Memory turning system off

gallowaya · 10 Mar 2012 at 22:09

I'm not sure how to explain this but I'll try.

Hi, Today I received the parts for my first/new build, anyway after installing everything it was working fine I installed W7, then when I installed my GPU drivers the system turned off (the gpu is fine now). After a little experimenting I found that it would work with 1 ram stick.

Since then I found that if I put a stick in certain slots it would cause my machine when first turned on to turnoff after about 1 second then turn itself on again then proceed to turn itself off again, continuing like this until I turned it off at the psu.
The motherboard is an Gigabyte Z68ap-B3 rev. and the Ram is 2x4gb dual channel Kingston HyperX genesis grey.
I tried inserting the Sticks one at a time and checking the results.
(Order of slots from closest to CPU)
-------------------Stick 1------Stick 2
Slot 4 (Channel A) . Pass ------- Pass
Slot 2 (Channel b) . pass ------- pass
Slot 3 (channel A) . Fail -------- Fail
Slot 1 (channel b) . Fail --------- Fail

I currently have them both in slots 4 and 2 which is akward because it is directly below the CPU cooler fan and I don't benefit from the dual channel

I appreciate any help as I am completely out of my depth. (If I have missed something important please ask.)

gallowaya · 10 Mar 2012 at 22:37

Kelt said:
Is the ram set to the correct voltage in the bios?

I'm not sure, I can't get to the bios when the aforementioned slots are used as the system turns off too quick

gallowaya · 11 Mar 2012 at 11:18

Surveyor said:
Can't you get into the BIOS with a stick of RAM in slots 2 or 4?

Enable the XMP profile but set the DRAM voltage manually to ~1.55V.

Also what CPU cooler are you using?

Yeah I can I thought i needed to get into the BIOS with the sticks in the affected slots, anyway.

Just to help both of us out I took some quick pics to better show the situation
I changed this

to this

and I the went into the memory voltage control and changed it to 1.56 as there was no 1.55.

Note because I was unsure about what these may do to my system I decided to run them by you guys because I don't want to irreparably damage anything.

And the CPU cooler is a Gelid Tranquillio Rev.2

gallowaya · 11 Mar 2012 at 11:59

Surveyor said:
It looks fine.

XMP profile is enabled in the second screenshot and you've manually set the voltage to 1.56V.

Note that if you didn't set the DRAM voltage manually it would have been 1.65V which is really too high.

The other standard settings you seem to have changed are "Performance Enhance" which by default is "Turbo" and "DRAM Timing Selectable" which by default is "Auto".

You may want to consider changing those back.

Your CPU cooler shouldn't be an issue but if your RAM slots still don't work you can try loosening the 4 securing screws a touch.

My issue with the CPU cooler was that the fan was directly over the top of slot 4 so I have to remove the fan from the heatsink to access the ram slot to either remove or insert ram sticks.

gallowaya · 11 Mar 2012 at 22:26

I changed the performance enhancer and timing selector back to auto and proceeded to test the ram in the different slots. Still wouldn't work, I then tried with one stick in an affected slot to gradually loosen the cpu cooler a few turns at a time. No luck.

I could return it if I had to, but is there a drastic impact on performance with 8gb using a single channel over dual channel.

I appreciate the help you've given so far.

gallowaya · 13 Mar 2012 at 10:27

Ciff1 said:
If it were me i would return the motherboard, i wouldn't be comfortable knowing that it's faulty in some way.Dual channel is going to be faster and you may want to add more ram in the future before prices increase, which would mean you having to get bigger sticks rather than just adding additional. your choice at the end of the day though. Your running at half your possible memory band width if you stay single channel but only about 5% or less speed difference between single and dual channel with 8gb.

I have a OEM copy of Windows 7, aren't they tied to the motherboard so should I return it I must buy a copy of W7 again.

gallowaya · 13 Mar 2012 at 21:11

I should have asked but How do I update the BIOS, I tried the Gigabyte website but the download is quite cyclical.

gallowaya · 13 Mar 2012 at 23:33

Do I have to update in order, because I am on bios version f2 and it goes to f7, can I skip to F7 or do I need to get there in steps F3,F4 etc.

Thanks