Help with diagnosis.....PLEASE!

Ben Cole

Ben Cole

Ben Cole

Soldato
Joined
24 Feb 2003
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Porthcawl and Southampton
Put new RAM in (G.Skill DDR2 1066) and experienced a few random crashes under heavy load. So presumed it was the new RAM.

Booted up memtest and tested with no errors.

The timings on the RAM when in auto mode in the BIOS (5-7-7-20)didn't match that on the packaging(5-5-5-15) so I changed them to match the specs and upped DDR voltage by 0.1v and the crashing stopped. However prime95 still returns errors. (I know next to F.A. about memory timings and what they do)

MoBo is Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G with latest BIOS.

Any tips to solve this or prove it's the RAM?
 
Last edited:
Nobody?

Is it possible for the RAM to be ok but still cause errors in prime95?

Just a compatibilty issue maybe?
 
Check what voltage your RAM requires.

Bog standard DDR2 runs at 1.8V so that's what your motherboard will be set to as a default.

Higher speed DDR2 RAM can need 2.2-2.3V.

On the PC Health Status screen in your BIOS you can see what your DDR voltage is currently set to. You may need to increase it further depending on what your RAM needs.
 
As I said in the first post I did increase the voltage a but. Bios reported it at around 2v which I thought would be fine as the packaging states 2.0-2.1v.

I'll try a bit more. Thanks for the tip.
 
Well.

I tried it in my media rig at home and got no errors and then realised it was only running at 800MHz :-(

Just got back to my work flat and re-installed the RAM. At first I didn't do anything and got errors after a few minutes in Prime95.

Changed the timings to match the specs but left the voltage alone.

So far so good, I've given it a right hammering for the last 1.5hrs and no errors.

Weird because obviously I'd tried it like this before and got crashes and errors but it seems that now all is well.

Odd but pleasing.
 
An update in case anyone is interested.

I took the RAM sticks out to test another build (that isn't going very well :-) ) and when they were returned they were generating errors again!

Very odd. Will have to start fiddling again when I get home from work. They must be really sensitive to installation issues.
 
Ben Cole said:
An update in case anyone is interested.

I took the RAM sticks out to test another build (that isn't going very well :-) ) and when they were returned they were generating errors again!

Very odd. Will have to start fiddling again when I get home from work. They must be really sensitive to installation issues.
Click to expand...

If you get the RAM working again don't take it out.

Ever.
 
Surveyor said:
If you get the RAM working again don't take it out.

Ever.
Click to expand...

Agreed. This is doing my head in a bit now.

Testing each stick at a time gave no errors. So maybe a mobo problem?

BUT WHY OH WHY did it that one time work flawlessly!!!!

Arrrggghhhhh!.
 
Another update. (obviously only Surveyor has helped but somebody might land here through the search and this may help)

After a lot of searching it seems not being able to operate this RAM at it's rated specs is not uncommon particularly on the P35 chipset which mine is.

I seem to now have stability after increasing my RAM voltage by 0.3v.

This would normally worry me but the reported voltage in CPUID Hardware monitor is 2.1v which is what the RAM is rated to work at (2.0v-2.1v)

I'm thinking maybe my setup/bios/chipset has been delivering low on the voltage side.

Who knows? Not an expert in the field. Anyway I think I'll run it like this and see what happens. Worst comes the the worst I'll fry the lot which will give me an excuse to scour MM for even more stuff.
 
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