RipjawsZ F3-12800CL9Q2-32GBZL (8x4G) with Intel DX79TO mb

[Robertochico]

Hi,

I bought the Intel DX79TO motherboard and the memory kit mentioned in the title (8 sticks of 4GB). My cpu is the 3930K (used mainly for working on 3D animation, motion design...). My power supply is the CoolerMaster SilentPro Gold 600W.

I installed the 8 sticks of memory but I couldn't boot.

After flashing the BIOS with the latest bios (v0424) I finally succeeded in installing 2 sticks at once and booting with 8GB. I tried with 4 sticks but I couldn't boot...

Is the memory I bought fully compatible with that motherboard ?
Should I change the kit for another one ?
Do I have a chance of getting all the memory sticks to work on my system ?

I'm more interested in hugh amount of memory than in very fast memory because it's for After Effects rendering and 3D rendering. So 1600Mhz memory looked good to me.

Do I first need to increase some voltages (vccio, vccsa... ?). To boost the memory controller because of the big number of sticks and the big amount of memory ?

Thank you for your help !

(I'm still in the return order timeframe so until tuesday I could send back the memory and buy another kit)


Mathieu

[Tradesman]

The Z series is designed for the X79 chipset and even with an Intel mobo should be fine with 1600 sticks, after installing the latest BIOS did you try enabling XMP and selecting profile 1 (1600 XMP 1.3)? That should be all you need to do, unless Intel doesn't have the BIOS set for higher amounts of DRAM yet....might also check each stick with Memtest to make sure you don't have a bad stick and/or reseat all the sticks to make sure they are firmly seated.

[Robertochico]

Thanks for your reply.

I enabled the XMP profile 1 but in fact I'm not sure anymore if it was before or after I flashed the bios. I will try again.

I tested 4 sticks with memtest and they were good (only 2 passes, I think it's enough to find obvious errors with the sticks). Tomorrow I will test all the sticks to be sure all of them are good.

The mobo is designed to accept 64GB of memory so I think the bios should be ready for that amount of memory, I assume so.

I thought maybe I should have to increase vccio because of all the threads I read about it. But if you think it should work with just the xmp profile, I will give it a try.
Thank you,

Mathieu

[Tradesman]

A couple of things, generally the mobo will advertise what it is capable of running (theoretically), it's not always actually tested to run that actual Spec (or say a mobo comes out stating 128GB, yet there are no CPUs can run 128GB (just an example) , oft times it takes a few or a number of BIOS updates to get there. Also, while a mobo might be advertised for 64 or 128 GB of DRAM, it's not all DRAM, in some cases it may advertise say 64GB of DRAM, but to run 64 you may have to drop to a 1333 freq.

Best bet is to give it a try and see, and check back or check w/ Intel...in this case I can't speak from experience as I don't use Intel mobos for build and seldom get a call on them to do upgrades or repairs so have very little time to play/experiment with these mobos.

[Robertochico]

Hi,

I installed the latest BIOS (0430) and enabled the XMP profile in the BIOS. It runs the 1.3 profile.
I tested every sticks with memtest and all of them worked fine but one. With that "bad" stick it didn't even boot at all !

So after that, I tried with the good ones, and it only runs with two sticks... as soon as I install 4 sticks it doesn't boot.

I'm a bit desperate because I don't know if the problem comes from the motherboard or the memory. I will try increasing the voltages of the vccio and the processor to check if maybe it solves the issue, but I have little hope.

[Tradesman]

Can slowly raise VCCIO (maybe to 1.15) VCCSA to 1.2 with 4 sticks, DRAM voltage to spec, and make sure timings are correct and CR at 2T

[Robertochico]

Okay, I will try that !

There is something strange, in the BIOS there are 3 columns for the timings of the memory : "proposed", "active" and "default".

"Proposed" are the good timings 9-9-9-24 2T
"Active" are 11-11-11-28 1T
And "Default" are the same as "Active".

It's weird, do you think the good timings are proposed but not enabled by the system so maybe it doesn't boot because of that ? And why the proposed timings wouldn't be active ? Hmm... it's very confusing.

Anyway I will try what you advised me to do, increase vccio and vccsa.

[Tradesman]

Need to put them in manually, the active column, you'd want the 8-9-9-24 2T timings

[Robertochico]

I set the vccio and vccsa as you advised, it didn't boot with 4 sticks but it worked with 3 sticks.
Someting else strange is that with xmp enabled I had the good timings in the "active" column with 2 sticks but with 3 sticks it went back to 11-11... It's as if when there is not enough voltage the timings can't be run.

Maybe I will try lowering the speed of the memory at 1333Mhz instead of 1600Mhz. Maybe it will be easier to boot with more sticks at this lower speed.

Also now I set the timings manually. I'll see if it change someting.

Thank you for your help, I keep testing.

[Tradesman]

The timings will change when you change the number of sticks, it auto senses the change and assumes all new, however many you put in and set to the mobos default, need to input timings manually. Also need XMP off unless you use the whole set

[Robertochico]

I tried to set the fourth stick and after 2 fails with 2 different sticks it worked with the third one... It seems that all the sticks are not equal in quality or something. So I guess I will try to put every stick one at a time and maybe finally every stick will find its place on the motherboard.

Now I run memtest for a pass or two with 4 sticks and 16GB available to find errors then I'll continue with other sticks.

[Tradesman]

What are your voltages at, can you post your BIOS settings, running 4 sticks (and even 3) may require raising the MC and system voltages

[Robertochico]

Hi,

I ran fine 20GB in memtest (8 passes for 24h long test). No errors !

My voltages are :
vccsa 1.2
vccio 1.15
PLL 1.8
CPU 1.1 (with high V-Droop)
MemV 1.5

The timings are good : 9-9-9-24-2T

I'm quite satisfied for now. I'll try to set the 3 sticks of memory left.
If it doesn't work anymore with more than 5 sticks, what voltages should I increase ?

Tank you for you help !

Mathieu

[Tradesman]

VCCSA to maybe 1.25 (don't use any more than needed), vCore up to 1.2 (for now), Mem up to 1.55

[Robertochico]

I tried to add a sixth stick, but it didn't work.

Before tweaking the voltages as you suggested, I wanted to run a little test with memtest just to be sure everything was still fine as before.
I don't know why but memtest found hundreds of errors, on every range of memory (so I guess every sticks is at fault ?).

Could it be because I removed a stick to be able to seat the sixth stick and when I put the stick number 2 at the end, the order in which Intel tells to set the sticks (DIMM 1, then DIMM 2...) wasn't good anymore ? Since then the boot is very unstable, reboot or not as it wants...

I set your last voltages values to see if it's better like that but I still don't understand how it could have been stable for 24 hours in memtest and now has hundreds of errors in memtest.