stuff". Curcial balstix memory is considered to be some of the most high performance memory you can by as far as im aware seens as it will overclock up to 1200mhz. Because it overclocks so high on just 2.2v it will run at 1.9v on more usual speeds of 800mhz if your lucky. might need it at 2.0v to get better timings though of 3-3-3-10

 

[Tetras]

What do you mean when you say "regular stuff"

Regular as in JEDEC standard (frequency, latencies, voltage), that is why I specifically said not Ballistix in brackets

Crucial intentionally make the upgrade stuff that way for compatibility, not everyone can use or wants performance memory; for example, many (all?) non-extreme branded Intel boards that are common in OEM/business PCs won't even allow VDIMM adjustment on base BIOS.