Memory-caused crashes

[valzi]

My CPU is designed for 1333 RAM, but I bought 1600 G.Skill RAM as recommended by banthracis. I have a Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 mother board which has these RAM specifications:

4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory
Dual channel memory architecture
Support for DDR3 1866(OC)/1333/1066 MHz memory modules
(Another source for supported RAM.)

I set my RAM to 7-8-7-24-2T. I changed the voltage to 1.64v and set the clock to 1333. It's set to unganged. (The bios recommends not going above 1.64v, but the memory is meant to run at 1.65. I had it set at auto before, which the bios says might raise the voltage to match timings. This might have damaged the RAM, I suppose.)

Now my Windows 7 system is crashing whenever I do anything RAM-intensive. (Here's the most recent dump.) They're most often IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors caused by ntoskrnl.exe. They've been happening for a little over a month and are much more frequent now than a month ago, despite similar computer usage. (Here's a post I made earlier in which it was suggested I use these RAM timings.)

Also, I ran memtest86+. It didn't get through the first pass and stopped with this error: "Unexpected interrupt - halting."

Has my RAM gone bad? Should I buy a new pair? Should I buy a 1333 pair?

My specs are here.


Thanks for the help! Let me know if you need further information.

P.S. If I end up needing to buy new RAM, I'm looking at these:
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
A-DATA XPG Gaming Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model AX3U1600GB2G9-2G
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL

 

[Noworldorder]

I doubt there is anything wrong iwth your RAM. Why don't you just set evverything on Auto-let the RAM set itself and see how it runs for a month.
You are not gaining much from setting the timing manually. 1%.....maybe....

 

[valzi]

I doubt there is anything wrong iwth your RAM. Why don't you just set evverything on Auto-let the RAM set itself and see how it runs for a month.
You are not gaining much from setting the timing manually. 1%.....maybe....

Same problem when set to auto. I left it on auto for 2 days and still had several crashes. I do, however, have it set back to auto now.

Last night, I took out stick B and tested stick A in socket 1 with memtest86+.

Stick A had 1310 errors in socket 1.
Stick B had 32,767 errors in socket 1.

Then I tested in socket 3.
Stick A had 0 errors in socket 3.
Stick B had a huge number of errors in socket 3 - something over 100,000.

I'll test stick A in socket 3 again today to see if it passed by fluke.

 

[Noworldorder]

If I remember correctly, doesn't that board require slots 3&4? I'm at work now and can't check.

 

[valzi]

Just checked the manual. Channel 0 is slots 1 and 3. Channel 1 is slots 2 and 4.

I'm attributing the problem to either my non-matching PC3 number or to having a voltage that is incompatible with my motherboard. This somehow seems to have fried my memory.

I think I'm buying these as a replacement pair.

 

[Noworldorder]

Right, it's slots 3 and 4 then.
Nice RAM, I have been thinking about getting them myself and running a RAM disc. What stops me is that RAM discs don't like my S3 sleep mode, which I can't live without...I think

 

[valzi]

Why 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2?

Also, with just one stick, which slot should it go in? Does it even matter?

My current (bad) RAM is getting worse and worse. I can only keep the computer on a few minutes now, whereas before it mostly just shut off if I did something RAM-intensive.

 

[Noworldorder]

I found it....' knew I had heard something about this....
This was the reference to slots 3 and 4:
"To reach DDR3 1866MHz or above, you must install two memory modules and install them in the DDR3_3 and DDR3_4 memory sockets" although this may not apply in your case.
With one stick of RAM it should go in channel "0".

 

[valzi]

Best answer selected by valzi.

 

[Mousemonkey]

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[Mousemonkey]

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[Mousemonkey]

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