MSI 790FX-GD70, AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz and F3-12800CL9D-8GBX

[haxx]

Mobo:

MSI 790FX-GD70
Pasted from <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130223>

CPU:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz*
Pasted from <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103692>

Memory:
Two kits of F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL
Pasted from <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231428>

Issues:
Intermittent BSOD's, both 2D and 3D applications crash causing my system to fail. In one sit down (6-10 Hours) I probably have to manually reboot my system 4-6 times.

It seems that certain 3D games are more prone to causing these crashes, particularly games that have more ambient hazy effects; however, my system also blue screens while just browsing the web. I've run memtest86+ 4.20 and get errors on test #5 with 4 sticks installed. I've swapped the sticks and tested in just single pairs and receive much less errors if any.

Say I install one kit, I will receive maybe two errors after the first pass then none for the next 3 when just running test #5. If I install both kits I receive somewhere around 2,000 errors on test #5 with 10 hours in on memtest.

Test #5 on Memtest86+:
Test 5 [Moving inversions, 8 bit pat]
This is the same as test 4 but uses a 8 bit wide pattern of "walking" ones and zeros. This test will better detect subtle errors in "wide" memory chips.

Pasted from <http://www.memtest86.com/tech.html>

What the hell does "wide" memory chips mean?

These images show some of my Memtest86 results:

http://img513.imageshack.us/i/11236255.jpg/

http://img839.imageshack.us/i/68784881.jpg/

URL=http://img28.imageshack.us/i/69409526.jpg/

http://img862.imageshack.us/i/26490560.jpg/

http://img855.imageshack.us/i/49489905.jpg/

http://img560.imageshack.us/i/90937048.jpg/

Last night I read the sticky about AMD CPU's and G.Skill DDR3-1600 memory. I set my boards DRAM Freq to DDR3-1333, Bus Freq to 240, double checked timings where set to 9-9-9-24, double checked DRAM @ 1.50V and saved this config.

Windows wouldn't boot so I decided to go back and lowered my CPU ratio to get a lowered OC to only 3.6 rather than 4.08 (Even though I have a Black Edition proc it is only C2 Rev). I also increased the CPU-NB Voltage to 1.20V.

Side thought: The sticky states that I should Raise the CPU Vcore however nowhere in my BIOS did I see Vcore adjustments. Is there another name for Vcore? Is Vcore the CPU-NB Voltage?

Windows booted fine with this config. Memory showed up as 1600 with CPU-Z on all four DIMMs. I booted up Dota for some gaming and blue-screened about 10 mins into my first game. Came back to play another game and it went well. Watched a movie then fell asleep. I exited most of my running applications before going to sleep but I left my PC running and woke to a BSOD this morning. (I've stopped documenting the BSOD info as I've had so many now.

I'm going to try the second method on G.Skill Tech's AMD CPU+G.Skill 1600 Memory and see if that helps anything. Check link for method: (http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=7688 )

In the meantime, do you guys have any thoughts further than this? Any suggestions in the event that this fix doesn't work? How much will increasing my CPU-NB help the situation and how high of Voltage can my hardware handle?

P.S.

BIOS firmware up to date.
Previous memory where these sticks and they worked flawlessly!

CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model TW3X4G1600C9D G

Pasted from <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145249>

I'd love to give G.Skill a good name to all of my fellow friends, some of which have also reported issues with G.Skill memory. Now I know that there is an issue with AMD CPU's and G.Skill memory when using four sticks I'd be more than happy to help them get their issues in order after I've got mine figured out.

Sorry for the length of this post, I've just been at this for awhile and I'd like to get it all sorted out ASAP

[GSKILL TECH]

You just need to configure with Method #2.

That is a great motherboard, CPU, and memory, you can easily overclock and produce great results. When building a performance system, especially with high performance memory, it's just all about configuring settings properly in BIOS. One incorrect setting can cause instability.

CPU-NB Voltage will be fine at 1.20V.

CPU VCore is the CPU Voltage, should be the first voltage option.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[haxx]

Excellent. Thanks for the speedy reply, I'll give that method a shot later this evening.

Nice to hear my three year old hardware is excellent (sans my new shiny RAM).

[Tradesman]

Let us know how it goes

[haxx]

Darn.

Alright,

I've followed method 2 as explained in your AMD Memory Sticky. I'm still getting intermittent blue screens. Once while gaming and once while using music productions software.

First BSOD error specific was QUOTA_UNDERFLOW and went on to list the failing addresses.

Second BSOD claimed there was "a driver attempting to corrupt the system and that it's been caught. The faulty driver currently on the kernel stack must be replaced with a working version."

Any thought on my next possible steps?

[NemesisChild]

What GPU and PSU are you using?
Since it mainly happens while gaming, could be a power issue.
Not recommended to run unmatched sets of memory, even though they are the same model.
Have you set your CR to 2T?

[GSKILL TECH]

Test one module at a time with the proper settings to see if one may be bad causing problems.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[haxx]

Further thine testing.

Nemesis,

My GPU's are two XFX Radeon 4890's and 1000w Kingwin PSU.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150359

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817121037

I think the machine crashes more often when I'm gaming because I do that quite often

There have been plenty of times my system has crashed when I haven't been in game though so I wouldn't be so hasty to point my finger at these components just yet.

My CR is at 1T right now, I'll set it to 2T and run some games on it. Hopefully I'll have good results to report.

GKILL TECH,

I'll also do my best to try this as well. If you remember, I've done mem tests with the sticks in pairs and yielded no errors. Maybe I'll see different results this time!

Thanks for the continued support. I'll let you guys know how these tests go.

[haxx]

Follow up

I just wanted to let you guys know that method 2 ended up doing my system justice. My rig has only crashed while playing one certain game so I believe that is not a hardware issue any longer. My machine has stopped having BSOD's or any other sort of errors I reported in the beginning.

Again, the fix was this:

1. Set DRAM Frequency to DDR3-1600

2. Set CPU-NB Frequency to 2400MHz (DDR3-1600 / 2 = 800MHz, then x 3) CPU-NB Frequency should always be 3X DRAM bus frequency

3. Set timings to tCL 9 - tRCD 9 - tRP 9 - tRAS 24, or whatever your memory is rated for.

4. Set DRAM Voltage to 1.50V, or whatever your memory is rated for.

5. Most CPUs will need a CPU-NB Voltage boost of +0.10V, so if your default is 1.10V, set it to 1.20V.

Thanks a ton for your guys' support.

[Tradesman]

Glad to hear it, Enjoy!