Z68A-G43 (G3) owners, can you boot with your ram sticks in Dimm slots 2 and 4?

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Falling Anvil

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 3, 2007
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Hey Guys, I've been putting together a budget-ish build lately, actually literally just bought the processor and I have a question to owners of this board. I've been kinda set at getting this particular motherboard, and I have a good idea of what components I want in this build but I do have concerns about RAM clearance, mainly because I bought some Ripjaws X sticks on Black Friday and am now worried that the cooler I've been meaning to get, the True Spirit 120 might not have enough space to fit that G.skill ram in the slot closest to the motherboard.

MSI's manual seems to stress doing at least the initial boot up on the first slot, but it seems to be a warning in all of their manuals so I was wondering anyone had any trouble booting from the dual channeled slots positioned away from the motherboard, or if that's a must. If it's alright then that's great, but if not then well, I'm gonna have to do some thinking on how this is going to work out.

PS. I'm also open to any suggestions coming my way. Would like to keep this relatively budget but I'm certainly willing to go up to say, $120-140 on the mobo if it's warranted to do so. I do want to keep costs tightly down though, and from what I can see that particular board should cover my needs nicely, though as a potential first-time OCer I am sorta tempted to get something that I can manually adjust the voltage with.
 
Not sure on clearance issues. But you could remove heat spreaders, or move fan up a bit maybe as I did with my d14 on my gd55. Worth a shot
 
I know you can remove the heatspreaders, and I've seen youtubes of that in action, but the thought of subjecting ram sticks to hairdryer-like heat and a screwdriver scares the heck out of me. What do you mean by "moving the fan up" though?
 
Not particularly familiar with your cooler, but most HSFs have a removable bracket that attaches any 120mm fan to the fins. Typically, this would allow you to either move the fan upwards along the fins to give you more clearance, or in the case of a cooler like the Hyper 212, flip the fan onto the other side of the fins, completely removing the issue of clearance.
 
i will find out either tonite or sometime this weekend when i build my system with that exact mobo, but i may not have to worry since the heat spreaders on my ram dont go over top of it.
 
Tsuyoi said:
Not particularly familiar with your cooler, but most HSFs have a removable bracket that attaches any 120mm fan to the fins. Typically, this would allow you to either move the fan upwards along the fins to give you more clearance, or in the case of a cooler like the Hyper 212, flip the fan onto the other side of the fins, completely removing the issue of clearance.
Click to expand...

From what I can tell the True Spirit has those clips too, and it seems like there might be enough slack in them to give my ripjaws a millimeter or two of extra clearance at the least, if I've got that practice of "raising" fans right.

And yeah, as a backup this cooler can also mount fans on the other side of the fins, so I was thinking that I could be able to invert the fan and place it back there instead, at least temporarily.

Worst case scenario is that I buy a 212 instead. :p
 
Typically unless you install the HSF and ram with the MoBo outside of the case, or have very small and precise tools, it's a pain getting the fan bracket in place. If you put in the RAM first, you literally have maybe 1-2mm of clearance to maneuver the bracket around and attach it. If you put in the HSF first, the ram won't have enough clearance to fit into the slots on the MoBo, even if it has clearance once seated.

For the 212, I found both these options to be pretty much impossible (or at least too damned complicated for me to bother with), so I just slapped the fan on the other side in a pull config. Doesn't make an ounce of difference in terms of final performance, and a much faster approach.
 
Ok sorry i havent gotten back right away, here are some pics of the clearance with a Hyper212+ and the Z68A-G43
ucJcM.jpg

a%3E
 
Nice. :)

I see that with the fan, your cooler is pretty much flush with the first dimm slot, which is in line with what I've heard with coolers of this size range. I'm still quite concerned, but from researching a very similar Thermalright cooler(the MUX-120), the fan clips holding the fan can apparently be lifted up for clearance. The True Spirit I'm after seems to use more or less an identical system, so my guess is I should really just find out for myself on this one.

Thanks for the pic and info though! :D
 
you can lift the fan a bit with that cooler to :) or get a thin Scythe brand 120mm fan its 120x120x12 i think
 
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