Issues with new ram

[MikeHiow]

I'm having trouble with new ram (2x1gb) for my PC (E6300/Asus P5Q). It originally had only 2GB in 2x1GB sticks and the motherboard/cpu/ram bundle I bought second hand came pre-overclocked (400x7=2.8GHz, Ram=800Mhz, VCore=1.4v, Ram Voltage=1.15v,NB Voltage = 1.45V).

Now, the ram appears to need a higher voltage to work at all, as with stock settings, even the original ram will not function.

So I add in my two extra sticks and the machine freezes at the fancy splash screen which normally replaces POST. If I juggle these around a bit, I can get it to POST but the board tells me Overclock has failed.

From here, I can either go into setup or restore defaults and continue - if I continue Win7 BSODs - I believe because the ram doesn't have sufficient supply. If I go into setup, I've tried reducing voltage, upping voltage and it always seems to fail on the motherboard's test it does after reboot to check overclocking settings are ok.

New RAM is PC6400 so it is not being overclocked, but it is cheap value ram from another retailer (voucher for xmas :/) that you might find their name on your dvd remote

Is there anything I can do? It has been a long time since I've messed around with PCs, since going Mac.

 

[SeraphX]

remove the OC totally install ram then start again,

 

[MikeHiow]

I think I solved the issue. The new, cheap ram is only rated to CAS6 according to the vendor, yet the motherboard was trying to run it at CAS4.

I got it to boot by knocking down FSB to 350Mhz, but there was some instability. A combination of that and setting ram timing to CAS5 seems to have solved it. I might try knocking the FSB up again later, but wonder if its really worth it considering I've only lost around 300mhz from the cpu clock speed.