ECS A55F-M2 and Ripjaws X F3-10666cl9d-4gbxl

[Shawn510]

Hello, I have been fighting with my new build and I'm hoping you have help me isolate the problem.
I have a A6-3650 in a ECS A55F-M2 mainboard. It has two ram slots and I am trying to run a pair of F3-1066CL9D-4GBXL modules.

I am running a new 400w PSU, I had tried an older 430w Antec I had but I thought that its 20 pin vs 24 pin connection and age (5 years!) might have been part of the problem.

The issue is that If I have the stick installed in one order the system boots, but has occasional BSODs and is intermittent as to whether Windows recognizes 4 or 2 gb of ram (minus the 512mb for the GPU). Note that the BIOS and CPU-z always show both modules, even when windows doesn't.

If I swap the order of sticks the system won't boot windows at all. It resets shortly after the mouse arrow first appears. It also sometimes has corrupted video.

I am trying to figure out if I have a bad MB or bad ram. I ram memtest86+ on each stick individually and found no errors. But I did not have time to run each test very long.

Also with just one stick the ram has to be in the slot nearest the CPU or it won't recognize. I don't know if that is normal for this board or not.

The Bios auto setting match what is specified on the sticks. I would have tried more voltage but I can't find that option in this bios. This is my first rodeo with an APU, is it tied to the CPU voltage?

Is there anything I can try to get this to work or at least find out if it is a bad slot?

Thanks!

[Tradesman]

Could you post up your BIOS settings, first guess would be to add a bit to the DRAM voltage (+ 0.06) and/or make sure you have the latest BIOS

[Shawn510]

My settings are:
1333/667
1t, 9-9-9-24

There does not even appear to be a voltage setting for the ram. I tried bumping the CPUvid a notch (from 11 to 10, increasing the voltage) to see if more power to the memory controller would help but that did not seem to work.

This is the latest BIOS on the ECS website, their eBlu program shows a later rev but it won't flash. The BIOS is over a year old.

[Tradesman]

Drop the CR (Command Rate/Timing) to 2T, and if possible, raise CPU/NB voltage about + 0.04

[Shawn510]

Dropped rate to 2T ,and increased CPU voltage. Still booting but only recognizing half the ram.

[Tradesman]

Where is only seeing half the DRAM is it showing only 2GB in the BIOS or in Windows, and if in Windows where, i.e. is that when running CPU-Z (or other Utility program) or is it showing 2GB under the Win System Settings?

[Shawn510]

BIOS and CPU-z show all four gigs. Windows task manager shows 1.5, windows system properties is more specific and shows 4.0gb (1.44gb useable).
It shows 2.5 gb as "hardware reserved".
There should only be the 512mb reserved as that is all the APU GPU uses. It is much more stable with the 2T setting though. No random resets.

I got hold of a single el-cheapo 4gb stick, initially it would not work at all, but I tried it after using the settings you suggested for the Ripjaws and now it works stable and shows the full 3.5 gb with 512 used by the GPU.

I think maybe I have a bad ram slot on the mobo.

[Tradesman]

Could try running Memtest on each stick individually, Memtest takes a long, long time for a full run, so I normally run through 4-5 passes, run each stick through slot 1 closest to CPU