Help Needed: Lockups when all 4 RAM slots are used

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mike87

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 17, 2009
Messages
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As the title states, I'm experiencing random lockups when all 4 RAM slots are used by my Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 MHz, definitely more apparent in games. PSU is a 650w thermaltake

Weird thing is, I'm completely rock solid stable when only 2/4 slots are used. I ran memtest86+ rigorously (on CPU OC'ed settings 1 stick at a time) on all 4 memory sticks and it returned with no errors.

OC settings as follows:

RAM Timings: 4-4-4-12
RAM Voltage: 2.0v

CPU: Q9550 8.5x400MHz = 3.4GHz
VCORE: 1.2v
FSB Termination Voltage: 1.3v
NB Voltage: 1.45v

Is it because my NB is overheating? I don't have a temp sensor on there but I suspect that might be the case... need your thoughts. Thanks
 
set the voltage to 2.1v the lockups should stop.. most likely there is a vdroop in the ram thats not showing up and crucial ballistix requires exactly 2.0v or higher to do 4-4-4-12 @ 800mhz.. i have a set of this ram and it absolutely blows.. so keep an eye on it..
 
I agree, bump it to 2.1V

What motherboard ? Some have some advanced memory timing and voltage features that might help.

eh, 4 x 1GB 4 x 2GB ?????

1.45 for MCH/Northbridge voltage is pretty high, way above Intels datasheet max. Cooling on the MCH/Northbridge on C2D/quad boards is always a good idea.
 
Is setting the RAM to 2.1v safe? I know for sure my RAM is rated at 2.0v (older Crucial revisions are rated for 2.2v). I don't want to run at 2.1v for long and have it develop a ton of memtest86+ errors down the line in about a year.


BillParrish said:
I agree, bump it to 2.1V

What motherboard ? Some have some advanced memory timing and voltage features that might help.

eh, 4 x 1GB 4 x 2GB ?????

1.45 for MCH/Northbridge voltage is pretty high, way above Intels datasheet max. Cooling on the MCH/Northbridge on C2D/quad boards is always a good idea.
Click to expand...


Whoops, sorry, forgot to list my mobo: ASUS P5B Deluxe

4 x 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC2-6400 800 MHz

Yeah I know 1.45v is pretty high, but I've gotten mixed thoughts on this voltage. Some people told me 1.55v is even fine, but I haven't gotten a straight answer. The next lower setting is 1.25v and I don't think that's enough bc I crash at that NB voltage. I'm running beta bios revision 1238 so I can use my Q9550 with my mobo. The only other settings for this are "Auto" and "1.55v"


Rossi~ said:
Set the RAM to 2T instead of 1T and see how that goes
Click to expand...

What's 2T and 1T?
 
Just had this transcript with a Crucial "expert":






Welcome to Crucial Technology's Expert Online. An Expert Online agent will join you in a moment... Please do not begin typing until you have been connected to an agent.
Hello, my name is Kristine . How may I help you?
Charles J: Hi, I have an issue with my Ballistix DDR2 PC6400 RAM
Charles J: I have 4 sticks of 2 GB each
Charles J: When I put in 2 sticks, my computer is stable
Charles J: When I put all 4 sticks in, it's unstable and will occasionally freeze in Windows 7
Charles J: I tested all 4 sticks individually, no problems, even in memtest86+
Kristine : If you could provide me with the make and model of your system or the make and model of the motherboard, that would be great.
Charles J: Sure, can you give me a minute?
Charles J: ASUS P5B Deluxe WiFi Edition
Kristine : Certainly.
Charles J: The RAM is BL25664AA80A
Charles J: 4 sticks of BL25664AA80A
Charles J: I have 4-4-4-12 timings and 2.0V hardset in my BIOS
Charles J: and 1T set
Charles J: Which is what this RAM was rated for
Kristine : Also, how much power supply to do you have, how many optical, hard drives, and how many video cards do you have?
Charles J: 650 watt Thermaltake power supply, 1 DVD-RW optical drive, 2 generic SATA hard drives, and 1 video card NVIDIA GTX 285
Charles J: CPU is a Q9550 2.83 GHz
Charles J: and the RAM is not overclocked, it's pretty much brand new
Kristine : Sorry for the delay, I was talking to upper level Technical Support.
Charles J: No problem
Charles J: I understand it's a tricky situation
Kristine : He is actually thinking that it may be your power supply. He added all the voltages up for what you have in the system and you are right on the edge of not having enough. He suggested that you have your board "scoped" to see if it is distributing the power correctly.
Kristine : Also, he wanted me to ask if you tried a pair in slots 3 and 4 alone to see if you are still unstable.
Kristine : That would be to check to make sure there is not something wrong with an individual slot.
Charles J: Just slots 3 and 4?
Charles J: I see
Kristine : Yes.
Charles J: I have not tried that yet
Charles J: 650 watts not enough? really?
Kristine : He really thinks that if you increase your power supply, the issue will go away though.
Charles J: I see, also I wanted to ask if this RAM was safe at 2.1V
Kristine : The RAM itself take a total of 140w, the board takes 165w, and the video takes 175w.
Kristine : No, that would be considering overclocking the RAM and taking you out of warranty.

[end]

:confused:
 
Command rate, its an internal timing of the MCH/Northbridge, Intel systems are by design 2T (so in theory the 1T setting should not even be available or ignored if it is, but Asus does some weird things with bios settings sometimes so setting/checking that 2T is set cannot hurt).

P965 chipset. :eek:
I still run one. These where the first C2D chipsets and where optimized for 2x1GB. Everyone had big trouble running 4 sticks, even just 4 x 1GB, and getting an OC. Its a layout/impedance issue. Later versions where improved slightly and I am not up on ASUS. (for example the Gigabyte P965 ver 2.0 and greater had the memory traces on the boards redone to help with this issue, no clue about ASUS).

Check the bios revisions, since you are running a 45nm cpu I imagine you have the latest but I have to ask.

Ouch if nothing inbetween you are stuck and I would go with the 1.45 when OCing or using a lot of memory which you are. Me, I would use the trusty count to 10 with a finger on the heatsink test to see if extra MCH cooling was called for.

Same for ram at 2.1v try it for a few minutes to see if it helps and if not I would back it off the the max recommended by the manuf web page specs. Dont go by newegg specs. So if 2.0V is all that is covered by warranty, I agree, stop at 2.0v.

Bottom line is 8GB + OC is "twichy" with about any board. Damn was hoping Gigabyte as I know that bios. I would be looking at bios options to "delay" the first bank of ram by a few picoseconds to allow for the increased trace lenght if you have such settings. Sorry just not up on ASUS bios options. Hell try any and everything. Going to be a chore to get it tweaked out with that much ram load.

So gonna kinda bail on you as ASUS are not my speciality. Hang in there. You might have to reduce your OC to get it to work but hopefully with some major tweaking you can make it work.



edit: just saw your last post. Sorry we both jumped on the 2.1V thing, thats what I get for assuming. Forget the 2.1v. FSB and Vtt voltages and any bank delay/phase timings (if available) are going to be the key.

LOL 140W for RAM ??? !!!! hopefully some kind of typo/miscommunication.

hmm cpu about 140W assume video 175W is about right, board and memory maybe 50W. hell call it 100w. Drives etc. another 50W (all talking 12V here). so 415W everythng going ball to the wall. hell call it 450W . So needs somewhere about 450/12 38A of +12 for full load. Trouble happens when gaming, so you are at or close to full/heavy load. Might be worth looking into but offhand unless that Tt is weak on the +12 /shrug.


Hey what about reducing the cpu mulitplier a notch or two to reduce your OC but keep the memory running at the same speed. That should reduce the power requirements some and might give a clue as to if it is your power supply. Just a thought.
 
Last edited:
Thank you everyone. I forgot to add that when it froze on me, I could not boot for about 2 minutes. I had to reset the power supply and wait. So... maybe it IS an overheating issue?
 
Thanks BillParrish -- "Command rate, its an internal timing of the MCH/Northbridge, Intel systems are by design 2T (so in theory the 1T setting should not even be available or ignored if it is, but Asus does some weird things with bios settings sometimes so setting/checking that 2T is set cannot hurt). "

So Mike87 (87 was good year btw), if you go into your BIOS and find the command rate for your ram, if you see the command rate as 1 or 1T then change to 2 and try that. I've found that using up all the available slots sometimes requires you to drop back to 2T.
As it only crashes with more ram i dont think we can point to overheating just yet.
 
Rossi~ said:
Thanks BillParrish -- "Command rate, its an internal timing of the MCH/Northbridge, Intel systems are by design 2T (so in theory the 1T setting should not even be available or ignored if it is, but Asus does some weird things with bios settings sometimes so setting/checking that 2T is set cannot hurt). "

So Mike87 (87 was good year btw), if you go into your BIOS and find the command rate for your ram, if you see the command rate as 1 or 1T then change to 2 and try that. I've found that using up all the available slots sometimes requires you to drop back to 2T.
As it only crashes with more ram i dont think we can point to overheating just yet.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Currently at work, so I will try the 2T (if I have that option in my P5B Deluxe with latest beta BIOS) and report back with results later tonight.

Will I see a big performance hit going from 1T to 2T?
 
mike87 said:
Thank you. Currently at work, so I will try the 2T (if I have that option in my P5B Deluxe with latest beta BIOS) and report back with results later tonight.

Will I see a big performance hit going from 1T to 2T?
Click to expand...

Just had a google. It looks as though when the motherboard got reviewed they noticed that the BIOS lacked the option to change the command rate.... lame. But you have the latest BIOS? 1238 is the latest.
Have you got teh timings entered in? or is it set to SPD? if set manually try by SPD. Go into the DRAM section in advanced (?) and you'll see what i mean.
 
Rossi~ said:
Just had a google. It looks as though when the motherboard got reviewed they noticed that the BIOS lacked the option to change the command rate.... lame. But you have the latest BIOS? 1238 is the latest.
Have you got teh timings entered in? or is it set to SPD? if set manually try by SPD. Go into the DRAM section in advanced (?) and you'll see what i mean.
Click to expand...

Yep, 1238 latest BIOS.

Got my timings manually entered, with voltage at 2.0v. I'll try by SPD then, since I guess there's no Command Rate options.
 
Instead of pushing my RAM to 2.1v, I lowered it to 1.9v and the random lockups went away. I'm stable for now. Gonna do some longer tests over the weekend. Also, CPU-Z already showed 2T. Timings are still at 4-4-4-12 and rest of my config is the same.
 
Run Prime large fft with all of your available ram enabled in the custom section.

Also pull back on your trfc to 55 or even 60. That should help with MCH stability (your problem) and not really effect bandwith. You may also need a bump in VTT or possibly vNB.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Run Prime large fft with all of your available ram enabled in the custom section.

Also pull back on your trfc to 55 or even 60. That should help with MCH stability (your problem) and not really effect bandwith. You may also need a bump in VTT or possibly vNB.
Click to expand...

What's trfc?
 
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