Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 Gen 3 problem

[Pitbully]

I put together a 2600k system built on an Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 Gen 3 board with 16gb of Gskill PC12800CL9D-8GBRL sticks. However I have yet to get it running correctly with all 4 sticks of memory. The motherboard has the latest bios, all drivers are updated and Win 7 Ultimate 64bit has service pack 1 and all updates, but the system will BSOD within minutes of booting to windows, no matter what settings I use on the memory and no matter how much load I have on the memory or CPU. I have tried switching sticks around, (system runs great with memory in slots 2 and 4 or 1 and 3), but NOT with sticks in all 4 slots. I have run memtest on all 4 sticks and they check out fine as well as switching them out randomly so I'm relatively sure all the sticks are good. This system runs all day at 4.8Ghz, (with only 2 sticks of ram in) and folds pretty much 24/7, the only break it gets is when I play BF3 at night. These are the things I've done so far trying to fix this problem.

1. updated motherboard bios
2. Bios settings, played with VCCSA voltage, (set from auto, .925v, 1.016v, 1.107v and 1.2v) None of these settings work with 4 sticks in and the motherboard doesn't seem to care what the settings are with 2 sticks in, they all work fine as long as only 2 sticks are in.
3. VTT Voltage in Bios: auto, 1.051v, 1.103v, 1.155v, none make any difference.
4. manually set memory timings in bios as well as trying it on auto, again it makes no difference, I get a BSOD in windows within minutes of booting.
5. Doing all this in the last 3 hours, all the bios settings we're purely stock, (no overclock on the CPU or motherboard) as well as trying it all with my 4.6Ghz and 4.8Ghz overclock settings.
6. Adjusted memory voltage, (auto, 1.5v, 1.55v, 1.6v) makes no difference.

BSOD errors I usually get, (again these seem random and I never get the same one twice in a row)
0x050
0x7E
0x9C
0x1A
0x1E
From what I can tell, most of these have to do with the VTT voltage, VCCSA voltage, Vcore or memory timings. Again, It makes no difference if the PC is overclocked or everything is bone stock.

Pretty much at the end of my chain here, I have no idea what else to try....

[Tradesman]

Running two set of DRAM can be problematic, might try with VTT at around 1.10 - 1.16 and raise DRAM voltage to 1.6 and see how that does with DRAM timings at spec and CR at 2T. If no go may want to run each stick through a few passes of Memtest individually

[Pitbully]

System wouldn't even boot with Ram @1.6v. Raised VTT to 1.16, (BSOD seconds after booting into windows, error 0x7E) then to 1.24v and system crashed before fully loading windows. I left it stock, then set CR @2T and same BSOD as well.

[Tradesman]

Might be a driver issue, when you updated the BIOS did you also update the mobo and component drivers? Also have you run Memtest on each stick by itself to see if one may be bad?

[Pitbully]

All my drivers are up to date that I can see, but I really don't believe its a driver issue. I've had it hardlock, while changing bios settings, (with 4 sticks in) and its crashed several times before it even boots to windows, leading me to believe its a bios setting or motherboard issue. I had to RMA 2 of the original 4 sticks I bought and just got 2 new ones back. Like I said before, as long as I have ONLY 2 sticks in the board, it runs like a top, leading me to believe the ram is fine. The original 2 sticks I kept, are working fine and sitting on my desk at the moment, the 2 new ones are in my machine now running like a top. I just played BF3 for 2 hours and have been folding on them all night with my machine running at 4.8Ghz, so I've pretty much ruled out that the memory itself is bad.

[Tradesman]

May have two sets that don't want to play together, as mentioned earlier, can try higher DRAM and/or VTT voltage or could try dropping to 1333 and tighten timings to 8-8-8-24 for near same performance as 1600, could also RMA the sticks to get sticks that will play together

[Pitbully]

Honestly I've about given up on it. I've tried every voltage and timing setting possible by now and nothing seems to work. I figured I'd be fine buying 2 matched pairs of memory, due to the board being dual channel and I'd be fine, but maybe I'll have to find a quad channel kit or something...

The memory all works fine, both pairs work, just don't work together....

[Tradesman]

The problem you run into with mixing sets is they may be off different production line runs or might have components that were made in different runs, or the tolerances may be off just a hair, that;s why it's best to get a single package with the total DRAM you want, each 'set' is tested to work to together whether it be 2,3,4,6, or 8 sticks

[Tomcat]

1333 worked for me

May have two sets that don't want to play together, as mentioned earlier, can try higher DRAM and/or VTT voltage or could try dropping to 1333 and tighten timings to 8-8-8-24 for near same performance as 1600, could also RMA the sticks to get sticks that will play together

@Pitbully ... Now I'm curious, you made a very clear and thourough troubleshooting presentation in your 1st post!, I feel your frustration ...

BUT did you ever get the 4 sticks stable @1333? ... I have your exact board (ASrock E4/G3) and I was able to get 2 very different sets of GSkill 1600 ram [F3-12800CL7D-8GBXH + F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL] to stabilize @ 1333 8-8-8-24 2N tWR-10 / tRFC-107 / tRRD-4 / tWTR-5 / tRTP-5 / tFAW-20 / VCCSA 1.107v / vDimm 1.54v / VTT auto ...

Thought that might help/encourage you? ... would also like your opinion if 8GB of faster ram beats out the 16GB's of slower (but tighter?) ram for folding? Playing BF3 I suspect the faster (more stable?) 8GB would be preferable ...

PS ... I'm currently running 2133's, and like most Z68 boards, mine is also pretty finicky at times ... http://gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=10062 ... seen you over @Overclock a few times, little to much "speculation"? (misinfo?) in the ASR thread for me these days

[Pitbully]

No, never got it stable @any speed with 4 sticks in. With 2 sticks, its stable as hell, just not with 4. I've been scouring the internet for days now trying to find someone else with this problem, to no avail.

In folding, I highly doubt that 16gb is any faster then 8gb. Running at 1600mhz vs 1300mhz is probably just a tad faster, but really, folding uses so little memory it wouldn't make a difference. Since bf3 uses maybe 2gb of system memory, I suspect there's very little difference there as well.

With the new Sandy Bridge chips, its pretty much been proven time and time again that you gain very little, if anything, from being at 1600 Mhz vs 2133Mhz with the ram. The extra cost of the 2133Mhz chips just isn't worth the very small gains you get, (or I defiantly would have bought the 2133Mhz chips myself).

Its just very frustrating buying 2 DUAL channel kits for your DUAL channel motherboard and not having them work!

[Tradesman]

Very frustrating I know (been there done that, but that's why sets are offered in such a diverse amount of both sticks, total GBs and freqs, with a single set they are tested to work together....if it were possible to make all sticks exactly identical, they would simply sell them as single sticks, with sets, as said they are tested to work together, the programming in the SPD is for set you buy (which is why XMP won't work with mixed sets), etc

[mrnewguy]

have you tried putting in one memory at a time and running memtest86+? I was having mutlitple problems with a set of g.skill memory and i didn't know what the heck was going on, then i some how stumbled on the memtest86 program, and copied the iso image and booted that image and it ran threw some memory tests, 1 module was good and the other one within seconds of running the test it just started counting erors left and right and only got to 46% on one pass and it counted 200k pluss errors. I already RMA'd just the bad memory and hope i don't have to wait too long with the replacement. I also have ordered another of the SAME exact set since my mobo has 4 dimm slots with dual channel for each of the 2 slots so i figured 2 dual kits for both dual slots. when i get the replacement memory and the other kit, ill let you know if i have a success with 2 dual memory kits.

[Pitbully]

I've ran memtest so many times over the last 3 days I can't even count. Not a single error, all 4 sticks are good.

On the plus side, I've been messing around with it tonight again. I've got it to actually boot with 4 sticks in at 1333mhz and everything else on auto w/zero overclock. Running IBT right now to see if its stable.

[Pitbully]

BSOD about 15mins into IBT with the 4 sticks @ 1333Mhz....back to the drawing board...

[mrnewguy]

man that really sucks, i actually had a bad ram, but hard to tell whats going on when all test good. I will let you know if i have a sucess or not at having two sets together rather than getting one set with all what i need., wont be until wednesday(shipping), wish it would come NOW, but i guess just have to wait. good luck