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First set worked like a charm. Enabled XMP and all times correctly set. System was stable as a rock. Easily overclocked system to 4.5 with stock volts and minimal effort.
Ordered second set to increase memory to 16gigs to be able to run VM,s and that is where the problems started. Set the memory timings to SPD default in bios prior to installing second set, but system would blue screen on loading windows 7. After numerous attempts removed the original 2 sticks and tested with the 2 new ones. System worked perfectly again, even with XMP enabled and OC'd.
Noticed that the timings on the two sets were slightly different. 8-8-8-24-5-24-218-2t for the original set and 8-8-8-24-5-23-138-2t for the second set. Manually set the timings for the slightly less aggressive original set and am able to run fairly stable with all four sticks (16gigs), but the system doesn't feel right. It seems to have a slight hesitation at times, like a system that has been Overclocked a bit too much, but is still stable enough to pass stress tests like HyperPi, Intel Burn Test, StressCPU, Prime95, Memtest86+, etc.
G.Skill's support site FAQ states it's doesn't support mixing sets like this which I find troubling. I specifically ordered two 8gig sets of two 4gig sticks instead of a single 16gig set of 4x4g or 2x8g to have some redundancy. I've had more ram failures than anything else (other than hard drives) and didn't want to have my entire system down for 2 or 3 weeks by having to send ALL of the ram back for an RMA in case of a failure. I've never run into a problem mixing identical sets (same model number) like this in my 30+ years of computing and can't understand why G.Skill should be any different.
I have until this Tuesday (the 21st) to sort this out before I would need to send the first set back to Newegg for refund or exchange (I have a couple of extra weeks for the second set). I wanted to post this last Friday, but it took G.Skill until Sunday to activate my account preventing me from posting until today (don't know what the holdup was, but that's another thing that is making me nervous). I increased the vdimm to 1.55v which has seemed to help. Not sure if this is a viable 24/7 long term solution though. Are there any other bios settings that I might want to try?
Am I just spinning my wheels trying to use two separate sets of ram like this? I've never had problems doing this in the past, but that was with DDR2, DDR1, SDRam, and earlier, not DDR3. I'm not opposed to making bios tweaks when I know which ones to make, but this is my first experience with tweaking DDR3 on a Core i series Intel system.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Ordered second set to increase memory to 16gigs to be able to run VM,s and that is where the problems started. Set the memory timings to SPD default in bios prior to installing second set, but system would blue screen on loading windows 7. After numerous attempts removed the original 2 sticks and tested with the 2 new ones. System worked perfectly again, even with XMP enabled and OC'd.
Noticed that the timings on the two sets were slightly different. 8-8-8-24-5-24-218-2t for the original set and 8-8-8-24-5-23-138-2t for the second set. Manually set the timings for the slightly less aggressive original set and am able to run fairly stable with all four sticks (16gigs), but the system doesn't feel right. It seems to have a slight hesitation at times, like a system that has been Overclocked a bit too much, but is still stable enough to pass stress tests like HyperPi, Intel Burn Test, StressCPU, Prime95, Memtest86+, etc.
G.Skill's support site FAQ states it's doesn't support mixing sets like this which I find troubling. I specifically ordered two 8gig sets of two 4gig sticks instead of a single 16gig set of 4x4g or 2x8g to have some redundancy. I've had more ram failures than anything else (other than hard drives) and didn't want to have my entire system down for 2 or 3 weeks by having to send ALL of the ram back for an RMA in case of a failure. I've never run into a problem mixing identical sets (same model number) like this in my 30+ years of computing and can't understand why G.Skill should be any different.
I have until this Tuesday (the 21st) to sort this out before I would need to send the first set back to Newegg for refund or exchange (I have a couple of extra weeks for the second set). I wanted to post this last Friday, but it took G.Skill until Sunday to activate my account preventing me from posting until today (don't know what the holdup was, but that's another thing that is making me nervous). I increased the vdimm to 1.55v which has seemed to help. Not sure if this is a viable 24/7 long term solution though. Are there any other bios settings that I might want to try?
Am I just spinning my wheels trying to use two separate sets of ram like this? I've never had problems doing this in the past, but that was with DDR2, DDR1, SDRam, and earlier, not DDR3. I'm not opposed to making bios tweaks when I know which ones to make, but this is my first experience with tweaking DDR3 on a Core i series Intel system.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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