[SOLVED] Old platform DDR3 voltage question

xpLoaDeD

Distinguished
May 24, 2013
91
4
18,545
So, a tricky one for you:

I´ve got an old X58 platform running with an i7 920 oc to 3.6Ghz paired with a tri channel configuration of Gskill DDR3 ram running at 1.5V (default) at 1333Mhz. The tri channel its enabled.
The oc its stable with everything set to "auto" even memory configuration. I´ve only tweaked BCLK frequency to 180.

Also I´ve happen to encounter a 3x 2GB set of OCZ DDR3 1333Mhz. Two of those are 9-9-9@1.7v while the other is 9-9-9@ 1.65v (guess its from a different set).

Question is, will i have a chance to running it with my config in the other DDR3 SRAM slots? I suppose i may have to change those with 1.7v to a lower voltage due to platform safety, but what about my currect OC ? Should i put every slot at 1.5v?

Many Thanks.



 
Solution
Well - you'll have to try and see. For DDR3 - 1.65V is max safe voltage.
Values above that are not recommended, you can fry cpu memory controller, if not careful.
So yo want to mix 3 sets of different ram modules?
Even with 2 modules, that are not from same kit, you can ran into problems.

When mixing 3 different sets, results are unpredictable.
It may work or you may need to tweak some ram settings or it may refuse to work at all.
 

xpLoaDeD

Distinguished
May 24, 2013
91
4
18,545


Yes i know its incorrect to do so, but i just wanted to know the risk of trying this out so i don´t blow the Memory Controller or something like that in the meanwhile. Would it be a good start to reset OC to default and just plug in the memories and see how do they behave?
 

xpLoaDeD

Distinguished
May 24, 2013
91
4
18,545


Thank you for your time. Im gonna try with 1.5v across all kits and start working from there. Will i blow something up just by putting the 1.7v OCZ kit and entering bios to set them to a lower voltage? I mean just by pluggin in them and booting i cant fry anything right?

Cheers.
 

xpLoaDeD

Distinguished
May 24, 2013
91
4
18,545
Made a couple of tests:

Set Vram to 1.66v (motherboard does not allow 1.65v) with all 6 sticks in. CPUZ shows every module working at 1.5v and windows only shows 8GB of ram total. It seems that only the low voltage OCZ 1.65v ram is being used besides the Gskill kit. Everything in BIOS besides Vram voltage is set to auto wich means QPI is about 1.2v default ( so i guess ram voltage could go up to 1.7v safely)