ASUS P8z68 V-Pro and F3-12800CL9Q-16GBXL problems

[JaguarIV]

Hi,

I have the following setup:

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68 V-Pro (at stock settings, no overclock)
CPU: Intel i7 2600K
Memory: F3-12800CL9Q-16GBXL running at 1600

I am on my second set of this memory. The first set had a stick go bad after a few days. I am having troubles getting the second set to pass testing at stock settings. My initial testing was with all sticks in the machine. I had to raise the DRAM voltage to 1.5575 volts to get it to pass memtest86+. It still fails HCI memtest. Should I expect things to 'just work' at stock settings, without raising the DRAM voltage? How high can I safely raise the DRAM voltage? Are there other parameters I might tweak to help things out?

I reverted the DRAM voltage back to auto and ran HCI memtest on just two of the sticks and also got a couple of errors, although pretty far into the test. I am now running tests on each stick individually to see what that shows.

It seems that the odds of me getting two bad RAM sets in a row is pretty low. At what point do I start being suspicious of other components? Sorry for the barrage of questions, but I need help figuring out what to do.

Thanks!
Jason

[Tradesman]

Do you have the latest BIOS? Did you manually set the sticks or are you using XMP? It may need a higher voltage to the MC and/or the vCore

[JaguarIV]

There is only one version of BIOS for the P8Z68 V-PRO. I initially was leaving everything to the defaults of the ASUS board (Auto on everything). I tried switching to XMP, and that seems to have helped some. With XMP on, I have tested all four sticks and found one stick that had an error in HCI memtest when in just one of the slots (it tested ok in another slot). I bumped up the VTT a bit and re-ran that stick in the 'bad slot' and it passed. This suggests that the memory controller isn't getting what it needs. I have all four sticks in now and am slowly adjusting VTT and Vcore up to a hopefully stable state (passing HCI memtest). Any suggestions on what is too high?

On another note, upon removing one of the sticks from the computer I noticed that the heat spreader was not stuck to one of the chips on the end of the stick. I don't know if it came this way, or if it was 'tweaked off' from being inserted. I have been applying pressure only at the ends of the sticks when inserting. I was able to press the spreader down on the chip and it appears to have stuck. Do I have to worry about it delaminating in the future, or should the thermal adhesive hold fast?

Jason

[Tradesman]

Think you should be Okay, might just check it on occasion, i.e. I use canned compressed air to blow out dust from the inside of the cases every couple months or so, something like that would be a good time to take a look at it

[JaguarIV]

The following settings appear to have stabilized things. I got to over 400% on HCI memtest with no errors.

VTT/VCCIO: 1.1
Vcore Offset: 0.02
Vdram: 1.5125

Hopefully these might help someone else out.

[Tradesman]

Sounds good, I'm sure it will help others