Memory instability problem

[zachrnz]

Hello,

I'm a noob at this, trying to build my first system. Some of you might remember I posted earlier looking for advice on the parts I was choosing. Anyway, after assembling my parts, the computer was unstable and would freeze. No BSoD, it would just stop accepting input with a frozen screen. It did this a couple of times during Windows 7 installation. I Thought it might be the memory, so I checked the BIOS and set the timings to match those from Newegg for my memory (7-9-7-24), but then my machine would not even boot. I also experimented with setting the voltage (1.65). I used the MemOK! button to get back to the BIOS when these changes prevented me from booting. Finally, I set the memory to run at 1066, leaving everything else set to the default "auto", and I have been stable ever since. However, I have 1600 memory, and I plan on experimenting with overclocking. Obviously, I don't want to run at 1066 forever. I really don't know where to start in troubleshooting this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Here's my system:

ASUS P7P55D-E Pro
i5-750
Mushkin 4GB 1600 RAM
OCZ 600W power supply
Seagate 7200.12 500GB
Gigabyte 4870
Antec 300

 

[yyk71200]

Hello,

I'm a noob at this, trying to build my first system. Some of you might remember I posted earlier looking for advice on the parts I was choosing. Anyway, after assembling my parts, the computer was unstable and would freeze. No BSoD, it would just stop accepting input with a frozen screen. It did this a couple of times during Windows 7 installation. I Thought it might be the memory, so I checked the BIOS and set the timings to match those from Newegg for my memory (7-9-7-24), but then my machine would not even boot. I also experimented with setting the voltage (1.65). I used the MemOK! button to get back to the BIOS when these changes prevented me from booting. Finally, I set the memory to run at 1066, leaving everything else set to the default "auto", and I have been stable ever since. However, I have 1600 memory, and I plan on experimenting with overclocking. Obviously, I don't want to run at 1066 forever. I really don't know where to start in troubleshooting this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Here's my system:

ASUS P7P55D-E Pro
i5-750
Mushkin 4GB 1600 RAM
OCZ 600W power supply
Seagate 7200.12 500GB
Gigabyte 4870
Antec 300

You may have a bad ram. Try testing one stick at a time and see if your system becomes stable at the rated speed. Run on one, than switch to another.

 

[zachrnz]

You may have a bad ram. Try testing one stick at a time and see if your system becomes stable at the rated speed. Run on one, than switch to another.

Thanks, I had to call it a night before trying the stick swap, but before I went to bed I started memtest. It ran for over 7 hours and completed 5 passes without an error.

Here is the memtest output:

walltime: 7:04:45
cached: 4087M
RsvdMem: 8788K
MemMap: e820-Std
cache: on
ECC: off
test: STD
pass: 5
errors: 0
ecc errors: [blank]

I don't know much about memtest except that I have seen it recommended elsewhere to people with memory problems. Does this eliminate the bad ram possibility?

 

[jonnyboyC]

you may just have to work with it. back in may i got some ocx platium rated at 7-7-7-21 at 1600mhz, I've later come to learn that these rating are usually not achievable a too good to be true kinda thing.

But it would boot but i would get random freezes and testing on prime 95 the test that uses the most memory, would cause my computer to crash, so i had to just play with the setting, until i got to 7-8-7-21 so that it would run stably, and it took a few ours to get to that point. But another point, for me the 7-7-7-21 would run in memtest but would not pass prime 95 just a heads up

 

[zachrnz]

Ok, so I've been trying these suggestions. I swapped the RAM in and out, tried both sticks alone and found the exact same problems (also learned they don't work if you don't seat them all the way...). I also tried relaxing the timings to the slowest settings, thinking I would work my way down and see how fast I could get them, but it seems that if I take the timings off of "auto" at all, I can't post.

 

[zachrnz]

I just noticed something odd. I tried running my board's automatic overclocking feature, and it was able to take my processor a little over 4Ghz and the memory just over DDR3 1600. Stress testing works fine (Prime65) at these levels, so I'm thinking I might not even bother with the manual overclocking. Back to the point though, why is the auto system able to speed up the memory, but I can't do it manually?

BTW I do have aftermarket CPU cooling (Cooler Master Hyper 212).

I should also stress that the original problems I posted have nothing to do with the overclock. Those problems came first.

 

[jonnyboyC]

well what is the timing now on the ram, it could have just really loosened up the timing settings, and therefor actually made it total throughput less