Memory undervoltage?

kickmyjiminy

Honorable
Jun 4, 2012
13
0
10,510
So I upgraded my CPU and started having problems with system stability. Here's what I'm running:

i5 760 (previously g6950)
H55m- e33 msi motherboard (lga 1156)
XFX hd 6670
4gb dual channel patriot memory (4 x 1gb modules, bought in pairs and paired by mobo slots)
500 gig WD blue hard drive
Windows 7 pro (64 bit)

I'm not an overclocker. Originally, I would get occasional lockups with the previous processor, nothing serious. After I upgraded to the 760, my system would hang, mostly during higher loads, and especially if I ran Prime 95 blended torture test and BF3. The other two test's would run fine, without a hitch. So I started to dig into this more. So I ran memtest86 and it's knockoff cousin memtest86+, both would lockup and not complete. So then I removed two of the modules, ran memtest's again. The tests completed withouth a hitch. I figured the other set was bad, so just to make sure I swapped them out, tested the other pair seperately, and they checkout fine too. What the hell? So I did the same test with Prime 95, both sets do fine seperately, so I put all of them back in again, and the computer locks up on blended again. I figure, memory is screwed, I'll have to get some new and better memory on Monday. After reading some forum posts, I decide to try my luck at overvolting the memory, as that seems to sometimes clear things up. I pushed it to 1.75 and 1.8, and windows only makes it a couple of minutes before crashing. Then I noticed that the board defaults the voltage to 1.6, when the memory I have is standard at 1.5. So I put it at 1.5, Prime 95 freezes the system again, memtest's still fail. Then I figure, screw it, I'll just knock the voltage down, so I set it to 1.35. Now everything is peachy. Prime 95 doesn't hang the system. I didn't try the memtests again, but BF3, which was hanging constantly, no longer was freezing the system either.

What's the deal?
 

kickmyjiminy

Honorable
Jun 4, 2012
13
0
10,510
Appears that even though MSI has a live update program, it doesn't do a very good job at updating drivers. I went to their website and manually downloaded all of the drivers for my motherboard, and then manually updated each component through the hardware manager in Windows. After doing that (and a bunch of things hadn't been updated that the live update said it had) I reran some of my previous tests with the memory voltage at 1.5, and everything worked flawlessly. I also reran windows experience index, and the memory index whent from 5.9 to 7.4, just from updating drivers for the pocessor!
 

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