Periodic blue screen after memory upgrade

[mewingloki]

I recently purchased G-Skill RAM to upgrade my system. An hour or two later I saw the first BSOD I've ever had on my year old machine (didn't know windows 7 still did BSOD). In the last two days I periodically hit the BSOD. It could be 2 hours or it could be 10. IT never gives any warning and has yet to happen at a time where I would argue the machine is being taxed (usually the opposite). Again, I had never even seen a blue screen until installing the new RAM and it has become a periodic occurrence happening about 7 times over the last 2 days. Now for the specs,

The RAM i bought is:
G.SKILL Sniper Gaming Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9T-12GBSR

My system uses triple channel and i bought the 3 stick kit upgrading my system from 6gb to 12gb.

My processor is:



the screenshot has everything however in short it is an intel Core i7 960. Bloomfield. Quad 3.2ghz.

My motherboard is:



Again, the screenshot has everything however, it is an alienware board, model number 0J560M. A03. Version A10

Finally, here is a shot of the RAM info as well. I went into the BIOS and changed the timing and voltage to match the GSkill RAM so that's where these numbers are from.



Since I began troubleshooting the issue I have run the windows memory diagnostic without it returning any errors. Also, I have run Prime95 on a variety of 1, 2, and 3 module configurations. I didn't happen to have a blue screen any of the times i tested the modules individually however i had a bluescreen from the time i have tested them all together and in pairs. I have changed the BIOS timings to the recommended 9-9-9-24, the voltage to 1.5v, and the frequency to 1600 as stated by the gskill RAM specifications.

Also, yesterday when i tried using the auto-detect RAM settings in my BIOS, when i selected dimm1 or dimm3, i was able to see the results just fine. However when i selected dimm2 i would receive a "multibit ECC error" in the BIOS description window. This happened regardless of me moving the modules around thinking different dimm's would have the issue following a bad module. I then resorted to putting my original RAM back in and found that i had no issue selecting any of the 3 dimm slots. Today I upgraded my BIOS from A10 to A11 and found that I could now access all of the dimm slots with no issue even with the gskill RAM (unlike before). However, I set my computer to run prime95 again and after 2 hours I still got a blue screen. Considering this did not happen last night with the old RAM in for 12+ hrs, something is still not right with the gskill RAM :/

I have .dmp files but have no clue how to open or interpret them. Let me know if i can provide anything else useful!

[NikX]

Nothing to worry m8,that usualy happens they you play with bigger stick of memory and X58,rising QPI VTT(or whatever its called on your mobo) voltage in order to maintain the memory conrtoller stability:everything up to 1.35 is SAFE,i would try 1.30

[mewingloki]

Ok, first, thanks for taking the time to read! I appreciate you giving me something new to try! That said, just to clarify, you are suggesting changing the voltage from the advertised 1.5v to 1.3v to fix the stability issues?

Also...I went into the BIOS and found that I can't set the voltage on the RAM any lower than 1.5v. What is the QPI VTT exactly? I am not terribly versed in this area and can't decipher abbreviations terribly well. Which voltage am i looking to change?

[Tradesman]

He was talking the QPI/VTT voltage to 1.3 maybe 1.35 which is the MC (Memory Controller) voltage, not the DRAM Voltage

[mewingloki]

Ok gotcha, not the DRAM. Im staring at the BIOS and i have IOH voltage, which has increments (is at 1.1v atm) and i have a QPI Uncore which is set as "default" and when i select it, gives me options to +100mv or +250mv, etc etc. So the IOH i can set to say, 1.3 whereas the QPI i can only add "mv's" am i to change the IOH voltage then?

And i appreciate the continued help and patience!

[Tradesman]

What's your actual mobo and I'll see if I have or can download a manual

[mewingloki]

All i can find out about it is that it is manufactured by Alienware possessing the model number featured in my original post as detected by cpu-id. I called Dell and they showed me where to find some manuals for my machine. Though i paged through them and am not so sure there is anything about the motherboard or voltages.

[Tradesman]

Do you have a link to where they are?

[mewingloki]

The manuals are located at: http://support.dell.com/support/topi.../manuals?s=dhs

Not sure if you can get there without my service tag or not. If not refer to the private message. Thanks a ton for the continued help!

[Tradesman]

Got will see if I can get them down and take a look - give me an hour or so

[Tradesman]

No joy yet, will try, but will Drop GSkill Tech a note to take a look Tues if he gets a chance, Got a problem system I need done by early AM

[NikX]

Ok gotcha, not the DRAM. Im staring at the BIOS and i have IOH voltage, which has increments (is at 1.1v atm) and i have a QPI Uncore which is set as "default" and when i select it, gives me options to +100mv or +250mv, etc etc. So the IOH i can set to say, 1.3 whereas the QPI i can only add "mv's" am i to change the IOH voltage then?

And i appreciate the continued help and patience!

IOH ,aka northbirdge voltage can help maintain system stability when you do BCLK o/c and play with lotsa hardware,like multi-gpus

Gigabyte and Asus are calling it QPI VTT,Alienware QPI Uncore
Its strange though,about Alienware,i played with mobos from them,they have decided to put default QPI at 1.1,instead ot Intels recomended 1.2:late mobos have 1.2 by default though

So,first try +0.1mv,if that doesnt help try +0.25-even with +0,25 its still in Intel recomendations

Thats a usual issue btw,many high speed,2000+ Mhz branded X58 DDR3 modules reccoment 1.35

Still remember an OCZ mod,had issues with OCZ Platinum running at 2000 9-9-9-28,he suggested for me to use QPI VTT 1.5

[GSKILL TECH]

Did you test one module at a time with the rated specifications to see if it may be a bad module causing problems?

If you can, post pictures of BIOS and we can double check everything is correct.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH