TWO sets of faulty DRAM - or something else?

wookiee87 · 19 Jul 2018 at 22:32

it's a tough call but i would put your problems down to the cpu or the board, something isnt right as you've got a new set of ram, reinstalled and the problem persists granted not as bad as before but to have something similar is very strange, have you looked in your bois at the psu voltage read outs, if one is a bit flaky that may also cause issues, but that wouldn't be related to the ram all the time, have you tested at 2133mhz with the new set and if so how'd that go, if your pc runs smooth as a kitten at 2133mhz i'd say the cpu is the culprit and a replacment should be on your list but only after testing at stock jdec frequencies
(if you test at 2133mhz and everythings fine could be your imc on the cpu is damaged and wont allow higher ram speeds)

riskyfrisky · 20 Jul 2018 at 06:26

wookiee87 said:
it's a tough call but i would put your problems down to the cpu or the board, something isnt right as you've got a new set of ram, reinstalled and the problem persists granted not as bad as before but to have something similar is very strange, have you looked in your bois at the psu voltage read outs, if one is a bit flaky that may also cause issues, but that wouldn't be related to the ram all the time, have you tested at 2133mhz with the new set and if so how'd that go, if your pc runs smooth as a kitten at 2133mhz i'd say the cpu is the culprit and a replacment should be on your list but only after testing at stock jdec frequencies
(if you test at 2133mhz and everythings fine could be your imc on the cpu is damaged and wont allow higher ram speeds)

Yeah it’s baffling and starting to spoil my enjoyment of the machine tbh.

I built it in January of last year so it’s not that old.

Voltages in bios are currently +3.3v 3.328 +5v 5.040 +12v 12.288.

I’m setting the ram to 2133mhz default and will see how it goes.

riskyfrisky · 20 Jul 2018 at 06:43

Okay I've just been back into the bios and i noticed that you mentioned vccio and vccsa. I couldn't find vccsa but vccio had a 'auto voltage' of 1.368v. I don't seem to be able to change it either.

The other thing is I've manually set the memory to 2133mhz but the xmp profile remained active so I have removed the profile - should that not have lowered the vccio voltage?

wookiee87 · 20 Jul 2018 at 09:03

your psu voltages seem all ok to me, so that rules out it being at fault, with regardis to your vccio voltage of 1.368, that to me is far to high for speeds from 2133 to 3000mhz, the voltage for thse speeds should be around 1.1 to 1.25ish, have you tried changing it from auto to manual and typing in a lower value, regarding the xmp sticking on you'll have to go to that setting in the bois and change it back to auto, you should have 3 options to choose which are auto, manual and finally xmp.

have a look back in the bois and try changeing the settings above, leave the ram at 2133mhz for now but do change the vccio as 1.3+ as you mentioned is far to high even at 3000mhz, to put it into perspective i have a 8600k and a quad channel 3600mhz under xmp and my vccio is at 1.1 -1.15v, but this varies from board to board not to mention you have a 6th gen chip and mines a 8th gen so less power is needed for mine

forgot to mention that the vccsa is also known as system agent voltage and this should be around the same voltage as the vccio at 1.1 - 1.25ish but no higher

riskyfrisky · 20 Jul 2018 at 14:35

wookiee87 said:
your psu voltages seem all ok to me, so that rules out it being at fault, with regardis to your vccio voltage of 1.368, that to me is far to high for speeds from 2133 to 3000mhz, the voltage for thse speeds should be around 1.1 to 1.25ish, have you tried changing it from auto to manual and typing in a lower value, regarding the xmp sticking on you'll have to go to that setting in the bois and change it back to auto, you should have 3 options to choose which are auto, manual and finally xmp.

have a look back in the bois and try changeing the settings above, leave the ram at 2133mhz for now but do change the vccio as 1.3+ as you mentioned is far to high even at 3000mhz, to put it into perspective i have a 8600k and a quad channel 3600mhz under xmp and my vccio is at 1.1 -1.15v, but this varies from board to board not to mention you have a 6th gen chip and mines a 8th gen so less power is needed for mine

forgot to mention that the vccsa is also known as system agent voltage and this should be around the same voltage as the vccio at 1.1 - 1.25ish but no higher

I've been back into the bios and had a look around, leaving the sticks at 2133mhz this is what the voltages were set to on auto:

VCCSA/SAV is at 1.096v
VCCIO is at 0.992v
I also noticed that DRAM voltage has dropped to 1.216v - all these voltages were listed in the 'ai tweaker' section in the bios.

Thanks for guiding me with this wookiee I'm just hoping it solves the issue.

wookiee87 · 20 Jul 2018 at 17:54

ahh that looks a lot better voltage wise especially on the vccsa and the vccio, your ram voltage is also good as thats the default value whilst running at 2133mhz, if everything runs ok with no errors then try setting xmp on the ram at 3000mhz when you do this leave the vccio/vccsa at auto and see what happens, if the pc posts then thats a good sign, head into windows and start running benchmarks or games, both will place load on the cpu and ram and if anything crashes, set ram at 3000mhz and slowly decrease the speed manually (3000mhz, 2933mhz, 2666mhz, 2400mhz ) after each drop go back in to windows and run some benchmarks or games, have a look on the side of the ram as it will have the ram timmings for 3000mhz, if you have to drop the ram speed everytime, start to tighten the timmings as not doing so will result in the pc not posting at startup (what i mean is dont run your ram at 3000mhz but use the timmings for 2133mhz that will not work)

but at the end of the day if you have got the ram at 2133 and the voltages at default settings and are still getting problems appering, i would recommend a new cpu as the likleyhood of a damaged imc due to the high vcccio you had set in the bios before.

let me know how you get on and i'll try to asist if you need help

riskyfrisky · 24 Jul 2018 at 09:16

I've been running the system with lowered memory frequencies for the past few days but last night I got the memory error message when shutting down so lowering RAM speeds hasn't helped.

I think at this point I'm going to have to get in touch with both Intel and Asus and see what support they can give me.

Does anyone know whether I am covered in this situation warranty wise? I am definitely within the warranty period for the CPU but not sure about the motherboard. But I am wondering whether they would try and blame 'the end user' for the damage. Thing is I know I have never overclocked the machine, manually or via auto settings, other then setting the XMP profile for the memory. It's this motherboards fault for setting ridiculously high voltages, if indeed the CPU is damaged.

wookiee87 · 24 Jul 2018 at 20:57

Damm! sorry to hear that the problem is still happing, if you are within the warranty period for the cpu and mobo it wouldnt hurt asking for help, explain the situation with corsair and the rma for the ram replacment your using, you'll have to explain all the settings for the ram and see if asus can help, with intel you could send the chip back for testing and upon completion intel will either replace or return the cpu depending on what they find.

or depending on which retailer you bought from you could send the parts back for testing and if found faulty you'll get replacments, other than that thers not much else you can do i'm afraid

riskyfrisky · 31 Jul 2018 at 11:12

Some (hopefully) good news incoming...

I've been on the Intel support forums and described this issue, and it turns out that this is, they think, a software issue at shutdown rather than a hardware issue. Something isn't shutting down properly or has a problem with the coding and it is playing up when Windows shuts down. All I have to do is find out which app is causing it, but if it is just a program playing up, that's a massive relief and would explain why the PC is otherwise fine.

I've also been told that my i7 6700k doesn't support 3000Mhz memory and that can cause issues in itself - I'm not sure what to make of that to be honest; nobody on here flagged it up as an issue. Either way running the memory as I have been at 2133Mhz hasn't helped so I guess time will tell.

Just wanted to update the thread and hopefully the end is in sight.

SupraWez · 31 Jul 2018 at 11:17

riskyfrisky said:
I've also been told that my i7 6700k doesn't support 3000Mhz memory and that can cause issues in itself - I'm not sure what to make of that to be honest; nobody on here flagged it up as an issue. Either way running the memory as I have been at 2133Mhz hasn't helped so I guess time will tell.

From Intel website https://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz

DDR4-1866/2133, DDR3L-1333/1600 @ 1.35V