F3-10666CL7D-8GBRH on GA-890FXA-UD5 v2.1 board w/1090T BE

[ap42]

I'm having some issues with my new build that I put together 4-5 weeks ago.

System specs - all new components:
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE 3.2GHz
GA-890FXA-UD5 v2.1 Motherboard w/F6 Bios
HIS Radeon HD 6850 graphics
4Gx2 GSKILL F3-10666CL7D-8GBRH (7-7-7-21-2T) (Runs as DDR1333 unganged mode)
WD Caviar Black 1TB (boot) + 2x Samsung HD103SJ 1TB
LITE-ON IHAS424-98 R (dvd burner)
Corsair CMPSU-750TX Power Supply
Viewsonic VA2431wm Monitor
Rosewill Challenger Case
Win7 Home Premium x86

I noticed that many times my machine would not come out of sleep mode correctly - it would hang or beep & I'd be forced to hold down power for 5 seconds to turn it off & then reboot it. Sometimes it will beep (10 times maybe? Need to count again), sometimes it would start to POST but would hang right after it reports my memory, sometimes it will detect drives correctly & then hang during windows startup (with the windows logo on the screen). I keep hard booting it off & eventually it will POST correctly & load up windows (so far). Once in windows, it seems to run fine. I turned off the sleep option in windows to avoid having the problems starting from sleep mode. But after a day or two I'll look at it in the morning & see that the screen is off, but the machine is humming away - all fans spinning, looking like the machine is alive with the screen blanked out. But the machine does not respond, the screen does not come on, and if I try to connect to a shared drive from another machine it says it cannot be located. So windows is hung. Then I have to hard reboot it & go through the previous steps until I can get windows started.

I had my two samsung drives as raid1 on the gsata controller & thought maybe that was the issue, so I put them back on the 850 SATA ports & turned off raid, and I still have the issues. I've tried Bios' F4/F5/F6 and it is still an issue (currently on F6). No overclocking, nothing out of the ordinary in my setup as far as I know. Temps all look good inside windows.

The common problem seems to be when I boot up from sleep or off mode after it's been sitting for a while (cold boot). I was not able to duplicate any boot problems once I booted successfully into windows unless the machine was off for a period of time.

Last night I reset my bios settings & lowered my memory timings for my memtest runs to 1066. When I set the memory clock to x5.33, it changed my default timings to what is shown under the "Auto" column in the attached snapshot. I changed the minimum ras active time to 21T, and changed the Trfc0/2/3 to be 110ns. Not sure if that is good or bad.

I ran 12 passes of memtest with 1 stick in slot 1, and there were no errors.

This morning I put stick2 in slot 1 & had problems booting with various beep combinations. After a couple tries it booted to my memtest cd & is currently running, but I expect it to come out clean as well.

Apparently I can't upload images here - I'll try to set up something where I can link to them. My latest memtest runs were with the memory underclocked to 1033 with 7-7-7-21 @ 1066 tRC=27 CR=2T

Originally I had it @ 1333 with 7-7-7-21 2T

Do you have any advice on how I should be setting timing for this memory? Or are there known issues with it on an AMD platform?

Pic of memtest passed on 1st stick in slot 1.

Pic of current dram config.

Pic of default voltages.

Pic of current cpu-z report for this memory setup.

Thanks.

[GSKILL TECH]

Check to see if you have memory power down or such option in BIOS. Try one module at a time to see if problem persists.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[ap42]

Thanks for the reply. I do not have any memory power down options set in the BIOS.

10 passes of MemTest completed with no errors on the second stick of memory in slot1. So Memtest liked both sticks by themselves, and together. The problem only seems to be when doing a cold boot.

I reflashed my BIOS using the BIOS qflash utility this time (as opposed to the windows-based @BIOS), did not have it save settings when doing so, and then loaded the optimzed defaults in the BIOS. Then I shut down & put both sticks of ram back in, using slots 1 & 3. Then I reset optimized defaults again & set all my general settings: disabled floppy, turned off cool&quiet, turned off C1E, etc.

This is done to make sure my BIOS is fully reset to the latest F6 bios & does not have anything carrying over from previous setups.

Timing is now set for 1333 9-9-9-24 2T

It booted right into windows, and I have Prime95 running.

I'll shut down later & try a cold boot test in the morning.

If it fails, then I guess it's time to start thinking about an RMA on this ram?

[ap42]

I reflashed, reset bios, and booted up with both sticks in banks 1 & 3. Running with default 9-9-9-24-2t timing. Did work & played on the computer for 4 hours or so. Shut it down & went to bed.

Did a cold boot this morning and it beeped like crazy. I took a video of it this time that I'll put up later today.
The sequence was: cold boot, beeps. Reset, beeps. Power down & try to boot a few times in a row & it beeps each time. Take one stick out (bank3) and it boots up fine. It seems if I do anything to the memory sticks, it will boot up fine. If I remove one, swap them, probably even if I pull one & stick it back in.

Now it is booted up on one stick & running fine.

So I turned it off, put the 2nd stick back in, and now it beeps again? Odd, blows away a bit of my theory. Took out the 2nd stick & it booted up fine again.

DQS Training Control is set to "Perform DQS". I don't remember setting it, so must have been a default? Turned it off, powered off, put second stick back in. Still beeps.

Took it out. Boots up fine. Argh.

Hopefully you will be able to look at my ram settings and tell me if the auto-detected settings are screwing anything up.

[NemesisChild]

I wouldn't advise running the memory on auto detect with an AMD platform.
Manually enter your frequency, timings, and DRAM voltage in the bios.
Also, disable Turbo and C1E State in the bios, see if that helps.

[ap42]

Here is a link to a photobucket album that has pics of all my BIOS settings, and a video of my cold boot errors this morning.

Maybe somebody will see something amiss with my settings? They look safe to me.

That cold boot was with 2 sticks in slots 1&3. When I removed the stick in slot3 it boots right up.

It is sitting off at home now so I can do a cold boot test with the one stick.

[NemesisChild]

Looks like you did a recent bios flash/update.
Did you clear the CMOS?
If not do so by removing the mobo battery and moving the CMOS pin to the "short" position.
After 20-30 minutes, replace the battery and move the CMOS jumper pin back to it's original position.
This will completely clear all settings and return all bios settings to default.

[ap42]

When flashing I clicked the option to not have settings carried over. Then as soon as I booted into BIOS I selected "optimized defaults".

I did not pull the battery or short the jumper on the board. I've only ever used that to clear cmos on an unbootable machine.

I already had F6 bios flashed, but from in windows using AMD's @BIOS tool. It was suggested elsewhere that I should use the QFlash utility built into the BIOS for flashing since it is more reliable & less likely to leave settings unchanged.

I will do the batter/jumper clearing tonight. Can't hurt to try.

[ap42]

Bumped my ddr voltage from 1.51 to 1.53.
Bumped CPU voltage from 1.35 to 1.4V.

Booted fine on the one stick (that worked earlier). We'll call this the 'good' stick.

Put in the 2nd stick. Would not boot. Didn't beep, but would not boot. Powered off/on & it hung at memory detection in POST.
Took out the 2nd stick. Booted fine.

Shut it down, put in 2 sticks of patriot cheapo crap-ram (2x2GB). Booted up fine.
Let it sit overnight. Booted up fine.

On a side note, one of the patriot sticks has to go back to compusa - it's a non-patriot rebranded stick of some spektek brand that fails memtest & causes prime95 errors. Doh. Live & learn : look at the chips on the memory & check to see that they have "patriot" on them & not a big "S".
Guess that's why it was $22 at a walk-in store.

So I guess I have to dig through this site & find out how to do the RMA on my memory & hope that the new ones have no cold-boot issues.

Any tips on the RMA process? I read in another thread that you're supposed to ask to have them test the new memory before they send it out to you - is that still true? Should I ask to have it replaced with 1600 or some other type of ripjaws in hopes that it will work better?

Thanks.

[GSKILL TECH]

http://www.gskill.com/rma.php

Complete the procedures, send them in for RMA, the replacements should work much better.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[ap42]

Thanks. I received my RMA number & will be mailing the ram out on Monday.
Hopefully the new set will have no issues. My wife is getting pretty annoyed with all the time I've been spending on this.

[ap42]

I mailed the RMA ram last Monday, and according to the USPS tracker it was delivered on Friday (from NC to CA). Now I sit & wait for the new replacement ram to show up. I'm just updating so folks can get an idea of how long things take.

[ap42]

My replacement ram arrived yesterday. I popped it in (slots 1 & 3) and booted up. It gave me 3 beeps then showed some message about "blah blah ram settings are overclocked & prevent system boot" and then it beeped once and booted into bios.

I took this to be normal & related to the differences between the ram settings detected by BIOS for the patriot cheapo ram I had in there.

I reset the BIOS to defaults, then set up all the standard BIOS settings as before, still using 1.53v for DDR & 1.4v for CPU. Then set the ram to be 7-7-7-21-2T.

Booted into windows fine. Ran an hour of prime95 fine. Shut it off & let it sit for an hour, booted back up fine. Let it power down into sleep mode (have windows set to go to sleep after 3 hours) overnight & rebooted it this morning fine. Powered it off & will let it sit all day & see if it cold-boots tonight.

I'm crossing my fingers & hoping this ram is good. If I can get a week's worth of cold boots with no issues I'll be satisfied. Still, I think I should have been upgraded to DDR3-1600 ram for my trouble/time/money wasted.

[ap42]

I will consider my issue resolved. It's been 3 days of cold boots with no issues on the new sticks of ram. Thanks for the help.