First off thanks in advance for the help you provide here, I bought my parts below about a year ago and have been dealing with this issue for just about the entire time. It's inconsistent and sometimes cause minor irritation and other times major frustration. My setup is as follows:
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO latest BIOS
AMD Phenom II 955 C2 black edition (thought I ordered C3 but never chkd when arrived)
G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL (4GB in 2 x 2GB sticks)
Antec 850w Quattro Quad Rail power supply
ASUS Radeon HD 5850 EAH8550 Direct CU TOP 1GB Video card
3 x WD 500GB drives (2 in RAID 0, 3rd as backup)
Windows 7 Pro 32bit
All my clocks are stock, mainly because I could not get enough stability to feel comfortable in starting to OC. Unlike many others I do not seem to have any cold boot problems. Sometimes it would freeze and rebooting cleared everything out and onward I went. Other times the fault would be quite hard and corrupt my RAID and require me to restore from my backup. After this latest hart fault about a week ago I have finally had enough, I am finally getting tired or trying to restore 300GB of data every couple of weeks and decided to figure out what the hell is going on.
After reading probably 100+ posts in here and equally as many on the web in other forums here is what I've tested. As a preface I use memtest86+ for my benchmark and Win 7 gaming as double check.
Slots Speed Timing Voltage NB Result
A1, B1 1600 9,9,9,24 1T auto auto Fail
A1, B1 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,(24-27) 1T & 2T 1.5 1.1-1.18 Fail
A1, B1 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,(24-27) 1T & 2T 1.55-1.65 1.1-1.20 Fail
A1, B1 1066, 1333, 1600 8,8,8,27 1T & 2T 1.5-1.6 1.1 Fail
A1, B1 1066, 1333 11,11,11,30 2T 1.5 1.1 Fail
A2, B2 1600 9,9,9,24 1T auto auto Fail
A2, B2 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,(24-27) 1T & 2T 1.5 1.1 Fail
A2, B2 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,(24-27) 1T & 2T 1.55-1.65 1.1-1.20 Fail
A2, B2 1066, 1333, 1600 8,8,8,27 1T & 2T 1.5-1.6 1.1 Fail
A1, A2 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T & 2T 1.5 1.1 Fail
A1, A2 1066, 1333, 1600 11,11,11,30 2T 1.5 1.1 Fail
A1 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 1 Pass
B1 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 1 Pass
A2 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 1 Pass
B2 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 1 Pass
A1 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 2 Pass
B1 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 2 Pass
A2 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 2 Pass
B2 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 2 Pass
I'm sure I'm missing a couple in there but I could not in any case where both sticks were in where there was not some error posted in memtest. When I ran just 1 stick (didn't matter) which one in ANY slot there was not memtest error after several full passes. This is backed up by playing some games like Civ5 for hours, this mind you freezes at some point every single time with 2 sticks. Some games like L4D2 and FalloutNV rarely freeze and can go days but eventually they all do. Watching movies will do it and sometimes just sitting there at the desktop will BSOD.
I filled out my RMA form and sent it in this weekend and I'm waiting for a response but I'm honestly not convinced the memory is bad. I've seen so many posts where this and similar mobo's (like the EVO's) are having problems with other ram, others who are having no troubles. There are also so many people having obvious trouble with the 955 C2. Anyone of these could be the culprit in my opinion. Does anyone have suggestions on how to narrow it down further? I really don't want to have to just start buying new components trying to fix this but I can't have this machine so unreliable for much longer.
Thanks for the help and suggestions.
Steve
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO latest BIOS
AMD Phenom II 955 C2 black edition (thought I ordered C3 but never chkd when arrived)
G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL (4GB in 2 x 2GB sticks)
Antec 850w Quattro Quad Rail power supply
ASUS Radeon HD 5850 EAH8550 Direct CU TOP 1GB Video card
3 x WD 500GB drives (2 in RAID 0, 3rd as backup)
Windows 7 Pro 32bit
All my clocks are stock, mainly because I could not get enough stability to feel comfortable in starting to OC. Unlike many others I do not seem to have any cold boot problems. Sometimes it would freeze and rebooting cleared everything out and onward I went. Other times the fault would be quite hard and corrupt my RAID and require me to restore from my backup. After this latest hart fault about a week ago I have finally had enough, I am finally getting tired or trying to restore 300GB of data every couple of weeks and decided to figure out what the hell is going on.
After reading probably 100+ posts in here and equally as many on the web in other forums here is what I've tested. As a preface I use memtest86+ for my benchmark and Win 7 gaming as double check.
Slots Speed Timing Voltage NB Result
A1, B1 1600 9,9,9,24 1T auto auto Fail
A1, B1 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,(24-27) 1T & 2T 1.5 1.1-1.18 Fail
A1, B1 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,(24-27) 1T & 2T 1.55-1.65 1.1-1.20 Fail
A1, B1 1066, 1333, 1600 8,8,8,27 1T & 2T 1.5-1.6 1.1 Fail
A1, B1 1066, 1333 11,11,11,30 2T 1.5 1.1 Fail
A2, B2 1600 9,9,9,24 1T auto auto Fail
A2, B2 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,(24-27) 1T & 2T 1.5 1.1 Fail
A2, B2 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,(24-27) 1T & 2T 1.55-1.65 1.1-1.20 Fail
A2, B2 1066, 1333, 1600 8,8,8,27 1T & 2T 1.5-1.6 1.1 Fail
A1, A2 1066, 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T & 2T 1.5 1.1 Fail
A1, A2 1066, 1333, 1600 11,11,11,30 2T 1.5 1.1 Fail
A1 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 1 Pass
B1 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 1 Pass
A2 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 1 Pass
B2 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 1 Pass
A1 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 2 Pass
B1 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 2 Pass
A2 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 2 Pass
B2 1333, 1600 9,9,9,24 1T 1.5 1.1 Stick 2 Pass
I'm sure I'm missing a couple in there but I could not in any case where both sticks were in where there was not some error posted in memtest. When I ran just 1 stick (didn't matter) which one in ANY slot there was not memtest error after several full passes. This is backed up by playing some games like Civ5 for hours, this mind you freezes at some point every single time with 2 sticks. Some games like L4D2 and FalloutNV rarely freeze and can go days but eventually they all do. Watching movies will do it and sometimes just sitting there at the desktop will BSOD.
I filled out my RMA form and sent it in this weekend and I'm waiting for a response but I'm honestly not convinced the memory is bad. I've seen so many posts where this and similar mobo's (like the EVO's) are having problems with other ram, others who are having no troubles. There are also so many people having obvious trouble with the 955 C2. Anyone of these could be the culprit in my opinion. Does anyone have suggestions on how to narrow it down further? I really don't want to have to just start buying new components trying to fix this but I can't have this machine so unreliable for much longer.
Thanks for the help and suggestions.
Steve
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