Need help please

[Murph]

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to respond!

I'm having an ongoing issue of crashing during gaming with my new system a friend helped me put together. The crashes are the kind where the screen turns a solid color, usually black or brown, and there is nothing I can do but reset the computer. (BSOD?)

Here are my specs:

Motherboard-GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

CPU-Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I32100

RAM-G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL

GPU-PowerColor AX6870 1GBD5-2DH Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card


Here's what I've already tried and why I'm here asking more tech-savvy people:

Made sure drivers were up to date.

Ran Furmark and 3DMark11 to test Gfx card and it seems to perform within expected ranges.

Ran several memtest86 tests which did come up with 1 to 2 errors on running with both sticks. I then called gskill tech support and they walked me through some bios setting changes, saying that my memory was too good for my motherboard or vice versa so we tweaked the settings so this would resolve. I still had the same issues of crashing after this so i tried doing memtests on just 1 stick at a time and 1 came up with errors while the other did not. I then tried gaming with just the 1 stick that had no memtest errors and there were no crashes from then on so I assumed I had discovered the problem and it was a bad ram stick and I RMAd the "bad" stick.

Two weeks later I got the new stick in the mail and installed it, then started gaming and again started crashing just like before. So now I'm left with having to think 1 of the following 2 possibilities is the problem: 1-It wasn't really a bad ram issue and it's some kind of advanced setting problem and I just need the right information and I can fix this with tweaks... or 2-I managed to get 2 bad sticks of ram in a row from gskill and I'm just that unlucky and should avoid going outdoors without a helmet.

I've heard that voltage issues can cause memtest errors so I'm hoping that's it and somebody can tell me exactly what to set the bios to to fix this.

If it matters this is my power supply:

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power

Also if it matters the way the crashes happen is a bit odd, almost all of them while playing Dues Ex: Human Revolution and the crashes happen after hitting the esc key to pause the game for a minute or to load a previous save point. The crashes never happen while actually playing the game, or during a cut scene.

Also I recently updated the bios but still have had crashes after this.

Thanks

[Tradesman]

So you already have the F12c, BIOS which is good, you'll want the sticks in slots 4-3 (numerically from the CPU 1 and 3) , boot into BIOS enable XMP and select the 1600 profile....generally that should do it, if you have any problems, might want to raise DRAM voltage a bit ( + .05) to 1.55 (the i3-2100 may need a little extra boost with the DRAM) or try the sticks in the other two slots (2-4 from CPU).

Also, when running Memtest, it's really made for a single stick at a time, running multiple sticks at once can cause errors. Another thought is that the BSODs/crashes could be from the game itself (could try reinstalling) or from your graphics driver, may want to check for updates...Guru3D generally has all the latest as well as the latest Betas

http://downloads.guru3d.com/

let us know if still problems

[Murph]

Thanks for the reply!

The bios version I have is F11, which is the most recent one listed from the manufacturer's site. I didn't see a F12c listed. This is where I got the F11:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...d=3976&dl=1#sp

I made the tweaks you suggested and will see what happens. I'll try to reinstall Dues Ex if crashes persists, though I was getting crashes on other games a few weeks ago so I doubt that it's the game, especially since no crashes at all for weeks while running just 1 ram stick.

I'll let you know and thanks again.

[Tradesman]

You have the 1.3 rev then, sorry, I looked at rev 1 of the mobo (didn't know).....we'll keep an eye out for...hopefully tis will solve the problem