rig advice.

DooMeR

DooMeR

DooMeR

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I'm looking to upgrade this time next year, new mobo cpu, ram and so on.

I am happy with my current rig it can run all my games maxed out at 1920x1200 so should last me a year (i hope).

The 1 problem i have is my ram and mobo, My mobo seems a bit unstable with 4 gig a problem which seems common with asus boards.

I'm temped to get a new mobo however all the other ddr2 sli mobos are all asus on ocuk and report simliar problems to the ones i am having.

So i have a few options get a new mobo and ddr3 ram which would properly cost me 300 quid or more, whcih seems a bit of a waste with the new sockets out.

Drop down to 2 gig of ram, how much in game performance would i lose ?

Or buy some new ram and hope it works with 4gig.

Or just put up with the random crashes, since i can usally get many hours of gaming in before i get a crash.

I dont know what to do so any advice suggestions will be welcome.
 
The ASUS P-45 boards are working flawless, at least mine is with 4x 1GB RAM and I haven't heard from anywhere that states otherwise. Stick with Corsair, I think OCZ has had issues with ASUS in the past, generally Corsair is better RAM, tighter timings and quite nice OC headroom!
 
Do any of the p-45 boards have sli support, seems like they support crossfire rather then sli :(
 
If you are running 4x sticks of ram have you tried increasing the NB voltage a notch or two? The reason being that 4x sticks generally put the NB under more pressure, especially if overclocking.
 
pastymuncher said:
If you are running 4x sticks of ram have you tried increasing the NB voltage a notch or two? The reason being that 4x sticks generally put the NB under more pressure, especially if overclocking.
Click to expand...

I havn't tried this, i have the nb volts set to auto i have no clue what the default nb voltages are so i wouldnt know what to set it too, shall i jsut check what its set to auto and increase it a notch or 2?

I check the asus webstie see if the voltages are on there.
 
If you take it off auto the first step will be the standard voltage. Try incresing it a notch, maybe two after that to see if becomes stable.
 
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I have set it 2 1.35 it was running at 1.33/1.34 in auto

I'll give me pc a good hammering tonight see if i get any problems.
 
My Asus P35 with 2x2GB was fine aslong as I had the volts between the recommended voltage (1.8 - 1.9, I had to set to 1.85 for 24/7 stability though), and its been working fine for months now with 4x2GB.
 
After a long gaming session i was gaming all night, i got a bsod after playing gta 4 for about 3-4 hours. the temps of my ram, mobo cpu and graphics cards all seemed fine.

my mobo was auto volting at 1.53 volts by the way i have now increased it to 1.60v so hopefully that will help.
 
pastymuncher said:
1.6v is a lot to be putting through the NB. It must be getting very warm. Have you set the correct voltage and timings for your ram?
Click to expand...

Yeah reccomend ram timings is 2.1 v maximum 2.4 v, i have set them slighty higher for 4 gig, its at like 2.15 or something.

Like i said my nb was auto volting at 1.53 volts, My sb was also at the same voltage. You think thats whats causing the problems maybe ?

Any idea what they should be at ? after i got my crash i checked the mobo temp in the bios and it was at 33c
i would have thought if the mobo was getting hot or over heating it wouldnt be that low right after a crash.

I'm gonna look into it more on google.
 
As it's happening after a certain period of use i am more inclined to think that it's your NB overheating due to the voltage. Set the NB and SB to a couple of notches above their minimum settings and see if that sorts it out. Can't tell you what the standard is as i would'nt touch the latest Nvidia chipset boards with a bargepole. The very lowest should be the stock voltage and it really should'nt need to go much above that. What other voltages do you have set to auto? Auto usually gives too much voltage in my experience.
 
I have set the nb to 1.45v and my sb is at the lowest settign at 1.5v and so far so good . I ran prime for 1-2 hours and it was fine. Also tryied various games and benchmarks and no crashes as of yet :)

Does a small change in volts really make that much of a differance?

My mobo has a habbit of settign the volts to high on auto it did the same with my cpu.
 
DooMeR said:
I have set the nb to 1.45v and my sb is at the lowest settign at 1.5v and so far so good . I ran prime for 1-2 hours and it was fine. Also tryied various games and benchmarks and no crashes as of yet :)

Does a small change in volts really make that much of a differance?

My mobo has a habbit of settign the volts to high on auto it did the same with my cpu.
Click to expand...

Yes it does. More volts = more heat. As you were gaming the NB and SB get's put under load so the heat starts to build. I am guessing that this is what was causing your problems. With any luck this has sorted your problem out. Manufacturers tend to fit heatsinks that will just about do the job which is why a lot of us fit third party coolers to our boards. My Asus P5E has a water block on the NB and a Zalman NB heatsink on the SB. My Gigabyte P35 DS3R has a Zalman heatsink on the NB along with the stock heatsink on the SB. All are fitted with AS5 though.

A lot of Asus mobo's overvolt on auto. It's always best to manually set voltages. What is your cpu set at?

No need to buy new ram as hopefully we have sorted it. There is no benefit (apart from less strain on the NB) to be had by swapping to 2x 2Gb sticks.
 
My cpu is set at 1.35 volts its the lowest i seem to be able to get it to get my overclock stable.

I'm still having problems booting with 4 gig of ram, If i turn my pc off for any length of time i have to take a stick out, increase ram volts put the stick back in then lower the volts back, to get it to boot its annoying having to do this everytime. Any ideas what might be causing this? I suppose i could live with it if the crashes stop. I had this ram working fine for many months before it started doing this.

Maybe its something to do with the bios as i had to update it a few months back to get my cpu working.

But so far no crashes allthough it has been very cold recently so that might be helping a little.
 
I was playing the new legendary demo and my pc jsut turned its self off, no crash or bsod or anything, its never done that before, increased the nb to 1.50v

Going to play tf2 for a few hours see how it holds up.
 
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