Gigabyte EP45 dsr3 freezes w/ 8GB of RAM

[roland61]

Hello every one
I am totally new to this forum community so please forgive my ignorance.

I have purchased a GA EP45-dsr3 MB & I'm having a ah heck of a time getting it to work with 8GB of pc6400 RAM. Vista always freezes under load. Memtester86+ will only complete a run with one stick in a slot no matter what type of RAM I have put in.

I have tried G.SKILL memory kits totalling 8GB
I have tried Kingston KVR pc5400 & pc6400 kits with no success.
Gigabyte says that I'm to call a supplier mentioned on their qualified vender list & ask for what memory will work, which I did.

I'm running vista64
Q9550
velacoraptor & raptor HD
corsair 1000 PS
ATI 4850 video card

Thanks for your help
Roland

 

[geofelt]

Go to the ram vendor's web site, and access their configurator.
Corsair, Kingston, Patriot, OCZ and others have them.
Their compatibility list is more current than the motherboard vendor's QVL lists which rarely get updated.
Enter your mobo, and get a list of compatible ram sticks.
You want ram that operates at the default voltage of 1.8v.

If memtest can't run 8gb, then you have a problem, and you can't expect vista to run either.

When you run one stick, did you try it in each of the four slots? It is possible that you have a bad slot.
I assume that all four sticks test ok by themselves.
Do you fail with just two sticks?

One solution might be to up the ram voltage by a couple of notches to 1.9 or 2.0 volts. Don't exceed the max specified for the sticks.

Lastly, the ram vendor support will probably be more helpful than gigabyte.

 

[roland61]

I have spoken to Kingston & they recommended KVR800D2N6K2/4G which they said would work. After this didn’t solve the problem the recommended I run memtest86+ & I did. I have tried all memory slots with a single stick & all works well. Next I tried testing 2 bars in slots 1-3 & 2-4 but they failed at 7%. Kingston says I shouldn’t have to up the voltage so I haven’t tried it. I'll try 1.9 to start.

 

[geofelt]

What bios is installed? F5 was the initial release. F6 to F9 have some memory fixes.
CPU-Z will tell you what you have as well as the board revision #.

If that does not fix the problem, you may have to RMA the board.

 

[roland61]

My BIOS is F10
I just passed memtest86+ ibut I reduced the mhz to 667 for 1 x 4GB kit in both sots. Filling all slots almost made it all the way through. One very intersting thin is that I have also lowered the voltage to 1.75 volts.

 

[bilbat]

There's a GREAT Gigabyte forum over at:
http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69
I've heard that Gb boards, in general, 'like' Mushkin RAM. Not to say others' WON"T work, just that Mushkins seem to take less fiddling with, and if you ARE willing to fiddle, might OC better. I'm planning a new workstation, and was going to buy 8Gb OCZ 1066 as it was a little cheaper, & they seem to have good support (especially at NewEgg) but, it seemed to me, I'd GLADLY pay $15 a stick to cut several hours of cursing at the BIOS while tweaking.

You'll find a step-by-step 'stickY' on RAM testing/tweaking; Follow the instructions carefully, and odds are 90%+ that you'll find your board/ram's OC 'sweet spot' w/no further assistance...

Good luck!!!