[Solved] GA-EP45-UD3R Trying to run 8G ram

[Hawkeye22]

I built a computer back in June using the GA-EP45-UD3R and 4 Gig of G'Skill ram (F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231166

I'm not OC'ing anything and left most settings at AUTO. The computer passed 24 hours of memtest86+ and Win7 x64 Ultimate has been running rock solid from day 1. I created a profile in the BIOs using F11 to hold my stable bios settings.

Recently I purchased another 4G kit to bring my memory up to 8gigs. I couldn't get the new memory to pass memtest and RMA'd them to Newegg. I just got my replacements and G'Skill tech support said all I needed to change to run with 8gig was increase the MCH Core to 1.4v and set tRFC to 80. Anytime I increase the MCH Vcore, the computer won't post and resets a few time before dropping me into the BIOS with a warning that the overclock failed. At one point, after the computer restarted, all my bios setting defaulted to factory and my profiles were gone. I have no idea how that happened. Did the mobo fail over to the backup bios??? Also, none of my HDD's show up in my bios anymore, although Win7 sees them all.

I then set all my bios setting back to what they should have been except this time I didn't mess with the MCH Core. instead I bumped the DIMM Vcore to 2.08v. All 8gig passed 2 passes of memtest (didn't feel like waiting 24 hours), however Win7 will run for a few hours and eventually blu screen. This morning before I came to work, I bumped the DIMM VCore to 2.1v to see if it stabalizes it.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get Win7 to run stable on 8gig of this ram?

Oh, and with the holidays coming up quickly, I'll be in and out at irregular intervals, so if I don't reply immediately, please continue to check back periodically. Thanks!!! ...and happy holidays everyone!

 

[bilbat]

That's likely quite a bit too high; try a one tenth 'bump' to 1.2V - should be fine...

You can 'save' your CMOS setup; here's a 'chunk' from one of my 'canned' overclocks (and, by the way, if you have anything but the stock cooler, and would like a safe, easy, 20-25% OC that will take less than fifteen minutes, post your CPU type...):

I want to teach you a new skill involving the BIOS: Do the <DEL> at the boot to enter the BIOS; notice, at the bottom, the <F11> "Save CMOS to BIOS" - hit this, and you should get a menu that will show a number (the count varies by BIOS) of empty 'slots', each of which will store an entire set of BIOS parameters, to be re-loaded from the corresponding <F12> "Load CMOS from BIOS"; this is a wonderful overclocker's feature. What I do with it, is to save my 'baseline' working parameters, so if I change something that 'irritates' the board, and forces a reset of all the parameters to defaults, or, even worse, get so screwed up I need to do a 'clear CMOS', I can get back to my starting point with no effort, and without having to remember 85 separate settings! Another thing it prevents is two hours' troubleshooting, having forgotten a change to a crucial parameter - like, "wait a minute - didn't I have the Trd at seven?!" It's pretty self-explanatory, and I always urge people to start right away by taking the time to give the 'slots' names that mean something: in two hours, "Try2" and "Try3" will not be very helpful, but "450@+10MCH" and "450@+15MCH" will! Another use is for 'green' settings; overclocks, as a rule, do not 'play well' with green features, such as 'down-clocking' and 'down-volting'; with the storage slots, you can set up one profile, say "Green", with all the settings at 'stock' values, and all the 'green' features enabled; another, say "Balls2Wall" with a full overclock, and all the 'green' stuff turned off... Another neat feature of this 'slot' system is, for most BIOS, the mechanism itself will keep track of which ones have booted successfully, and how many times (up to, I believe, a max of five)!

 

[Hawkeye22]

My processor is an Intel E7500 wolfdale, stock @ 2.93Ghz and I'm using an ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro. My CPU temp at idle is 28°C with core0/1 at 30°. Under load I've never seen my core temps go over 50°C using HWMonitor from CPUID.

Should I leave my DIMM vcore at 2.1v or leave it at auto? I have my memory set manually to 5-5-5-15, command rate 2T, tRFC at 80 and the rest set at auto.

 

[bilbat]

I'd first try it at 2.05 - that's really good RAM (lots of good experience with it here, with a variety of northbridges, and I use it exclusively on 775 MOBOs) and it often will run rated speed a bit below rated (2.1) voltage... If you still have stability issues, you can always put it back to 2.1

You can likely lower the tRFC once you're stable as well; mine is currently at 58, and I've had it run well as low as 52...

Back a bit later with an OC

 

[Hawkeye22]

Thanks, I'll give it a try later tonight. Two sticks (4gig) was running fine with DIMM vcore set to auto which would usually show up in HWMonitor as 1.8v. I also appreciate any OC info, but at this point I'd really like to just get it to run stable at stock speeds.

 

[bilbat]

GA-EP45-UD3R 7500 to 3.6 GHz
Intel E7500 1066FSB x11.0mult 2.93GHz .85-1.3625V Core R0 sSpec SLGTE/SLB9Z CPUID 1067Ah262-253-0236
G.Skill F2-8500CL5D 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 memory: 5-5-5-15-2t nominal 2.1v

Before we start ramping things up, I want to teach you a new skill involving the BIOS: Do the <DEL> at the boot to enter the BIOS; notice, at the bottom, the <F11> "Save CMOS to BIOS" - hit this, and you should get a menu that will show a number (the count varies by BIOS) of empty 'slots', each of which will store an entire set of BIOS parameters, to be re-loaded from the corresponding <F12> "Load CMOS from BIOS"; this is a wonderful overclocker's feature. What I do with it, is to save my 'baseline' working parameters, so if I change something that 'irritates' the board, and forces a reset of all the parameters to defaults, or, even worse, get so screwed up I need to do a 'clear CMOS', I can get back to my starting point with no effort, and without having to remember 85 separate settings! Another thing it prevents is two hours' troubleshooting, having forgotten a change to a crucial parameter - like, "wait a minute - didn't I have the Trd at seven?!" It's pretty self-explanatory, and I alway urge people to start right away by taking the time to give the 'slots' names that mean something: in two hours, "Try2" and "Try3" will not be very helpful, but "450@+10MCH" and "450@+15MCH" will! Another use is for 'green' settings; overclocks, as a rule, do not 'play well' with green features, such as 'down-clocking' and 'down-volting'; with the storage slots, you can set up one profile, say "Green", with all the settings at 'stock' values, and all the 'green' features enabled; another, say "Balls2Wall" with a full overclock, and all the 'green' stuff turned off... Another neat feature of this 'slot' system is, for most BIOS, the mechanism itself will keep track of which ones have booted successfully, and how many times (up to, I believe, a max of five)!

On the "Advanced BIOS Features" page:

"CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)" to "Disabled"
"C2/C2E State Support" to "Disabled"
"C4/C4E State Support" to "Disabled"
"CPU Thermal Monitor 2 (TM2)" to "Enabled"
"CPU EIST Function" to "Disabled"
"Virtualization Technology" to "Enabled" - this allows use of Win7's fantastic VirtualXp feature...
"Full Screen LOGO Show" to "Disabled"

On the "Integrated Peripherals" page:

Your manual shows "Legacy USB storage detect", but later BIOS say "USB Storage Function" - either way, set to "Disabled"

On the "Power Management Setup" page:

"ACPI Suspend Type" to "S1(POS)" (for now...)
"HPET Support" to "Enabled"
"HPET Mode" to whichever OS type you're running - "32-bit" if an x86 version, "64-bit" if an x64 version...

On the "MB Intelligent Tweaker(M.I.T.)" page:

"Robust Graphics Booster" to "Auto" (I've always loved the name of this one - just sounds cool to me...)
"CPU Clock Ratio" to "11"
"Fine CPU Clock Ratio" to "0"
"CPU Frequency" - this one can't be set, it's calculated, and will change when we set the next few items...

******** Clock Chip Control ********
>>>>> Standard Clock Control

"CPU Host Clock Control" to "Enabled"
"CPU Host Frequency (Mhz)" to "334"
"PCI Express Frequency (Mhz)" to "100" (not auto...)
"C.I.A.2" to "Disabled" (we did this already - just a check...)

******** DRAM Performance Control ********
"Performance Enhance" to "Standard" (we did this already - just a check...)
"Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P.)" to "Disabled" (ditto...)
"(G)MCH Frequency Latch" to "333"
"System Memory Multiplier (SPD)" to "3.2B"

The strap is the reason we used a 334 clock instead of a nice even 333: the 'straps' are sets of northbridge timings - much like memory latencies, the faster you go, the 'looser' the timings have to be... There are four straps, corresponding to the Intel FSB ratings: 200 (800FSB), 266 (1066FSB), 333 (1333FSB), and 400 (1600FSB - Intel actually does make a 1600 FSB CPU - the QX9775 - but, I think, it's over $1500 a pop!); each strap has it's own set of available memory multipliers (ratios). The 3.2 we used (which is actually a 8:5 bus to bus ratio) is available only on the 333 strap. Anyway, the strap latencies, for some northbridges, don't 'kick in' until one over the
selected strap; so, in other words, setting the clock to 334 guarantees that we're getting the 333 latencies/timings...

"Memory Frequency (Mhz)" - again, can't be set, it's calculated...
"DRAM Timing Selectable (SPD)" to "Manual"
You can leave the rest of the memory settings alone; we haven't changed its actual speed...

"Load-Line Calibration" to "Disabled" (this works differently on different boards - on mine, it's worse "enabled" than "disabled" - the function is supposed to cure a phenomenon called Vdroop - the CPU voltage regulation circuit causes the CPU core voltage to sag, or 'droop' under high loadings; hopefullt, we're going to be at a low enough voltage to just ignore this...)

"CPU Vcore" to "1.3250V"

And that should do it!

I should point out that getting two reboots in a row here is perfectly normal behavior; it seems that, when you change certain settings (and we don't exactly know which ones - the only sure one I know is Trd - if you change it, I think you get the 'twin' reboot) it boots once to 'see where it's at', recalculates its remaining 'auto' settings, saves them, and then boots again. Three reboots in a row, however, usually indicates that the board was 'given indigestion' by your settings, and is going back to defaults. This sometimes goes astray, and it doesn't get back into proper operation - for example, at this point, mine will sometimes 'lock' itself into 111MHz x a six multiplier - and take a week to do a whole boot - that's time to do a CMOS reset, and use your 'stored' <F12> profile to get back to where you were...

Good luck!

Bill

 

[Hawkeye22]

I just got a response from GSkill. This is what they said.

Dear Customer

DIMM VCore should always be set to 2.10V. Memory Timings should always be set to 5-5-5-15-Command Rate 2. Set tRFC to 80 and leave MCH Core on AUTO and see if that will work.

If not, try testing the new set by itself to make sure both sticks are fine. If they are, you may have a motherboard with a weak memory controller which is why it can not operate 4 sticks 8GB at DDR2-1066. Once you have the motherboard replaced, with the setting changes already mentioned, everything be running smoothly.

Thank you
GSKILL SUPPORT

A weak memory controller? Is this possible? I've never run into this situation before.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Well, I never could get this board to run with all 4 sticks (8 gig) so I decided to just hang onto the extra memory in case I needed it. Yesterday I noticed that Gigabyte put out a new bios, F12. One of the fixes is memory compatability so I figured I'd give it a shot. I updated to F12, reset to defaults, and put the memory on auto. I then put my additional 2 sticks of ram in and fired up memtest. It ran with no errors. I then proceeded to boot Win7 and it recognized all 8 gig and I haven't had a BSOD yet.

So, anyone having problems running 4 sticks of ram, particularly G'Skill, try updating your bios to F12.