RAM voltage question

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Soldato
Joined
1 Jun 2005
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I have some RAM designed for overclocking, as I planned to overclock it if needed in the future, but leave it stock until then. When i first installed the RAM (over a year ago now) I had tons of issues getting it to POST due to my asus maximus formula not supplying enough voltage by default, when I finaly got into the bios and increased the voltage a little, it worked for a while but eventully I got BSODs and found it was a memmory issue, after removing one of the sticks the system is stable again.

I am now starting to think that perhaps the stick of RAM didn't die, but it infact gave BSOD problems because it was undervolted (even though it was above stock motherboard voltage). So my question is, RAM designed for overclocking that has warrenty up to 2.2V, should it actully be ran at those speeds even on stock speeds? Could a lack of voltage cause BSODs with 2 sticks of RAM but be perfectly fine at the same voltage with only 1 stick in? Or am I just being too hopeful that I may be able to recover my 2nd stick of RAM and that it is in fact just corrupted/dead?
 
i had a similar initial post problem like yourself with the board not posting with 4 sticks of ram as the mobo supplied 1.8 by default and the ram needed 2.1, removing 3 out of the 4 sticks altering the value in the bios then putting the sticks back in solved this. ironically even after cmos resets ive never had this problem again.

how many sticks have you? 2 or 4?
have you tried switching a stick with the suspect dodgey one and seeing if it still bsod's with the alternative stick removed?

what is the required voltage the ram needs to operate?
 
The following example will be in terms of the ddr2 I spent ages playing with. Apologies if it's too simplistic, I'm trying not to miss anything out.

First a set of ocz reaper 1066mhz ddr2, rated at 2.1V.

This would run at stock settings of 1066mhz, cl5, at 2.1V rated. In practice it was quite happy at 1066mhz, cl5, 1.98V.

Or it would run at 800mhz, cl4, 1.85V. Or 800mhz, cl5, 1.8V. As speeds go up/latencies down you have to feed it more voltage.

I had a second set of 800mhz cl4 ocz gold ram, rated at 1.9V. This would do 990mhz cl5 at 2.1V, but no higher. So it hit nearly the same spec as the better ram, but missed barely. However, when pushed, at 2.1V the ocz reaper hit 1100mhz stable, nearly stable at 1150. The gold wouldn't even come close to this.

Any ram you buy, will nominally run at its rated specifications. As a result of speed binning/it liking your particular chipset it may run a lot higher on the same or lower voltage. On an older G35 chipset that same reaper wouldn't do 1000mhz stable, even though this was below spec.

I'm going to hazard a guess that you're dealing with dual channel ddr2. Probably kingston based on the 2.2. At 800mhz, I'd expect it to be fine at well under 2.2V. However at 1066mhz I'd expect it to want 2.1 to 2.2V. You can overvolt ram, how it reacts depends on the particular memory involved. Some doesn't like extra voltage at all, some loves it. I had a set of ocz reaper die at 2.2V, which makes me wary of any ddr2 quoting 2.2V for stock speeds.

5am doesn't agree with me, I hope that answers your question
 
I had a similar problem

DDR3-1333Mhz, OCZ gold. Default motherboard volts were 1.6. That memory is rated up to 1.95 thanks to OCZ EVP (extended voltage protection) and its even still in warranty with that voltage. I had BSOD's in XP straight after i increased its speed to the rated 1333 (default was 1066).

All went perfectly, 100% stable after I increased the volts to 1.95. If the RAM is rated to 2.2, stick it at 2.2 :)
 
The ram I have was OCZ ReaperX, 2 x 2GB, motherboard is an asus maximus formula. If i remember right, it ran at 1.8v by default, which I could barely get to boot a single stick of ram, and I knew it was safe to run at 2.1 to 2.2v as the warrenty covers it, but I thought if i dont overclock it i may not need that voltage, so i think i tried increasing the voltage to somewhere between 1.9 and 2.0 I cant remember exactly and I cant restart my machine right now to check (and CPUz doesnt seem to show current voltage).
 
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