Asus P8P67 Pro and Low Voltage

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oldbustedjorn

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Feb 21, 2007
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I've done a bit of searching and I can't find anything regarding this.

I have a P8P67 Pro (Rev 3.1), an i7 2600k and 2 x G.SKILL Sniper Low Voltage Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR2 (yea, I copied and pasted that lol).

I could have sworn I check the memory compatibility list for this motherboard, but I must have checked before I was certain which motherboard I was getting and maybe it was a different model. However, it isn't on ASUS' list of qualified memory.

Last night I was building the system and I could not get it to boot with 4 sticks in. So eventually I took all but one stick out and finally got it to boot - the motherboard recognizes it as 1.35v when it is actually rated for 1.25v. I tried various configurations but the only one that will boot is a single stick. I even tried forcing the motherboard to run the stick at 1.25v (which worked), but still would not run more than one stick.

When I saw that it wasn't on the list, I started looking at different options that were <=1.5v and found that almost NO 2x4GB kits are "qualified" on this board. Yet, it seems that I see people running the same memory on boards like the P8P67 Deluxe (which doesn't qualify this memory either).

Am I doing something wrong, or should I just suck it up and send it back? I bought new kits that were qualified just so I have a working PC this weekend either way, as I actually took a day off of work to play around, but if I can get these to work consistently, I may send the new kits back unopened.

Any help is appreciated!
 
By way of update:

I updated the BIOS to the latest available (2001) and was able to boot with one stick. I also set the XMP profile to the only one available (1600 @ 1.25v) and it still booted.

However, once a second stick of memory is present it will not post and is stuck on the dram light.
 
Have you tried increasing the voltage for the memory to 1.35v+ and try with 2 sticks?
 
CarpeDiem99 said:
Have you tried increasing the voltage for the memory to 1.35v+ and try with 2 sticks?
Click to expand...

I have not actually tried this. Part of the reason, I think, is because when I first put them in (before bios update), they read as 1.35v and it didn't work then. I suppose it is worth trying at a higher voltage anyway, now that I can at least consistently reproduce the problem. I will do this as soon as I can and post back.

Thanks
 
Update!

Ok, so I think I may have figured it out...

I was about to test by upping the voltage as was suggested elsewhere, but as always, I like to verify that it works right before tampering (so I now I didn't accidentally leave it in an non-working state).

One stick worked as usual but I decided, once more, to try the second stick, since I also wanted to verify that I could reproduce the problem, then immediately fix it by removing the second stick. Once I did that (with resulting no post), I decided to try another stick just to sanity check it after the bios update. Here's where things got weird.

It didn't post. So my first thought was that I had a bad stick, but I was sure I had booted from all 4 at a previous time. While it was doing it's memOK thingie, I had a flashlight on it and noticed that the dimm WAS NOT SEATED ALL THE WAY.

Before I tell you the resolution, let me just say that the dimm slots on this board are a pain. I feel like I am nearly breaking the PCB every time I have to seat one - so it's no surprise that one wasn't seated.

So I properly seated it and it booted. Then, for some reason that I don't know, I put the other stick in the second slot AND IT WORKED. I think at that point I went in and made sure the timings and voltage were right. I set them and took a shot at 4 dimms, which now decided to work. I wasn't completely comfortable, as I was worried a simple bios reset or loading defaults would cause no post and then I'd have to rip my PC apart to fix it.

Thankfully, I was able to reset to defaults and then change things back and each time it booted.

What was the real problem? Hard to tell. It could have been:

- DIMMs not seated all the way
- BIOS update (it was running the first BIOS they released for the board
- The timings, per g.skill are supposed to be 9-9-9-24-2T @ 1.25v. At some point I noticed that it was running at 9-9-9-28 @1.25v. I don't remember at which step I changed it, but it is now running at 24.

I'm still skeptical of the stability, but I'll be testing that out over the weekend and I'll still have the QVL-certified memory on hand in case I need to check it.

Thanks!
 
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