Need help F3-16000CL6D-4GBPIS, Rampage Extreme 3, i7-960

[Bomlin]

Greetings,

Although I've built several systems, memory has never been an area I've felt over comfortable with. Now I'm having trouble with my memory setup and would really appreciate some help.

I have the Asus Rampage Extreme 3 mobo with an i7-960 cpu, windows 7 Professional 64 bit. I purchased 2 sets of (2x2GB) F3-16000CL6D-4GBPIS and I'm having the following problems.

* First, the mobo/bios will only show 4GB. Windows also will only show 4 GB while CPU-z shows all 8GB.

* The second issue is I am having trouble setting the speed. Although I've gotten it up to 1600, I cannot get 1866 to work. Nor does the bios allow for setting it to 2000.

The good news is that I am still within my return window with Newegg if I need to get a different set of memory (It would still be G.Skill. ) Did I buy the wrong memory?

As I mentioned before, memory is not a strong skill for me so please be specific as you can be.

Thanks....

[jbljay]

though i'm not G.Skill's tech team posting...

BUT, the RIIIE board needs it's 0704 bios flash. it seems to be a very common issue with many of the high end ASUS boards. the issue i have and the only issue i have with ASUS is why doesn't their recently shipped products have the most upto date bios in the first place

without the 0704+ bios, you'll have memory issues and many overclocking issues.

[Bomlin]

Thanks,

I appreciate the suggestion. I was on 0602 and updated to 0704 but no luck. It was a good suggestion. I'm still managing to run at 1600 so its not too bad atm. Thanks again...

[Bomlin]

I was able to work past some of the issues...

Issue #1: OS and Bios only saw half of memory while CPU-z saw it all.

Resolution: Long story short, while playing around I discovered that this mother board is rather snug with the memory. I little more forceful push seated the memory properly and caused it to be visible to both Bios and OS.

Issue #2: Getting spead to 2000. I was able to use TweakIt with the ROG connection and got the memory up to 1805. Getting better but any higher and I get crashes. I fully assume this is due to my not understanding memory config properly. If anyone knows values I should be setting for this memory, I would appreciate it.

[GSKILL TECH]

Any higher you will need to manually set QPI/DRAM Voltage. Once you find the precise voltage necessary, your system should be stable.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[wevsspot]

Yep,

Set your QPI/DRAM voltage to 1.55v and work your way down from there depending on what final frequency you'd like your RAM to run at. To run it at 2000Mhz you will need at minimum 1.5v QPI/DRAM voltage and possibly as high as 1.6v

Once over 1800Mhz I have to bump my QPI/DRAM voltage from 1.35v up to 1.4825v

At that point I can take it clear to 1960Mhz stable. After that I need to push it to 1.55v or in that neighborhood.

The speed of this RAM scales directly with QPI/DRAM voltage and the ability of your on-die memory controller to handle the stress.