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Trouble with F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ and GA-EP35-DS3P

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  • Trouble with F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ and GA-EP35-DS3P

    The problem is that I am getting freezes after a few minutes of running Memtest 86+ (always in different places).

    I already RMA-ed the set of DIMMS I bought and this one is slightly better but still not stable. So I'm not sure what to do now.

    Here are the tests I have done. The Memtest column indicates how long it ran before freezing. When testing in PC2-8000 mode I used the settings specified for the Gigabyte P35-DS3 with a 333MHz FSB on page 11 of http://www.gskill.us/145.pdf . All the tests have been done with +0.05v on the MCH and FSB but previous tests done with the stock voltages were much the same.

    FSB | CPU | RAM | Timings | Memtest
    333 | 2667 | 800 - 1.8V | 5-5-5-15 | 3m38s
    333 | 2667 | 800 - 2.1V | 5-5-5-15 | 37s
    333 | 2667 | 1000 - 2.1V | 5-5-5-15 | 24s


    What I don't understand is that it's memtest is freezing rather than giving me errors. Does it means it's more a compatibility/settings issue rather than memory with a bad spot? It's also a bit disheartening that even at slower speed it's not stable.

    Right now I'm running stably with a pair of scavenged no-name PC2-5300 DIMMS but it's only 1GB of RAM. But I'd really prefer to be able to use my 4GB of GSkill RAM.

    Any recommendation on what to try now?

    Proc: Intel Q9450 @ 2.667GHz
    MB: GA-EP35-DS3P
    RAM: F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ
    Power: Corsair VX450

  • #2
    did you update to the latest bios yet?


    G.S

    Comment


    • #3
      So far I have been using the F5 Bios which was released on 2008/07/25.
      I checked on Gigabyte's website and only one new Bios has been released on 2008/07/30: F6a which is still marked as a beta. So today I upgraded to F6a to see if it would make a difference but it didn't.

      As I was checking things I noticed that the tests I reported so far were done with Memtest86+ 2.01 rather than 2.04 (which I must have on a CD somewhere). So today I updated to the latest version: 2.11.

      Also, when I looked into the 'PC Health Monitor' I noticed that the motherboard tends to overshoot the DDR2 voltage. For instance with +0.3V I got 2.16V, though this varies a bit from boot to boot. So I did some tests with +0.2V and +0.25V too, the latter giving me a nice 2.112V (usually).

      Here are the test results (all with CPU at 2.6GHz, 333MHz FSB):

      Code:
      Bios | RAM  | Timings  | DDR2 | MCH  | Memtest
      F5   | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.25 |+0.05 |    22s
      F5   | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.35 |+0.05 |    12s
      F5   |  800 | 5-5-5-15 | 0    |+0.05 |  1m12s
      F6a  | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.20 | 0    |     2s
      F6a  | 1000 | 5-6-6-16 |+0.25 | 0    |     1s
      F6a  | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.25 |+0.05 |     8s
      F6a  | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.25 |+0.10 |     5s
      F6a  |  800 | 5-6-6-16 | 0    | 0    |  3m49s
      F6a  |  667 | 5-5-5-15 | 0    | 0    | 11m42s
      I also noticed some differences between the GSkill documentation and the actual Bios settings. So I took some screen shots to illustrate (it was easier than copy/pasting everything).
      M.I.T.1: http://fgouget.free.fr/tmp/gskill1_mit1.jpg
      M.I.T.2: http://fgouget.free.fr/tmp/gskill1_mit2.jpg

      In particular, 'High Speed DRAM DLL Setings' has disappeared, and the 'tRD' value seems to be called 'Static tRead Value' and defaults to 5 instead of 3. I did try to force it to 3 but the computer would not Post. Also, 'tRD Phase Adjustment' seems to have been renamed to 'Static tRead Phase Adjust' and now displays 1 instead of 0 when in Auto mode. But that difference may not be significant because there is no option to set it to '0' anyway. So I think it's just that display issue.

      And for reference (showing +0.25V mapped to 2.096V at the time):
      PC Health: http://fgouget.free.fr/tmp/gskill1_health.jpg


      Finally I have retested with the no-name memory (2*512MB) and it's still stable with Bios F6a and Memtest86+ 2.11 (but at PC2-5300 speeds).

      Comment


      • #4
        try to add the FSB and MCH voltage to +0.15-0.2v and memory voltage to +0.3v
        thanks


        G.S

        Comment


        • #5
          Hi,

          I tried that but no luck :-(
          For this round of tests I went back to the F5 Bios as the F6a did not seem to help.

          Code:
          Bios | RAM  | Timings  | DDR2 | FSB  | MCH   | Memtest
          F5   | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.30 |+0.10 |+0.10  | 6s
          F5   | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.30 |+0.10 |+0.15  | 1s
          F5   | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.30 |+0.15 |+0.15  | 1s
          F5   | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.30 |+0.15 |+0.20  | No Post
          F5   | 1000 | 5-5-5-15 |+0.30 |+0.20 |+0.175 | No Post
          It looks like my Northbridge does not like overvoltage.

          Comment

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