Windows 7 stuck on Starting Windows screen with 6 DIMMs, but not with 3. Help?

[Guest]

Hello fine folk that browse Tom's,

I'm having a very strange problem as I try to put my first X58 build together. Upon installing Windows 7 Professional, I found that it would boot with 1, 2, or 3 DIMMs installed, but with 4, 5, or 6 DIMMs installed, the boot up would hang at the "Starting Windows" screen. I swapped out all of the DIMMs and I am able to confirm that all 6 DIMMs are functional.

Here's what I know.

-BIOS reads all 6 DIMMS/All 6 DIMMS are working
-With 4 or more DIMMs installed, the system will freeze on the Starting Windows screen with the pulsing Windows logo
-With 1,2, or 3 DIMMs installed, the system boots up with absolutely zero problems.

My question is, how can I get all six DIMMs to work with my system? By all means, I am new to this, so I'm certainly hoping that I missed something very obvious.

MSI Big-Bang Xpower
Intel i7-930
Corsair XMS3-1600 12GB 6X2
WD Caviar Black 2TB
EVGA GTX 480
Antec TPQ-1200 W PSU
Antec 1200 Case
Lite-On DVD and BD

Thanks for any help!

 

[mrhoshos96]

did u set the timings frequency and voltage of the ram in the bios try that and tellus what happened.

 

[pjmelect]

With six DIMM's you need to increase the voltage by 0.1 volts.

 

[Guest]

Okay,

First, thank you for your quick answers, I'm sure you once knew the feeling of anxiety of not knowing what to do with a certain situation.

However, after going into BIOS and manually setting the voltage to 1.6v (from 1.5v that the MOBO had set as default), my problem remains.

-The timings that came with the RAM are 9-9-9-24 1.60V 1600MHz.
-I manually set the BIOS to match these specs and once again, there is absolutely no problems posting, BIOS picks up all 12 GB.
-I tried the same set up with the XMP profile enabled and disabled.

I had to double-check and I do indeed have 64 bit Windows. Even now, I'm typing this to you from the rig with 6GB of RAM installed. Perhaps I'm "doomed" to only run 3 physical DIMMs.

(On a side note, when I tried to use OC Genie, it actually underclocked my CPU to around 2.4GHz? I'm wondering if there is a side effect issue from the RAM?)

 

[mrhoshos96]

i7's usually downclock and undervolt when they are running on idle.

 

[Guest]

i7's usually downclock and undervolt when they are running on idle.

Ah. I didn't know that. Thanks.